Review Tacticular Cancer reviews March of the Eagles

[Trash]

Tags: March of the Eagles; Paradox Interactive

Straight out of the trenches we send our very own Oscar to go and re-enact some good old fashioned Napoleonic warfare with Paradox's March of the Eagles. Did he enjoy it or found it to be as much fun as marching all the way back from Moscow to Paris?

The horrible, horrible ‘ping-pong’ warfare of earlier Paradox games has returned with a vengeance. This is when a defeated army endlessly retreats, with your army requiring an insane number of victories to actually destroy it. Recent Paradox games have addressed this problem by seeing armies that stand no chance against you in battle instantly annihilated when you win. But here it’s worse than ever with enemy armies managing to retreat through your armies into your own provinces even when core provinces owned by them are available. I’m no military genius but I imagine that when an army is defeated they don’t “retreat” deeper into enemy territory. This is exacerbated by the game registering provinces without fortresses as instantly captured when an enemy army arrives. While this realistically represents the rapid manoeuvre and speedy advances of the Napoleonic Wars combined with this ‘ping-ponging’ of defeated armies, warfare can quickly take a turn to the ridiculous. In my game as Prussia, the Russian invasion into the east felt more like un-coordinated bandits bouncing around the frontier (a small invading Russian army of a few thousand soldiers managed to retreat all the way to Berlin) than any serious military threat. The game left me feeling more like I was playing whack-a-mole via mouse click instead of organising a desperate defence against the vast Russian tide. While the AI was faring poorly against me in their war score, they were certainly winning the fight against my patience. Thankfully the developers have put fixing this on their to-do list, but as it stands combat is more about your capacity to endure tedium than your tactical prowess. The diplomatic AI seemed little better, with Britain forming and then dissolving its coalition against France every few months.​

Sacré bleu! Read the full review here.

 

[TripJack]

damn you paradox

oscar post something so i can brofist you

 

[Trash]

Posted it on the Pdox forums. Now I remember why I hardly ever visit them anymore. Fucking fanboys man.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...Tacticular-Cancer-reviews-March-of-the-Eagles

And now they're wondering if this is being a legitimate "press review." This is rich.

 

[oscar]

Flanks and battle orders are hardly a MotE innovation, Crusader Kings II has had them for a while (a game that deserves credit for its transition very dull number-centric warfare in early patches to a lot more interesting stuff, especially when coupled with mods, now). With the right terrain, unit composition and commanders you can also win victories against armies that quite badly outnumber you. Surviving the Mongols virtually requires a 24+ martial commander so you're not annihilated in the skirmish phase and can pull of a 'Shield Wall' battle tactic.

He kinda implies it is when he says 'Recent Paradox games have addressed this problem by seeing armies that stand no chance against you in battle instantly annihilated when you win', suggesting it's not present here - when it is.

Even stacks that I outnumbered 10 to 1 I still had to chase down and beat over and over again (as they retreated deeper into my own borders). The AI's love of harassing you with multiple 1,000 man raiding stacks than actually confronting you in a serious battle exacerbates things, even by that calculation he quotes requiring you to send 10,000 men in pursuit. Now if the AI has about eight of this little stacks running around the place than things become frustrating very quickly. It would have been even worse without my satellite in the rear to help chase down these I'd literally been playing Crusader Kings II the week before I reviewed this what had none of this tediousness. Crusader Kings II isn't even centred around warfare (assassination, intrigue and cunning marriages are just as potent a tool as military force) yet it is far more interesting there. Both ping-ponging and the AI will need some serious changes. There is some potential and nifty new features in the engine, but as I said in the review playing the singleplayer AI is more about your ability to withstand tedium than challenge as things stand.

 

[Infinitron]

Are you offering doritos?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The whole things screams of paradox modder shovelware, just something to pad the release schedule until their proper games come out.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Posted it on the Pdox forums. Now I remember why I hardly ever visit them anymore. Fucking fanboys man.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...Tacticular-Cancer-reviews-March-of-the-Eagles

And now they're wondering if this is being a legitimate "press review." This is rich.

I noticed that bloke with all the icons thinking he's billy big bollocks. Proudly displaying all the paradox shite he's splurged for like some lame career general pinning every superfluous medal to his front.

DEMI MODERATOR.

Pigeon chested cunt.

 

[Brayko]

I'm actually more inclined to side with them on this one. I had a blast managing my armies in MotE, and the thrill of taking out numerically superior forces by assigning the right tactics to each flank. Review has some good points but is ignorant on others.

 

[oscar]

"Overrun only triggers if there is a fight, and mostly a retreating stack without moral evades most fights, so you will hardly see overrun if you chase a retreated stack"

Well that explains it. Could have sworn that his claim about overrun firing at the end of any battle with a 10 to 1 numerical advantage couldn't be right

I'm actually more inclined to side with them on this one. I had a blast managing my armies in MotE, and the thrill of taking out numerically superior forces by assigning the right tactics to each flank. Review has some good points but is ignorant on others.

All those details are somewhat meaningless when the AI struggles to properly co-ordinate a simple invasion across a land border or combine its spread out armies into a single stack that could actually stand a chance of beating me. This isn't even to get me started on the virtually non-function diplomatic AI or glaringly poor balance. Any province development outside of depots is ridiculously worthless. Likewise money flows in at such a rate (with little worthwhile to spend it on) that the game's sole resource ends up being manpower.

As I concluded in my review, there's some neat ideas in there and multiplayer would allow you to ignore the weak AI. As the game stands however I'd really struggle to recommend this, even with its low price tag, to anyone interested in a solid single player experience. In its present form the singleplayer fees like a stripped-down, ADHD-suffering EU for map-painters.

 

[Suroh]

Jesus fucking Christ.

And I though the Codex is pathetic with gayfisting morons, patronmonkeys and racetraitors. r00ffles!

 

[BelisariuS.F]

Posted it on the Pdox forums. Now I remember why I hardly ever visit them anymore. Fucking fanboys man.

Aren't you exaggerating a bit? Basically every discussion there is normal civil discussion: some praise, some criticism, some disappointment, and exchange of arguments about how things should look like (weak elements of MotE also received criticism by people who expected more, and no one was raging that some dares to criticise it). Or do you expect that every forum should bash everything codex-style?

 

[Trash]

Do check the thread. Then look at the edits. The mod edited his own remarks, edited a few other and even deleted a few 'trolling' and 'off-topic' posts.

The 'is this even a legitimate press review' for instance got quickly edited out and I got an infraction point for linking to this thread further into the discussion. Nice, huh?

 

[Sranchammer]

Do check the thread. Then look at the edits. The mod edited his own remarks, edited a few other and even deleted a few 'trolling' and 'off-topic' posts.

The 'is this even a legitimate press review' for instance got quickly edited out and I got an infraction point for linking to this thread further into the discussion. Nice, huh?

Tread carefully, one never knows what demons make emerge from that summon.

 

[hakuroshi]

Jesus fucking Christ.

And I though the Codex is pathetic with gayfisting morons, patronmonkeys and racetraitors. r00ffles!

Well, one does not have a choice not to display these baubles unless he also does not care about access to tech support subforums and some other stuff there. Sometimes it is useful to quickly know what version the certain poster is playing with. Just an ego scratching most of the time though...

 

[Kane]

- ‘Ping-ponging’ has come back from the grave

back from the grave? when has it been buried?

paradox has to get rid of those old board game mechanics.

edit:

combat reflects historical reality of big battles.

holy fuck are fanbois annoying
i don't get why anyone on this earth would defend paradox combat mechanics unless he has been dropped as a child.

 

[Burning Bridges]

No one seem to have luck with Napoleon Campaigns. The score is now at two underwhelming games.

This is all the more ironic because all that AGEOD had to do was make another game like ACW, which required perhaps 10% of the resources for PON. Now they cannot even try because the franchise belongs to Paradox, and they probably signed that they will make nothing with Napoleon in it.

 

[Trash]

Kewl, that Paradox forum thread has now gone over 4 pages filled with angry fan boys, trolls, clueless tards and a few lone voices of sanity. It's awesome. Well done, oscar.