First peeks at "Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition"

toonces the cat that can drive a ship
Dude, if those ships can't sail straight into the wind, I don't know how I'm going to figure out the naval battles. 

Gil R.
I don't even know how to spell 'DRM.'

son_of_montfort
Hahaha... DRM talk even got into the thread of a game - without any form of DRM. I'm seriously LMAO right now!

son_of_montfort
and it looks like the WitP for the Napoleonic Age.

Sorry, I shouldn't have brought up that 3-letter word. 

I didn't mean to derail the thread Gil, sorry.

Major Defect


This looks a cracker I must say.

I note that one of the comments from the screenshots noted that the AI opponent made some odd moves that led to a bit of an opening for the player (and the other way too, in the intersts of balance!), is that a major problem do you think, or is it just an odd event in the beta stage?

You already have my cash based on all of the above, but I am a tad curious all the same!!!

Thanks.  Are you asking about ships being able to fire down the aft of an enemy ship?  As I wrote in the thread, I wasn't playing a serious battle so much as moving around ships and firing so that I could get some screenshots.  So I made a number of moves a player normally wouldn't make, and that led to what you saw in the screenshots.

toonces


Sorry, I shouldn't have brought up that 3-letter word. 

I didn't mean to derail the thread Gil, sorry.

Don't worry about it.  I sort of enjoyed it, especially the comment that DRM has even crept into a thread about a non-DRM game.

That snake in the statue would make pretty good DRM - Dragon Rights Management. You copy this - you get burninated.

So Gil... we looking at pretty soon. I need to know if I should assuage this sudden Napoleonic craving with a game of stock CoG, or if it wouldn't be worth it because I will be restarting. Scratch that - I know I would be restarting, it takes months to really get deep into a game of CoG.

You should release the naval part as its own minigame. I think people would buy THAT!. It looks so awesome!

SoM

Son_of_Montfort
Bazinga!

toonces


Sorry, I shouldn't have brought up that 3-letter word. 

I didn't mean to derail the thread Gil, sorry.

It's actually a TLA.

A Three Letter Acronym. :D

One strikeout is a tragedy; a million strikeouts a statistic.

So, was the original Crown of Glory a good game? I've been watching this new version of it on the Matrix forums and it's definitely caught my interest.

People with intelligence will use it to fashion things both true and false to try to push through whatever they want with their clever reasoning. This is injury from intelligence.
Nothing you do will have effect if you do not use truth.

Forge of Freedom is probably the better comparison as many of those elements will be in this title. Is it good? Some concider it the Best Civil war game ever made or at the very least place it right behind AGEOD's American civil War game. It's a matter of personal preference as to which is favored as the two games in general are good- they approach it very differently.

So yeah I'd say be excited. Grown of Glory got an impressive score on IGN for example. An 8.0 from a review site notedly harsh on the gender.

Both games had a learning curve. From what I understand Gil is going an extra step in tutorials on this one.

That Steve Butts at IGN gave CoG an 8.0 is amazing (I didn't know this before GR, good catch), as he is notoriously hard on wargames.

Forge of Freedom, as GR say, was probably the "better" of the two, but that mostly just comes from a lower learning curve. With FoF, you only have two factions - North and South, and the economic model is streamlined for a constant and total war economy. Diplomacy is pretty shallow in FoF, partially because the two sides were not going to diplomatically end the war. However, you get some neat and complex things - like being able to outfit certain units with different guns that are better than your stock weapons.

 In CoG, you have TONS of factions, the major kingdoms and the minors that can be influenced by diplomats (who can also do all sorts of other actions). Treaties are a "build your own treaty" mechanic that is the best treaty system in any game I have seen. The economic model in CoG, made to simulate economies that were not constantly at war, is MUCH more complex (somewhere just under Victoria in complexity).

CoG was the first game, so the engine, AI, etc, were all new and untested. Being more complex, in many ways, than FoF, the initial AI in CoG wasn't stellar (although not a slouch either). Further, with the near limitless actions a player could take, there were still some sticky bugs that crept into CoG. But now, they are mostly gone and patched out (as are the bugs in FoF).

This EE is pretty much addressing the advice and requests of the fans. Naval warfare was always the least fun and most ignored part - so they are adding the new turn based naval battles. The map was confusing and a tad overly cluttered - so they have worked on the map and added better borders. I think people are going to be very happy with this one!

SoM

Son_of_Montfort
Bazinga!

ghostryder


So yeah I'd say be excited. Grown of Glory got an impressive score on IGN for example. An 8.0 from a review site notedly harsh on the gender.

Both games had a learning curve. From what I understand Gil is going an extra step in tutorials on this one.

I'm not sure which is more alarming -- that you think COG has a gender, or that you seem to have coined the nickname "Groan of Glory."  (Which reminds me of an odd review that mocked the game by referring to it as "Tiara of Fruity" for some reason.)

Ghostryder's quite right about the tutorials -- we'll be providing 8-10 video tutorials, which should ease the learning curve considerably.

I've got little to add to what son_of_montfort wrote (whom I thank for his post), other than to point out that one of the most important additions to COG:EE is an option for playing with a greatly simplified economy, so that those who want to focus on military and diplomatic affairs can do so.

I'm not sure which is more alarming -- that you think COG has a gender, or that you seem to have coined the nickname "Groan of Glory."  (Which reminds me of an odd review that mocked the game by referring to it as "Tiara of Fruity" for some reason.)

Ghostryder's quite right about the tutorials -- we'll be providing 8-10 video tutorials, which should ease the learning curve considerably.

ROFL. My spelling and grammar are surely horrible. But it's not my fault I was dropped so much as a child.

Gil R.


Thanks.  Are you asking about ships being able to fire down the aft of an enemy ship?  As I wrote in the thread, I wasn't playing a serious battle so much as moving around ships and firing so that I could get some screenshots.  So I made a number of moves a player normally wouldn't make, and that led to what you saw in the screenshots.

Ah yes, missed that. My apologies! I'll use my "excited looking at the screenshots" defence on this one then!

I always get a little peeved when a "sequel" to a game comes out which, in fact, is really a significant upgrade to a previous release. I bought COG and enjoyed it greatly, and looking at the new version, it looks outstanding; yet I will effectively need to shell out twice to get the best version of the same basic game ultimately.

No problem Gil, I've supported these games since they came out! Obviously, some of the early stuff was rocky, particularly with CoG, but I think the road has been a pleasant one none-the-less.

Son_of_Montfort
Bazinga!

Be aware that Matrix Games don't generally go down in price until quite some time after release (over a year in most cases that I recall).

A lot of major titles go down in price quite quickly because they make their killing in the first couple of weeks of release...strategy games (true strategy, not mass market games) don't generally sell in massive numbers so the price stays high to counter the relatively low take up.

In other words, you could be waiting well over a year to see the price of Crown of Glory EE go down in price.

I AM The Law
JudgeDredd

gocrows


,,,I will probably buy it, but not until it reduces in price a little, as no doubt, it will be released at a premium.

I believe CoG owners will get a minor price break on the EE version.

Edit - Erik R posted that the discount will be $10.