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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [Napoleonics] >> Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition >> honest review

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honest review - 8/29/2009 6:11:17 AM

R.E.LEE

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i have only played about 20 hours,but this was enough to post this,i love the acw and nappy period,FOF was and is the best ive ever seen ,had cogee recieved the attention to detail that FOF received it would have been a game for the rest of my life,but its so lacking in many things that could have and should have been moved over from FOF,like all the biography s on generals ,the weapons purchase ,the list goes on.i am very anxious to see what there next title is,and hope that it is approached with the same heart that was put into FOF.all that aside cog is still an awesome game ,just not what it could have been,had it copied FOF in design, this is only my opinion .and i will continue playing both but hope that the cog patch passes some of FOF details into it.regards and thnx for 2 great games.

after 100 hours of play ,i will be reassing my opinion.i am find the learnig curve in politics a bit steep for my small mind,but once i master it,i will be feeling better in fighting my wars.

< Message edited by R.E.LEE -- 8/29/2009 6:30:04 AM >

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RE: honest review - 8/29/2009 6:51:38 AM

Gil R.

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R.E. Lee,
I definitely appreciate your comments -- both positive and critical -- but feel I should respond to two points:
1) We don't have the bios simply because they are an ENORMOUS amount of work. In addition to the countless hours put in by the volunteers who write them -- especially Battleline and jkBluesman, whose dedication has been amazing -- it takes me on average an hour per bio to go through them. We now have 300 in FOF, with a backlog of unedited bios that's at least 200 more, and I've been too busy working on a still-secret project to so much as touch that backlog in the past few months. While it would be great to have something comparable in COG:EE, I just don't have the time to work on such a project as well.
2) There might also be other reasons I'm not thinking of, but the main reason we don't have the weapons purchase system that FOF has is that COG:EE is at the divisional level, and it just made sense to us that FOF, being a brigade-level game, should give the player the ability to upgrade from muskets to Springfields for 2000-3000 men.

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RE: honest review - 8/29/2009 7:47:19 AM

R.E.LEE

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great point about the div level,that makes perfect sense,i feel stupid not seeing that reason myself,in divisional level the mix of arms would nullify a weapons purchase screen.

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RE: honest review - 8/30/2009 10:43:24 AM

Mus

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Weapons purchase makes more sense for the ACW period as well because the technology was changing so rapidly and being fielded in such a haphazard way.

< Message edited by Mus -- 8/30/2009 11:12:08 AM >

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RE: honest review - 8/30/2009 1:13:03 PM

Anthropoid

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Good points about Div level and historial context . . . BUT

two questions:

1) would it be undoable from a coding/workload standpoint to put in some sort of weapon purchase system?

2) would it actually be a 'breech" of historicism?

Bottom line to me is this: the ability to customize your units is (for nerdy arm chair general guys like us) a very effective way to make a game more "fun" (meaning we can spend more hours mentally masturbating with it while our wives look on disdainfully). The ability to think strategically in terms of "customizng" your army and then use that customized army tactically is one of the most fun design elements of FoF. While CoGEE has this to a degree, it is much less so. I can't see why, from an historical perspective, Napoleonic Era units should be less 'trainable' 'equippable' etc., all the things that customizing is modeling in game.

Related to this: why only two slots for unit attributes instead of the larger number as in FoF (forget if it was 3 or 4?).

To me, overall, CoGEE is the better game. The diplomacy, the multiple nations, the naval, the advanced economy, the province values, etc. all to me are a better middle-ground between good gaming and good historical model. CoGEE feels a bit more open-ended and 'sand-boxy' than FoF too, though that is more about the topic/period. In this respect, I kind of disagree with RE Lee. However, I do in general agree with him that CoGEE would be an even better game with some of the neato features in FoF included. Maybe just food for thought for CoGEE II

. . .

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RE: honest review - 8/30/2009 7:14:29 PM

Gil R.

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From a programming point of view adding weapons purchase is doable, but keep these points in mind:
1) The time spent coding it would mean that some other feature(s) would not get added, since programming time on COG:EE is not limitless. (Not if we want to produce other projects!)
2) It would require redoing parts of the graphics, which can be a big deal, and also delays other projects.

We did recognize that customizing units makes for a better game, which is why we added the "Special Abilities" concept from FOF. (In answer to your question, FOF has just two slots for special abilities and two for brigade attributes. If ever we do a FOF expansion I'd like to see a third ability slot available for "Legendary Units," to make them more, er, special.)

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RE: honest review - 8/30/2009 10:17:42 PM

Mus

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I honestly do not see the point of customizing weapons in this period.

A smoothbore musket is a smoothbore musket, a rifle is a rifle. One of the things I have been struck by as a person with more than a casual interest in firearms and their proper use is the almost universally crappy quality of the weapons and poor training standards of the troops in their use.

Certain countries might have had a little bit better or a little bit worse in any given weapon system, but they were all within a certain envelope that doesn't require that much detail from what I have read.

The ACW is completely different in that you could have big disparities such as infantry fighting in linear formation armed with muzzleloaders going up against dismounted cavalry skirmishing in open order using repeating rifles.

< Message edited by Mus -- 8/30/2009 10:18:56 PM >

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RE: honest review - 8/30/2009 11:00:27 PM

Marshal Villars

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It is my feeling that based on the relative short period of the game (probably intended for 10 year games) that CoG:EE is not the ideal platform for adding several weapon types. I haven't been under the impression that any army went through that many TYPES of firearms during the wars. If the game was a longer one (say 100+ years), then it would definitely be needed/useful--because you couldn't have guys walking around with 100 year old firearms technology, and the only way to get rid of them would be to scrub/disband the unit.

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RE: honest review - 9/2/2009 4:48:10 PM

ericbabe

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There wasn't really much in the way of firearms improvement during the Napoleonic era. The British produced about 30,000 rifles, and we try to reflect this with the "infantry + rifle" unit. But as far as I can tell there was nothing like the advances in weapons technology that occurred during the American Civil War during this period.

For the generals, we decided, after looking at many other Napoleonic / Civil War products on the market and by reading discussion threads, that there simply isn't the fan-base for Napoleonic commanders as there is for American Civil War generals. The generals for FOF took an incredible amount of work on our part, and in reviews this research was either ignored or -- in the case of our print-reviews and from the comments of reviewers at Wargamer -- openly mocked. Suffice it to say that I didn't feel much of an incentive to put that same incredible amount of work into the commanders for COG:EE (and Gil is still not done editing all the bios for FOF yet!)

We did adopt unit special abilities, and I think allowing them to be purchased with experience works well.

We didn't adopt unit attributes, but -- as has been pointed out -- I don't think these make as much sense at the division level.

The FOF supply rules didn't seem to be any more or less popular than the original supply rules we had for COG, so I didn't see a strong reason to introduce those.

We introduced "strategic disorder" as a simpler version of strategic morale.

For flags, there simply aren't the sorts of resources available for Napoleonic flags as there are for American Civil War flags. As for the commanders, there also seems to be a much smaller fan-base for Napoleonic-era flags.

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RE: honest review - 9/3/2009 3:47:56 PM

Anthropoid

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

There wasn't really much in the way of firearms improvement during the Napoleonic era.� The British produced about 30,000 rifles, and we try to reflect this with the "infantry + rifle" unit.� But as far as I can tell there was nothing like the advances in weapons technology that occurred during the American Civil War during this period.

For the generals, we decided, after looking at many other Napoleonic / Civil War products on the market and by reading discussion threads, that there simply isn't the fan-base for Napoleonic commanders as there is for American Civil War generals.� The generals for FOF took an incredible amount of work on our part, and in reviews this research was either ignored or -- in the case of our print-reviews and from the comments of reviewers at Wargamer -- openly mocked.� Suffice it to say that I didn't feel much of an incentive to put that same incredible amount of work into the commanders for COG:EE (and Gil is still not done editing all the bios for FOF yet!)

We did adopt unit special abilities, and I think allowing them to be purchased with experience works well.

We didn't adopt unit attributes, but -- as has been pointed out -- I don't think these make as much sense at the division level.

The FOF supply rules didn't seem to be any more or less popular than the original supply rules we had for COG, so I didn't see a strong reason to introduce those.

We introduced "strategic disorder" as a simpler version of strategic morale.

For flags, there simply aren't the sorts of resources available for Napoleonic flags as there are for American Civil War flags.� As for the commanders, there also seems to be a much smaller fan-base for Napoleonic-era flags.

Thanks for the clarification(s) guys. I suspected that there was little historical basis for differentiating late 18th century weapon systems with the purchase thing.

It is a real shame that the General's Bios thing did not get well-received. I personally have found it to be a highly-enriching aspect of that game. In particular, I remember reading in Sherman's bio about how he had a breakdown at some point . . . and sure enough IN-GAME, the sherman general icon became disabled in some way partway into the game! I also remember reading about Patterson and having that shape my game play to a large extent. Real shame that there are not more reviewers players who appreciate this fine attention to detail.

To me, it is this attention to detail, and sincere effort to balance historicism with gameplay-fun that really distinguishes WCS, and it is frustrating that you do not receive widespread accolades for it. I guess it should be surprising in a world in which World of Warcraft, Fallout3, Empire Total Frustration, etc. do so well.

ADDIT: question about the "unique" units (Jaegers, Guards, Cossacks, the Turkish one) the manual that I'm using (paper copy included in CD package pp. 44-48) is a bit sparse on details of exactly what distinguishes these troops from common infantry (same for the Heavy Cav and Lancer units). Reading this thread, I'm getting the impression that these 'unique' units are meant to represent Divisioins that were either specially equipped, specially trained/supplied, or followed some sort of special warfighting doctrine(s)?

For example, I seem to recall someone saying on the forums that Jaegers are particularly good at attacking urban hexes, and also good at overrunning artillery? I also seem to recall someone saying something like "Lancers should charge when in Column formation, not Line," those kinds of things. But I see no reference to this type of thing in the manual, so I wonder if it is true or not?

If more clarification about how these units are distinctive, and how they are best used in game could be provided in future updates to the manual or just to stickies on the forums I think that that would be quite helpful.

< Message edited by Anthropoid -- 9/3/2009 4:01:11 PM >

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