The strategic game is a nice idea but it could use some improvements. After a few campaign games, I think the following features are problematic and should be changed:
Taking a capital gives you the entire empire of that nation, even if it spans half the world and your nation holds only two or three provinces.
Problem: The fastest way to win is to attack capitals as much as possible, ignoring all other provinces unless they get in the way. Why are they even on the map?
Solution: Change all provinces of a nation whose capital has fallen into “barbarian” provinces that you have to conquer in the usual manner. It might be necessary to increase the number of turns before the game ends so that global conquest is still possible.
Attacking a province results in a tactical map that comprises two adjacent provinces, both attacker and defender start out with a local capital, and one valid way to repulse the attack is to take the attacker’s capital. However, taking the enemy’s capital only results in a province gain for the attacker, not for the defender.
Problem: Even when the defender manages to take the attacker’s capital, the province hosting that capital on the strategic map actually has yet to be conquered which will play out on the exact same tactical map. That’s boring, invites reckless attacks as there are no repercussions (armies are indestructible!), and cheats the defender out of the reward for his effort.
Solution: When a defender repulses an invasion by taking the attacker’s capital, as opposed to just sitting out the time limit, the attacker’s province on the strategic map should pass to the defender. Incidentally, this would also further inhibit the capital-only strategy outlined above since the attacker would have to worry about losing a province.
The capital thing might be interested, but there are a limited number of turns to the game and it would be impossible to conquer each province individually. In the one campaign I’ve completed so far it was a matter of getting an army to my last enemy’s capital before I ran out of turns. The “treachery” and “sabotage” cards proved quite usefull in that regard. And I had so much tribute at that point that point that I would keep buying cards I didn’t need in an attempt to draw those two. A limit to the cards you can purchase per turn might be in order.
Well, you’re supposed to use overruns as much as possible but I never quite manage to get my armies and alliances set up properly for that. I agree that the game would need more turns if you didn’t get the entire empire with the fall of the capital province.
Hmm… how about getting as many provinces as you have armies, and turn only the rest over to the barbarians? You’d probably still need more turns per game, though.
Since most capitols are at level 6-8, I really think you’re overstating how easy it is to capture them. I mean, they’re really powerful already, even with multiple armies. What difficulty level are you talking about Christoph? At Normal I thought taking capitols was challenging, at higher difficulty I found myself having to plow through weak provinces just to get the cards necessary to weaken nearby capitols enough to nail them with just a couple armies. You’re making it sound like it’s simply a matter of attacking capitols to win the game, I’m finding it much harder than that. For one thing, they tend to be buried deep in provinces and it’s hard to get armies nearby so you can even attack with more than one at a time (which I think is necessary). Maybe you’re the RoN master or something…
Anyway, FWIW, according to Reynolds, CtW was added in April 2002. I can’t believe how polished it is considering it had only been in development for a year. It isn’t perfect and I’m not excusing that, but Reynolds indicated the expansion was going to focus a lot on this part of the game.
Well, I won my last campaign game at Moderate/Normal/whatever is just below Tough, and I found conquering level 6-7 capitals so easy that I just had to write this post!
Sure, you’d better have a bonus card or two, and an ally won’t hurt either, and you should make sure that the enemy doesn’t have an ally at hand. But if you go for capitals right from the start you’ll amass so many armies and tribute points that can basically roll up two or three entire continents before any capital province reaches level 8 fortification. Moreover, you’ll have tons of bonus cards and they won’t have any allies left to help.
As for my second point, I take it that everyone agrees giving an attacking province to the defender if the attacker’s provincial capital is taken is a good idea?
Anyway, FWIW, according to Reynolds, CtW was added in April 2002. I can’t believe how polished it is considering it had only been in development for a year. It isn’t perfect and I’m not excusing that, but Reynolds indicated the expansion was going to focus a lot on this part of the game.
I definitely agree that CtW is a great addition to an already very complex and extremely well-made game. No other game except for WBC2 has even tried that AFAIK. It’s good to hear that the expansion will focus on this aspect, maybe the couple of issues that bother me will be solved there in one way or another.
