Some Alea Jacta Est impressions

Got my grubby paws on Ageod's latest and have been playtesting it for the last few days. Thought it would be fun to share some of the early impressions. If you know Ageod you'll know their games are solid and deep historical wargames that stand out for being utterly grognard, having a very steep learning curve (aka not giving into the retards) and having pretty maps to gaze upon.

AJE has all of that. Map looks gorgeous and spans Europe and North Africa. Very boardgame feel to it. Learning curve is a mofo, with all sorts of nuances that can make or break you. Tutorial does a good job at introducing the basic aspects and the pdf manual helps with the rest. Will take some time nevertheless.

Music varies from usual epic bull to quite nice. Nothing particularly great. They've decided to include scenarios ranging from early republic to the fall of it. All of them feel huge. Timeframe is quite large though so you'll have to get familiar with all the strenghts and weaknesses of troops, generals and infrastructure in each one. Plenty of scope for DLC/expansions here as well, since the range of scenarios only begin to cover Roman warfare in the period. Notably absent are the Punic Wars aka fuck up Carthage.

Game mechanics feel nice, supply and morale are very important and no matter what you play the challenge seems solid. The AI being quite an asshole helps. Lots of political decisions that fit the scenarios and events that play out as well. Helps with all that immersion. What's bad though is that the review copy loves to crash and burn. Methinks there are a few rather nasty memory leaks. Game can feel clunky at times as well with graphical artifacts, spelling errors and bugs popping up. This being a beta build I do hope they fix them before release.

All in all iso far it feels like another solid Ageod product. Not really a revolution but more an evolution of their past products. Expect a review somewhere next week together with an interview of the devs.

 

Full disclaimer : I am a beta - so I might be subjective.

I agree with most of your first impressions. I like the opening music a lot more than you seem to have ; and I had no crash & burn. Spelling errors and bugs are being fixed as I speak - most probably there will still be an handful surviving to release, but nothing game-changing.

If the AJE engine / graphism / touch was applied to RUS, RUS would be the best game evaaaarrr.

Let's also shamelessly promote myself - I made an AAR for AJE on the Paradox Interactive Forum, and I try to explain all game concepts as I go along (= it is aimed to total AGEOD beginners).


It is here The Hero, The Traitor and The Barbarian

 

And a splendid AAR it is. Thanks for the advice you or your fellow beta gave me regarding starter scenarios. Any solutions for the whole crash & burn thing? Did all the set memory at 25% and lower textures and all that. Also find that it mostly hangs now during really big (20000+) battles. Glad to hear Ageod is working on these.

Will post more impressions later on. Sun is shining and all that.

 

I am Narwhal, so it was probably me

Anyway, I have no crash & burn myself, but the "first" version 0.99R was uploaded incorrectly and had this type of issue. If you have a download link, and you have a version 0.99R, redownloading the new version might fix it. You can see the version at the bottom right of the loading screen.

 

Thanks for that then. The scenario really helps, even for someone who already has experience with Ageod games. Anyway, the version I have is the v1 press release one (0.99m). I'll just keep an eye out on the forums to see if the release version has the same problems when it unlocks for the pre-orders. I'm pretty sure it's just a memery leak which shouldn't be that hard to solve and Ageod has a reputation for excellent patching. We'll see.

For people looking for an incentive to pre-order. When you do you get the Spartacus scenario as an extra and I must say, it's a whopper. Looks simple because of the limited theater but both sides got some excellent issues. Spartacus needs to keep expanding and moving in order not to get tied down and destroyed while the Romans start with a very weak force and have a serious problem on their hand if the slave rebellion grows out of hand. Simply love the scenario. Excellent design and a treat to play.

 

Damn and here I was hoping we will finally get some other method of MP than PBEM. I prefer my games to finish in one-two evenings in MP, thank you very much. Big minus for me.

 

^ Wäh?
Pull mail every minute, write autohotkey script to copy to savegame folder. Profit?
You'll prolly have more problems finding someone who will play with you the whole evening.

 

To each his own, and AGEOD games introduced me to PBEM, but being to play anytime with people from, in my case, Poland, Turkey, Scotland or Canada is outstanding.

 

I was actually planning another campaign in AACW, and not a new game The replayability is unbelievable.

Can someone already compare the two games AJE and AACW?

 

Me and EmoBunny are beginning a AACW PBEM pretty soon.

I just got addicted to AACW and am squeamish to learning this one ATM.

 

Even better, use dropbox and make a directory junction to the savegame folder and you get auto syncing of the save files.

OK I was really on the fence with this one but seeing the comments here and on the ageod forums made me fork the money for it. Now lets see..