Ageod Wargames

[Joined on the 4th of July]

• Players: 1-7
• PBEM: Yes

Codex PBEM could be amusing.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The latest releases seem more and more rushed. If I just look at the graphics in NCP I could puke.
Lately my impression is that they have several teams of professional modders who can make any game they want, AGEOD just makes necessary adjustment to the engine.
I also still think that the new streamlined UI was a huge mistake. I've never really gotten very far since they came up with that shit, it's simply too depressing.
Anway you can still have tons of fun but you might as well stick with AACW (the original), WiA or RUS.

 

[Comte]

This game looks like it was rushed out the door for Christmas. Also Thirty Years War appears to be rushed out the door as well. I am pretty far into a TYW PBEM but it's incredibly boring and the diplomatic options are basically non-existent. Ageod really needs to update their engine it still doesn't make use of multi-core processors. That's why its laggy and turn processing can take forever especially in NCP. Some guys bought the rights to WWI Gold which was an AGEOD spinoff and managed to optimize the engine and got it running faster before they were forced to remove the game due to legal issues. I agree with Burning Bridges AACW, WIA and Rus are their best games. Stick with those and avoid the new stuff. They seem to have lost their way.

 

[Agesilaus]

RUS and WIA are great, but I like AJE best.

I haven't played any of the more recent titles.

 

[Sranchammer]

Slitherine ruined them

 

[oscar]

It's a shame as I love both these settings and would love to see someone truly do them justice.

 

[Burning Bridges]

You can still have lots of fun with the games. it's just the sloppy execution that puts some people off.

They graphics seem to be taken from various books and photographs and then painted over with little skill. They dont even match in size and are all over the place.
In TAW I tried to rearrange the graphics myself as best as I could until I realized how stupid that was.

 

[Zarniwoop]

You can still have lots of fun with the games. it's just the sloppy execution that puts some people off.

Wish I could. But constantly reading a stream of error messages in French and then trying to send an army to attack a Confederate general because the tutorial tells me to, only to find that he doesn't exist and the region he's supposed to be in is blank, is not my idea of fun. Civil War 2 is the most bug-ridden POS I have seen since AssCreed Unity.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The new Napoleon game seems to be quite popular though.

 

[Sranchammer]

Their most ambitious was Pride of Nations. If they ever set their full capabilities on the sequel they could give Paradox a run.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Paradox owns them now lel

 

[Sranchammer]

Paradox owns them now lel

No, Slitherine owns them now.

 

[Trash]

Amen to that. Their production values have dropped off from the moment they sold their soul to the EA of wargaming. Remember, Slitherine=Matrix.

I'm done with them for now. Their new releases that is. The old stuff is still stellar.

 

[Agesilaus]

Slitherine has always been a bit shit. I did enjoy playing Field of Glory online, though. Very quick and a huge variety in the armies.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Why are all these games so heavily scripted? I feel like a spectator most of the time. Why can't they have some kind of sandbox mode, where you have a starting situation and you play from there and fuck events. :huttburt:

 

[Endlösung]

Why are all these games so heavily scripted?

Cause AI is hard.
And what you are basically playing in Ageod is Risk with a gazzilion attributes dumped on it, but you dont look at them, just stack and Risk gameplay.

 

[Beowulf]

[...]Why can't they have some kind of sandbox mode, where you have a starting situation and you play from there and fuck events. :huttburt:

Play one of the larger scenarios; the biggest campaign that you can find, preferably.
That way you'll have strong chance that scripts will break and bug out and events won't trigger properly or at all (mostly applicable to newer titles).

 

[Sranchammer]

Smaller scenarios have always been the way to go.

I've found I'd rather play boardgame version on Vassal than AGEOD campaign.

 

[rezaf]

Smaller scenarios have always been the way to go.

Really? I've found myself gravitating towards larger scenarios when possible.
But the only one I really really liked was the AACW (the first civil war game) grand campaign, and it (historically) had the major flaw of being pretty one-sided.
I think my second favorite is AJE.

AACW also had the best map art IMO and just the right fit when it comes to complexity.
For example, I dig the corps mechanics, and in AACW it's fun to figure out a proper order of battle - To End All Wars has a similar mechanic, but there's so frigging many troops to keep track of it crosses the line from being fun to being a chore (and then keeps going).
AACW had also the best interface for building units and reinforcements, the on-map thing they use in subsequent games is just more cumbersome to me.

The game that really seemed to had them lose their way was Pride of Nations. Unlike what you wrote last year, I think it merely showed making a grand strategy game was just far beyond their level of expertise, or at the very least far beyond what the AGEOD engine could handle. I still have nightmarish memories about how long executing a single turn took...

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

wud be cool if there were games like ageod games, but they were made by technically competent people

 

[Sranchammer]

Boardgames remain the best option, unfortunately.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The problem is that they made a very good engine, then thought they can milk the shit out of it and were unable to improve the game.

If I remember right, the 2 base games Birth of America and AACW came out ca 2006, and if you look very closely none of the features they have added afterwards have improved the games in any way.

Shortly after 2007 they also lost their talented main artist and the guys that came after her are talentless hacks. This was the as you could see how they were struggling to fake it, but were not even able to make icons the same size. Therefore most of the games look like a fucking amateurish mess, with some notable exception (WiA).

The now dumbed down UI, the aggravating changes to recruitment, the idiotic replacement management ("how small can a font get"), the chore with so called "regional decisions", the sum of all these wrong decisions was the nail in the coffin for me. At some point I realized the games become nothing but a gigantic switchboard of meaningless micro decisions that would be great as some kind of occupational therapy in prison, but I have better things to do with my time.

Although AACW was quite challenging in 2007, the AI is not working well in most games, and the reason is that the people who make the games now are not even developers, but previously unemployed guys took a chance to make a buck, and I guess they hardly understand what they are doing.

The only major modder who took on some of the glaring problems has left, totally pissed off.

I think Ageod had their peak in 2006 - 2010 afterwards they kind of stopped caring. The reason was probably a) because their long delayed ambitious sequel Pride of Nation tanked so badly and b) because their deal with Paradox was humiliating, destroyed their morale and probably took away the best people. And the blame is with themselves because they made nothing but absolutely wrong decisions with gameplay and technology.

P.S. I still think one day I will attempt a game of TOAW, but before that I must complete my graphic mods, because the game in its vanilla shape is just horrible.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

I'm mostly fine with graphics. Well... hole-face generals of EAW are asking for some modding, sure.

Somewhat smooth scrolling of map and faster AI decision making/turn resolution (which takes minutes, while all my cores except one fiddle their thumbs) would go a long way in soothing my butthurt.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Boardgames remain the best option, unfortunately.

I really like the WEGO-type turn system with its separate orders and resolution phases, and that's really cumbersome outside computer games. Rare too I guess, can think of only Diplomacy.

 

[Burning Bridges]

FWIW, Ageod games are actually real time games with simultaneous phases of 14 days.

The game then pauses for the next stage of turn based orders and so on.

But essentially this system is real time.