Now that Forge of Freedom has been released...

[Grand_Armee]

Will development of this game continue, or will we wait for all of the patches that are being clamoured for in FoF?

[jimwinsor]

Oh yeah, from what I've been hearing, a naval expansion for CoG is in the works, including (drum roll...) detailed hex war naval combat!
 
This I am looking forward to!  [:)]

[wonkguy]

don't count on it.  why would they put anymore resources into this game when AoE is coming out soon and now they have people who plunked down $$ for FoF and want that game supported. 

CoG is a excellent idea but I think it has fallen victim to Father Time and other factors.

And where is the notion that suddenly the naval combat system is going to be rewritten coming from????

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: wonkguy
don't count on it.  why would they put anymore resources into this game when AoE is coming out soon and now they have people who plunked down $$ for FoF and want that game supported. 
CoG is a excellent idea but I think it has fallen victim to Father Time and other factors.
And where is the notion that suddenly the naval combat system is going to be rewritten coming from????

Perhaps from the developers and publisher?

[Terl]

Gosh.  You guys make it sound like death knells are sounding.... I hope not, I just bought CoG for my Christmas present.  I am just starting to dig into it.  I have some learning to do..... [:)]

[wonkguy]

Don't get me wrong, this is a great game and you will be able to entertain yourself for at least the next year with it.   

[Gray_Lensman]

I bought (CoG) after (FoF), even though I knew it was the older game. development wise. Reason being, I like the game system of both games, and I want to encourage the developers to continue along similar lines, so I put my money into their coffers, as a statement of support.

[Didz]

Well I hope CoG will continue to be supported as I only bought it today.

As for FoF, I have little interest in yet another ACW game, so I'll not be bothering with it.

[Gil R.]

Yes, it will be supported. We WCS types were discussing this just the other night. No timeframe yet, but we're definitely aware of the desirability of doing a few things for the COG-playing community.

[Gray_Lensman]

ORIGINAL: Didz

Well I hope CoG will continue to be supported as I only bought it today.

As for FoF, I have little interest in yet another ACW game, so I'll not be bothering with it.

Didz, believe it or not FoF is not just another Civil War game. I, too, was sceptical at first, but now that I have played it awhile, the depth of it puts all the other civil war games to shame.

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: Gray_Lensman
Didz, believe it or not FoF is not just another Civil War game. I, too, was sceptical at first, but now that I have played it awhile, the depth of it puts all the other civil war games to shame.

But, its still just another ACW game. I have loads of them and I'm not interested in another one.

My favourite incidently is 'American Civil War - From Sumter to Appomattox' by iMagic designed by Frank Hunter, which manages to capture just about every aspect of the conflict without becoming anal about it.

Personally, I think it would be nice to see a bit more variety in the periods covered by computer games. For example, how about a decent game based upon the English Civil War.

[jkBluesman]

It is a marketing question, I think. There are not that many periods that appeal to a vast audience. Most people are interested in 19th and 20th century warfare, sometimes Ancient Romans and Greecs have a chance but that is about it.
However, I would love to see a great game based upon the English Civil War or wars in Japan or China prior to the 19th century.

[Didz]

Personally, I think its more of a US market fetish problem.

Statistically, the two most wargamed periods (worldwide) are WW2 and Napoleonic, with ACW coming in a poor third.  But I'm still waiting for a decent Napoleonic game and yet ACW has been done to death three times over. 

[hgilmer]

    I'm from America and I have to agree with Didz.  I have seen so many games about the ACW that I have become jaded about the whole prospect of even buying one.  How can we keep them all separate?  The names all start sounding the same because there are so many out there.

War games are to a select audience and I think you'd see some interest in a well coded, well designed game from the Napoleoic era.  I'd like to see other games and eras developed as well.  I think the HYW would be a great era to produce a detailed, well coded and designed game.  Japan from about 1500 - 1800 would be another excellent era.

[Gil R.]

There are plenty of good (and great) games devoted to Civil War battles, but I think it's pretty clear that FOF was filling a gap in terms of covering the whole conflict. (And AGEOD's AACW, of course, is filling that gap, too.) Not all gamers enjoy tactical games, so I think there was definitely a need for FOF, and its reception in the war-gaming community proves it.

What was written up above about earlier periods not selling so well, sadly, is true. I'm by profession an ancient historian, and would love to spend as much time on developing the perfect Greeks or Romans game as we did for FOF, but that would be an insanely dumb business decision because it would sell a small fraction of the number of copies as COG or FOF.

[Didz]

Not sure about this gap, I already have a game that does that called 'American Civil War - From Sumpter to Appomattox' by iMagic designed by Frank Hunter and I've owned it years.

[Ironclad]

FSTA is an impressive game that for a long time was virtually unique in covering the whole ACW. I enjoyed it enough to preorder the revised version - probably some years away yet if the Guns of August development timescale is a guide.

FOF is a far more complex and I think demanding game and its combination of top class strategy and a superb tactical module puts it into a class of its own. I do like COG's more complicated economic model (which can be confusing at times) but am looking forward to the enhancement benefitting greatly from FOF's much better battle model and AI combined with the many advances in command, control, troop qualities/skills and weapon options.

[Didz]

@Ironclad
I had a look at the screen shots of FOF and thought it looked remarkably like COG, so your confirmation that it is merely confirms what I already suspected.  Personally, I rapidly tired of COG which puts a heavy emphasis on logistic's requiring my to spend hours working as an army quartermaster and then fails to deliver a solid strategic and tactical model as a reward for all my efforts in number crunching.

Personally, I prefer the FSTA approach which focuses player interaction at policy rather than book-keeper level, even though the tactical model is extremely basic.  My ideal would be a game system which handled economics and trade at policy level like FSTA but handled strategy and tactical play in a similar way to the Totalwar series.

But that looks like it's a long way off, either from Matrix or CA, just hope it happens before I'm too old to play it. 

[Gil R.]

Didz,
The most complete set of screenshots of FOF (with labels) is here: http://www.west-civ.com/ForgeOfFreedom/ ... /index.htm

If you look at the first image, the Options Screen, you'll see that many of the game features that you must be thinking of can be toggled off.

[Didz]

I may be wrong but as far as I can see what the Options Screen is providing is the ability to switch game features off, not decide what level of involvement one wants in micro-managing them.
 
Having said that COG has the option to auto-manage trade, diplomacy and military development, its just that when you allow it to do so it does some really alarming things, or at least the diplomacy did.  FSTA seems to cope with all of this is a pretty straight forward and elegant way, its obviously not as detailed but it does include every factor that had an impact on the result.