Kuattro
Augur
http://store.steampowered.com/app/400470/
I saw this on sale and I thought it looked interesting. Then I saw that you get to create divisions regiment by regiment (and I expect armies/corps division by division?) and my heart started beating pretty fucking fast.
But it's still 15€ and I have the bad habit of buying a game (I had to restrain myself when I saw that division creation screen) and then, after playing 5 hours, finding it's absolute horseshit, or at least not as good as it promised to be, and not being able to refund.
So, my friends, has any of youfoolishly valiantly charged armed only with your trusty bayonet, tried it, and can you tell me only this: Is it as good as it looks? Because right now it looks exactly like the game that I have been designing in my head for years and that I'll never make because I'm lazy and useless.
And if not, at least let's hope some of you will decide to throw a couple bucks the way of the guy who is making the game all by himself (and yes, he is already developing paid DLC for it. Way of the world I guess, specially with niche products. Germans do have to eat too.).
EDIT: Fuck it, I bought it, I'm only human.
I guess the moment I realized these have been the 15€ best spent of the day was at the end of the "tutorial". I was asked to take my division (no armies, the division seems to be the only independent unit you use in the game), cross the Channel and take Lille because the british garlic reserves were running low.
If anyone thought this is Total War, they were so incredibly wrong. Stand in front of an enemy city for x number of turns until the enemy either spontanously vanishes or is massacred as it tries a sortie against my intact army? No sir!
I found myself in the need of building a siege camp, and to be quick about it. Basically because as soon as the siege began the frogs started bombarding my troops, and in just a couple of day I'd lost a couple dozen soldiers already. And then, once the camp was built, the slow process of building trenches so that my troops could take refuge. Once that first trench system was done, I decided I would build an artillery position so that my cannons could engage in a bit of counter-battery fire. So there my fusilliers and musketeers went, under the nasty french fire, digging position for the artillery, then more, closer, trenches, so that my grenadiers could, step by step, approach the city and prepare for assault, then closer artillery positions so that my cannons could fire at the walls, side trenches to flank the enemy and protect my army in case the enemy decided to attack me... and then they surrendered. And the enemy has the option, oh yes, to offer surrender of the city and the garrison just gets to walk out, arms, colours, and everything, like civilized people do.
I can't seem to find anything about sieges in the screens (EDIT to the EDIT: Turns out I'm a blind idiot, there is actually a siege screen, it just doesn't tell the story in all it's gory glory), and if I had seen on the steam page what I saw when I started that siege, I wouldn't have doubted for a second. I can't even imagine what would have happened to my army if a french division had showed up, because I was just mesmerized.
The economy... I don't think I've even understood it, not enough to describe it. If any of you has player Pride Of Nations, it seems to me like this guy did too, and then thought "bah, that's not complex enough!", and I don't use complex in the sense that game journalists do today ("I couldn't complete the Stellaris tutorial, this game is too hard!"), I mean complex in the "is there an accountant in the room" sense. There's regular expenses, extraordinary expenses, subsidies, taxes, trade, quarterly idontknowwhat, and more that I'm probably missing.
There's provincial buildings like farms and mines, that you need to build next to the resources you want them to collect, and then your traders will buy said resources and transport them to the cities, but they are merchants, not idiots, so they will only buy if they will make a profit, and they will move around looking for the best prices (you set them, because they're your companies producing resources). On the sea, there are explotation points or whatever they're called, they produce fish, and cotton and spices I think? And then back in the cities, there's a market for it all, your citizens have demands, your "corporate" have demands, and I don't know yet if that includes the demands to build ships and recruit soldiers, and then the prices are influenced by said demands. And above all, money. To pay for resources, to pay soldiers and sailors, otherwise they lose morale and desert.
The battles, I've only briefly looked at the historical ones. They reminded me of Sid Meier's Gettysburg, which is frankly the highest praise I can think of. If the comparison holds, if the battles are only half as good as they were in that game, they will be excellent.
So, there's that. If it was me answering my question about whether or not should I buy this game, and obviously knowing myself, I would scream "yes! god, yes!". And I would recommend it to any of you that is even barely interested in what they can see.
But to be honest, it looks like the amount of what can only be called autism invested in this game is astounding. I remember learning to play PoN (and I still don't know if I learned it that well), and this, as I said, looks even worse.
If you think you may like it, I can only tell you that playing the tutorial should take you about half and hour, way below the two hour limit for refunds, and that you will not learn to play the game in that half an hour, but you will get a crystal clear image of what the game is about. And with that, you can then decide if you'd rather try to play this monster or rather shoot it and bury it's bloated, beautiful body in the backyard.
I just know that I'm loving it.
I saw this on sale and I thought it looked interesting. Then I saw that you get to create divisions regiment by regiment (and I expect armies/corps division by division?) and my heart started beating pretty fucking fast.
But it's still 15€ and I have the bad habit of buying a game (I had to restrain myself when I saw that division creation screen) and then, after playing 5 hours, finding it's absolute horseshit, or at least not as good as it promised to be, and not being able to refund.
So, my friends, has any of you
And if not, at least let's hope some of you will decide to throw a couple bucks the way of the guy who is making the game all by himself (and yes, he is already developing paid DLC for it. Way of the world I guess, specially with niche products. Germans do have to eat too.).
EDIT: Fuck it, I bought it, I'm only human.
I guess the moment I realized these have been the 15€ best spent of the day was at the end of the "tutorial". I was asked to take my division (no armies, the division seems to be the only independent unit you use in the game), cross the Channel and take Lille because the british garlic reserves were running low.
If anyone thought this is Total War, they were so incredibly wrong. Stand in front of an enemy city for x number of turns until the enemy either spontanously vanishes or is massacred as it tries a sortie against my intact army? No sir!
I found myself in the need of building a siege camp, and to be quick about it. Basically because as soon as the siege began the frogs started bombarding my troops, and in just a couple of day I'd lost a couple dozen soldiers already. And then, once the camp was built, the slow process of building trenches so that my troops could take refuge. Once that first trench system was done, I decided I would build an artillery position so that my cannons could engage in a bit of counter-battery fire. So there my fusilliers and musketeers went, under the nasty french fire, digging position for the artillery, then more, closer, trenches, so that my grenadiers could, step by step, approach the city and prepare for assault, then closer artillery positions so that my cannons could fire at the walls, side trenches to flank the enemy and protect my army in case the enemy decided to attack me... and then they surrendered. And the enemy has the option, oh yes, to offer surrender of the city and the garrison just gets to walk out, arms, colours, and everything, like civilized people do.
I can't seem to find anything about sieges in the screens (EDIT to the EDIT: Turns out I'm a blind idiot, there is actually a siege screen, it just doesn't tell the story in all it's gory glory), and if I had seen on the steam page what I saw when I started that siege, I wouldn't have doubted for a second. I can't even imagine what would have happened to my army if a french division had showed up, because I was just mesmerized.
The economy... I don't think I've even understood it, not enough to describe it. If any of you has player Pride Of Nations, it seems to me like this guy did too, and then thought "bah, that's not complex enough!", and I don't use complex in the sense that game journalists do today ("I couldn't complete the Stellaris tutorial, this game is too hard!"), I mean complex in the "is there an accountant in the room" sense. There's regular expenses, extraordinary expenses, subsidies, taxes, trade, quarterly idontknowwhat, and more that I'm probably missing.
There's provincial buildings like farms and mines, that you need to build next to the resources you want them to collect, and then your traders will buy said resources and transport them to the cities, but they are merchants, not idiots, so they will only buy if they will make a profit, and they will move around looking for the best prices (you set them, because they're your companies producing resources). On the sea, there are explotation points or whatever they're called, they produce fish, and cotton and spices I think? And then back in the cities, there's a market for it all, your citizens have demands, your "corporate" have demands, and I don't know yet if that includes the demands to build ships and recruit soldiers, and then the prices are influenced by said demands. And above all, money. To pay for resources, to pay soldiers and sailors, otherwise they lose morale and desert.
The battles, I've only briefly looked at the historical ones. They reminded me of Sid Meier's Gettysburg, which is frankly the highest praise I can think of. If the comparison holds, if the battles are only half as good as they were in that game, they will be excellent.
So, there's that. If it was me answering my question about whether or not should I buy this game, and obviously knowing myself, I would scream "yes! god, yes!". And I would recommend it to any of you that is even barely interested in what they can see.
But to be honest, it looks like the amount of what can only be called autism invested in this game is astounding. I remember learning to play PoN (and I still don't know if I learned it that well), and this, as I said, looks even worse.
If you think you may like it, I can only tell you that playing the tutorial should take you about half and hour, way below the two hour limit for refunds, and that you will not learn to play the game in that half an hour, but you will get a crystal clear image of what the game is about. And with that, you can then decide if you'd rather try to play this monster or rather shoot it and bury it's bloated, beautiful body in the backyard.
I just know that I'm loving it.
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