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Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 12/24/2006 11:40:41 PM

Grand_Armee

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Will development of this game continue, or will we wait for all of the patches that are being clamoured for in FoF?

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 12/25/2006 1:55:51 AM

jimwinsor

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Oh yeah, from what I've been hearing, a naval expansion for CoG is in the works, including (drum roll...) detailed hex war naval combat!

This I am looking forward to!

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 12/27/2006 5:40:14 PM

wonkguy

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don't count on it.� why would they put anymore resources into this game when AoE is coming out soon and now they have people who plunked down $$ for FoF and want that game supported.�

CoG is a excellent idea but I think it has fallen victim to Father Time and other factors.

And where is the notion that suddenly the naval combat system is going to be rewritten coming from????

< Message edited by wonkguy -- 12/27/2006 5:51:11 PM >

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 12/27/2006 7:58:13 PM

Erik Rutins

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quote:

ORIGINAL: wonkguy
don't count on it.� why would they put anymore resources into this game when AoE is coming out soon and now they have people who plunked down $$ for FoF and want that game supported.�
CoG is a excellent idea but I think it has fallen victim to Father Time and other factors.
And where is the notion that suddenly the naval combat system is going to be rewritten coming from????

Perhaps from the developers and publisher?

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 12/28/2006 12:11:36 AM

Terl

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Gosh. You guys make it sound like death knells are sounding.... I hope not, I just bought CoG for my Christmas present. I am just starting to dig into it. I have some learning to do.....

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 12/31/2006 4:10:45 AM

wonkguy

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Don't get me wrong, this is a great game and you will be able to entertain yourself for at least the next year with it.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/1/2007 9:26:37 AM

Gray_Lensman

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I bought�(CoG) after (FoF), even though I knew it was the older game. development wise. Reason being, I like the game system of both games, and I want to encourage the developers to continue along similar lines, so I put my money into their coffers, as a statement of support.

< Message edited by Gray_Lensman -- 5/1/2007 9:28:13 AM >

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/6/2007 2:05:16 AM

Didz

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Well I hope CoG will continue to be supported as I only bought it today.

As for FoF, I have little interest in yet another ACW game, so I'll not be bothering with it.

< Message edited by Didz -- 5/6/2007 2:07:40 AM >

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/19/2007 1:36:29 AM

Gil R.

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Yes, it will be supported. We WCS types were discussing this just the other night. No timeframe yet, but we're definitely aware of the desirability of doing a few things for the COG-playing community.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/21/2007 8:01:10 PM

Gray_Lensman

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Didz

Well I hope CoG will continue to be supported as I only bought it today.

As for FoF, I have little interest in yet another ACW game, so I'll not be bothering with it.

Didz, believe it or not FoF is not just another Civil War game. I, too, was sceptical at first, but now that I have played it awhile, the depth of it puts all the other civil war games to shame.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/22/2007 11:12:10 AM

Didz

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Gray_Lensman
Didz, believe it or not FoF is not just another Civil War game. I, too, was sceptical at first, but now that I have played it awhile, the depth of it puts all the other civil war games to shame.

But, its still just another ACW game. I have loads of them and I'm not interested in another one.

My favourite incidently is 'American Civil War - From Sumter to Appomattox' by iMagic designed by Frank Hunter, which manages to capture just about every aspect of the conflict without becoming anal about it.

Personally, I think it would be nice to see a bit more variety in the periods covered by computer games. For example, how about a decent game based upon the English Civil War.

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Didz
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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/22/2007 5:21:40 PM

jkBluesman

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It is a marketing question, I think. There are not that many periods that appeal to a vast audience. Most people are interested in 19th and 20th century warfare, sometimes Ancient Romans and Greecs have a chance but that is about it.
However, I would love to see a great game based upon the English Civil War or wars in Japan or China prior to the 19th century.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 5/22/2007 6:26:05 PM

Didz

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Personally, I think its more of a US market fetish problem.

Statistically, the two most wargamed periods (worldwide) are WW2 and Napoleonic, with ACW coming in a poor third. But I'm still waiting for a decent Napoleonic game and yet ACW has been done to death three times over.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 6/30/2007 9:35:17 PM

hgilmer

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I'm from America and I have to agree with Didz. I have seen so many games about the ACW that I have become jaded about the whole prospect of even buying one. How can we keep them all separate? The names all start sounding the same because there are so many out there.

War games are to a select audience and I think you'd see some interest in a well coded, well designed game from the Napoleoic era. I'd like to see other games and eras developed as well. I think the HYW would be a great era to produce a detailed, well coded and designed game. Japan from about 1500 - 1800 would be another excellent era.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 7/3/2007 3:40:01 AM

Gil R.

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There are plenty of good (and great) games devoted to Civil War battles, but I think it's pretty clear that FOF was filling a gap in terms of covering the whole conflict. (And AGEOD's AACW, of course, is filling that gap, too.) Not all gamers enjoy tactical games, so I think there was definitely a need for FOF, and its reception in the war-gaming community proves it.

What was written up above about earlier periods not selling so well, sadly, is true. I'm by profession an ancient historian, and would love to spend as much time on developing the perfect Greeks or Romans game as we did for FOF, but that would be an insanely dumb business decision because it would sell a small fraction of the number of copies as COG or FOF.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 7/3/2007 1:27:57 PM

Didz

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Not sure about this gap, I already have a game that does that called 'American Civil War - From Sumpter to Appomattox' by iMagic designed by Frank Hunter and I've owned it years.

< Message edited by Didz -- 7/3/2007 1:28:14 PM >

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 7/3/2007 3:04:20 PM

Ironclad

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FSTA is an impressive game that for a long time was virtually unique in covering the whole ACW. I enjoyed it enough to preorder the revised version - probably some years away yet if the Guns of August development timescale is a guide.

FOF is a far more complex and I think demanding game and its combination of top class strategy and a superb tactical module puts it into a class of its own. I do like COG's more complicated economic model (which can be confusing at times) but am looking forward to the enhancement benefitting greatly from FOF's much better battle model and AI combined with the many advances in command, control, troop qualities/skills and weapon options.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 7/3/2007 5:02:12 PM

Didz

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@Ironclad
I had a look at the screen shots of FOF and thought it looked remarkably like COG, so your confirmation that it is merely confirms what�I already suspected.� Personally, I rapidly tired of COG which puts a heavy emphasis on logistic's requiring my to spend hours working as an army quartermaster and then fails to deliver a solid�strategic and tactical model�as a reward for all my efforts in number crunching.

Personally, I prefer the FSTA approach which focuses player interaction at policy rather than book-keeper level, even though the tactical model is extremely basic.� My ideal would be a game system which handled economics�and trade at policy level like FSTA but handled strategy and tactical play in a similar way to the Totalwar series.

But that looks like�it's a�long way off, either from Matrix or CA, just hope it happens before I'm too old to play it.�

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 7/4/2007 1:16:19 AM

Gil R.

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Didz,
The most complete set of screenshots of FOF (with labels) is here: http://www.west-civ.com/ForgeOfFreedom/Gallery/index.htm

If you look at the first image, the Options Screen, you'll see that many of the game features that you must be thinking of can be toggled off.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 7/4/2007 12:07:41 PM

Didz

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I may be wrong but as far as I can see what the Options Screen is providing is the ability to switch game features off, not decide what level of involvement one wants in micro-managing them.

Having said that COG has the option to auto-manage trade, diplomacy and military development, its just that when you allow it to do so it does some really alarming things, or at least the diplomacy did. FSTA seems to cope with all of this is a pretty straight forward and elegant way, its obviously not as detailed but it does include every factor that had an impact on the result.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 8/8/2007 8:41:22 PM

ericbabe

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Didz
Not sure about this gap, I already have a game that does that called 'American Civil War - From Sumpter to Appomattox' by iMagic designed by Frank Hunter and I've owned it years.

At 11 years old, is FSTA really still fulfilling a need of the war-gaming market? I can't find a place that even sells it on the web, not even a used copy at Amazon. Abandonware has a copy and their policy is that they won't put up a copy of a game if it's still for sale anywhere.

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 8/27/2007 8:56:55 PM

solops

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So, can we still expect a patch for CoG that will fix some of the remaining problems Before and add-on pack or CoG2?

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 8/27/2007 9:56:37 PM

ericbabe

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Which "remaining problems" did you have in mind?

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 8/27/2007 11:04:02 PM

Russian Guard

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

Which "remaining problems" did you have in mind?

Butting in here...I'm sure there's a number of things many would like tweaked in the short term, for me the list is short:

I'd definitely like to see the set-up Power levels added back in ( +3/-3, mentioned this in another thread to you, Eric), you said you'd check into that and verify that it was (accidently?) left out of patch 2.26...I'd like that to be patched back in sooner than having to wait on a CoGII if possible.

If this was a simple case of just adding the code back in, I'd be happy to playtest it to make sure it's working right, if you provide me with the requisite file changes.

The only other thing that comes to mind would be cutting back on the cash the AI gives to unplayed Nations at the higher levels. This leads to monster AI Armies roaming around with seemingly endless money to supply them. And the thing is, it doesn't really help them, it hurts them; when I battle those Armies I usually cause so many casualties over a cpl battles, that they surrender due to battlefiled casualties and battle-size glory and morale loss.

Again, be happy to play-test this if you can either provide me a file or show me how to tweak this.

edit: after reading some old posts on the subject of the large AI Armies, I see that Eric had addressed this issue in detail last year, and decided it was the best course in terms of play balance. I would make the argument, however, that it isn't effective, for the reasons I allude to above.

Probably the best solution would be to build some new options into the game, allowing for player control over this issue. Just MHO.

< Message edited by Russian Guard -- 8/28/2007 1:14:24 AM >

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 9/6/2007 4:04:50 AM

solops

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

Which "remaining problems" did you have in mind?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, there aren't a lot of true bugs. Something is wrong in Container manipulation. It is still awkward for me, but that is not a bug. But, things often do not "stick" or "stick" and then cannot be unstuck in containers. There are a few things I cannot really remember. Things that bug me, gleaned from other threads:

"Province Control: The province control system is broken. Some of the problems include (1) Protectorates that are conquered by a major power are considered �home territory� and are unable to be turned into protectorates of that power. In the player list, the conquered protectorate is still considered a protectorate of the former major power (2) Ceded provinces from a treaty are considered �home territory� and are impossible to form as part of a minor nation i.e. The province of Tyrol is required to be part of Bavaria in order to receive bonus troops during the spring levy. The only way I�ve been able, as France, to get Tyrol from Austria is through a peace treaty. Hence the problem, I can�t make it a protectorate as part of Bavaria. A province that is acquired through conquest or treaty should be able to be turned in to a protectorate at that countries choosing and not have limitations placed on them."

and

"Multiplayer remote game .

If you are the server/host of the game everything appears to work ok apart from the occasional game lock ups during detailed battle.

If however you have joined the game as an opponent of the server/host then certain important functions of the game dont work!

1 When you change the action of a Diplomat from say "Spy" to "Charm" or any other order, the order reverts back to "Spy" when you hit end turn making it impossible to change your Diplomats orders.

2 When changing your armys orders from say "Charge the Walls" to "Fire at the Walls" the same problem as explained above occurs.

3 A similar problem is also occuring when you tell your army to "Force march" or "forage" etc

LAN issue:
crash of the game during detailed combat while playing against another human with a AI reinforcement."

Lastly a really good thread for much of the post-1.2.26 issues and bugs:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1295772

< Message edited by solops -- 9/6/2007 4:07:39 AM >

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RE: Now that Forge of Freedom has been released... - 9/6/2007 4:36:59 PM

ericbabe

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There was a change that ceded provinces and some conquered protectorate provinces become home territory -- this fixed problems involved with the formation of protectorates. I agree that it does make forming new protectorates more difficult. I wouldn't say that the system itself is broken, though there are a few things that players should be able to do that they can't do in it. We'll likely address this as we work on the expansion, and it would seem reasonable to release these changes as a patch to 1.2.26 provided that our changes to the protectorate system aren't too complicated.

I don't know how the power settings were disabled -- they do seem to be gone -- I'll have to look into that.

I fixed one multi-player bug when working on FOF that I will be able to fix in COG -- it involves the occasional invisible unit in detailed battle (can happen when reinforcements show up)... the reinforcement thing you mentioned. The other problems (with the diplomats and army siege dispositions) seem to be related to dropped packets, since many people seem to be playing the game without these problems and I have never been able to reproduce them on our LAN; however, we've added code to FOF that does some packet dropping detection (still waiting on feedback to see whether this is improving things for some people) and I may be able to fit that code to COG as well.

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