My Own Mini Poll...

[Anthropoid]

1) Why did you buy Crown of Glory:Emperor's Edition?
2) What aspect about Crown of Glory is the "best" to you?
3) What aspect about Crown of Glory needs the most work in your opinion?
4) What are your thoughts on the tactical battles?
5) Would you have purchased the game if it wouldn't have had tactical battles in it?
6) How important is the PBEM game, and would you be interested in a 12 player variant, allowing for players to be added for any additional four nations of your choice?
7) Is the treaty system clear to you?
8) What would you think about a six week or two month turn?

1. Why

FoF is one of the best games I've ever played at every level: user interface,vision, design, balance, mechanics, detail, historicity, replayability, innovation, everything. Loved the strategic and tactical engines combined. I believe this is wave of the future for wargames.

COGEE is in some ways even better, though I would like to see them try to combine the greatest strengths of FoF and COGEE in their next game. I feel like some of the greatest strenghts in FoF were left out of COGEE and vice versa.

WCS are not just smart, gifted, "non-sell-out" game designers, their gamers, and their good guys. I know they want to do the right thing for the gamer community, and in particular the Grog community, which I think they want to grow by designing games that both Grogs and Grogs in development can love. Companies like this need our devotion so that our hobby develops in the right directions. I will definitely buy ANYTHING WCS makes; even if the next two they put out are only mediocre at best (which I canot imagein happening in a million years), FoF and COG are such good games, they've built up a sufficient loyalty from me that I'd endure even that many.

2. What best?

Strategy AND tactics. Historical constraings AND alternate history opportunities. Details. The non-linearity, "unpredictability" (i.e., not all provinces are alike and not all developments have equivalent effects) of the Econ engine are brilliant. Treaty system is brilliant. Graphics are brilliant. Interface is brilliant. Overall design and look and feel, brilliant. The basic naval engine brilliant. The basic detailed battle engine brilliant. The overall replayability and victory structure, and user-adjustable settings for difficulty etc. brilliant.

3. What needs work?

Well, this applies to virtually ALL games, but the AI leaves something to be desired. Once you figure him out, you can take him to the cleaners, but again, without a Cray super computer or Skynet running the show, what do we expect?

I dislike the randomly generated detailed battle maps; actual hexified maps for actualy battlefields, and surrounding area, and other strategic areas would be much better. This would be a huge project though I recognize. Maybe someday. The old Civil War Generals II game had better tactical maps, which were replicas of actual battlefields. It would be neat if all of Europe (or at least all of it that was within 7 miles of a road or town in Napoleonic Era) could be digitized into a connected hex map database WITH topography! You guys need to check out Civil War Generals II maps! The Close Combat maps are also more along the lines of what I'm thinking of here. It would be a huge project though . . .

More operational options linking strategic and detailed maps, e.g., I should be able to build defenses in prep for detailed battles.

Naval maps are too small, and naval AI is completely inadequate.

Need formations and tactical doctrine in naval battles.

Bring back the FoF approach generals, weapons, more attributes, etc., better "random" generals functions as I've outlined elsewhere (Wishlist etc.).

4. Tactical

Had I never experienced the FoF tactical I'd say sure. But now that I HAVE experienced an engine that seamlessly integrates a strategic and tactical interface, I have come to expect it from any game. For example, Commander Europe at War would be a so much better game if it was basically a combination of CEAW and Close Combat!! ALL IN ONE!!

The only problem with making awesome games is that it ups our expectations one more notch! [:D]

5. Buy w/o Tac?

I doubt it now.

6. PBEM

Engine works pretty well, but bascially a lot of the detail decisions, tactical decisions and stuff are completely absent from the PBEM, so PBEM is really just the strategic game. Not sure how it could be workable any other way, but that is a slight deficiency.

IMO, getting even 8 guys into a good cohesive PBEM crew is an amazing feat, but that is based more on the Civ gamer crowd. Maybe with the community who play games like WCS makes, a crew of 12 would be more tenable, but I tend to think that that is just way too unmaneable. I think it works fine iwth 8 guys and AI controlling the rest, esp considering how much of each humans actions are actually run by the auto AI script during the movement phase. I think 12 would be over-ambitious, and even if it worked, I don't think it would necessarily add anything to the game for a human to get to play an extreme underdog nation.

7. Treaty clear?

Yeah, seems perfectly clear to me.

8. Turns

If anything I'd go the other direction 2 week turns. 6 weeks would be too fast. I'd prefer more detail to less.

[barbarossa2]

Thanks guys. This helps.

[Asberdies]

ORIGINAL: barbarossa2

Just curious. I would love know know your answers to these questions from as many players as possible (please note that I have added a question 6 and 7 since this all started):

1) Why did you buy Crown of Glory:Emperor's Edition?
After reading the Matrix forum and seeing comments about it.

2) What aspect about Crown of Glory is the "best" to you?
It is what CEIA (Computer Empire in arms) should have been. I was lurking the EIA forum for years, here at the Matrix forum, for the computer version of this game and was so disappointed by comments about it that i did not purchase it. I think COG:EE is really what the game should have been so i am happy now

3) What aspect about Crown of Glory needs the most work in your opinion?
UI and graphics. i would have dreamed of COG:EE gameplay and ETW graphics :p
4) What are your thoughts on the tactical battles?
Good one even if somewhat limited, i do them often on big battles
5) Would you have purchased the game if it wouldn't have had tactical battles in it?
yes
6) How important is the PBEM game, and would you be interested in a 12 player variant, allowing for players to be added for any additional four nations of your choice?
Dont think i will do a pbem game. So long, so many things can happen and ruin your game and chances of not finishing it ar too high
7) Is the treaty system clear to you?
yes, but it is so much a copy of the one in EIA
8) What would you think about a six week or two month turn?
1 month is fine

If you own CoG:EE, please take the time to answer these 6 or 7 questions (or the ones which interest you). They are actually not just going to get flushed down the toilet and someone might be interested!

[ptan54]

1) Why did you buy Crown of Glory:Emperor's Edition?
I have COG. I saw COGEE, liked it, the discount helped.
2) What aspect about Crown of Glory is the "best" to you?
Best strategic and tactical Napoleonic game out there.
3) What aspect about Crown of Glory needs the most work in your opinion?
Needs more event moddability. Want to write my own events relating to the rise of Napoleon. Also would be nice if you can board ships without the ships going into harbours.
4) What are your thoughts on the tactical battles?
Great. Better than in COG. Maybe make victory hexes an option for the player.
5) Would you have purchased the game if it wouldn't have had tactical battles in it?
Not likely. I enjoyed tactical in COG very much. Now it's better. I like the pursuit phase better than trying to surround everyone.
6) How important is the PBEM game, and would you be interested in a 12 player variant, allowing for players to be added for any additional four nations of your choice?
I don't play PBEM.
7) Is the treaty system clear to you?
Yes.
8) What would you think about a six week or two month turn?
1 month/turn is fine.

[vicberg]

1) Why did you buy Crown of Glory:Emperor's Edition?

I like the concept...tactical and strategic...naval combat addition is something I've looked for in other games for years

2) What aspect about Crown of Glory is the "best" to you?

The entire game concept

3) What aspect about Crown of Glory needs the most work in your opinion?

I believe the game needs to become a pure turn based movement system, where one side goes and then the other, just like virtually every other game out there...the turn based system applies to both strategic and tactical...the "my unit goes/your unit goes...my army goes/your army goes...my fleet goes/your fleet goes...." approach creates an unrealistic game to the point of unplayability in my opinion...I keep trying to play the game and then quit because the game feels silly at times...

The current movement system doesn't work at all in naval tactical...you can't do line ahead because your ships foul - because the middle ship in the line has to move first and fouls the rest - and if you leave spacing to prevent fouling, the enemy ships moves from 8 hexes away to cut the line...plus each battle ends up as scrums because there's aren't really another other tactics that can't be applied within the current movement mechanics...removes the tactics of the period and the realism

4) What are your thoughts on the tactical battles?

Same as above...naval ships and ground forces should be moved all at once for a side, then other side goes...this works better for pbem if people want to wade through tactical combat...plus, there's currently NO way for tactical in PBEM...and the strategic game, by itself, doesn't hold up to other games out there published by Matrix...

5) Would you have purchased the game if it wouldn't have had tactical battles in it?

No...there's plenty of other strategic level games out there...combination of strategic and tactical are what give the game great potential..it's the strange movement mechanics that reduce the playability...for example...the grand armiee wasn't two armies in reality...it's a game convention because of army size limits built into the game...however, because they are two armies, they move separately and one army can end up fighting without the other...didn't happen in reality...they were one large army.

6) How important is the PBEM game, and would you be interested in a 12 player variant, allowing for players to be added for any additional four nations of your choice?

Possibly....strategic game is not quite up to snuff as other similar strategic games published by matrix...without tactical it could end up being a ton of administration without the fun of the tactics...if they converted the movement system...tactical could be done pbem, albiet difficult...another option is allowing a specialized combat screen for tactical for direct connection so that tacticals can be done directly between participants while strategic is done via email....probably too expensive to so something like that from a coding perspective.

7) Is the treaty system clear to you?

Love it...

8) What would you think about a six week or two month turn?

Possibly

[ericbabe]

For what it's worth, the distances with which players need to keep ships from each other to prevent fouling correspond to the distances that Brian Lavery says were distances ships were kept apart on approach to battle in British naval doctrine for the purposes of preventing fouling.