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Although the scale in this game is massive, it is the chrome of eye candy that does vastly help sales. For 95% of the code and 5% of the effort, the biggest payoff is the eye candy that the buyer SEES that does makes them WANT to buy the game.

I have zero doubt the rewrite of this game will be excellent. I would hate to see it not live up to its income creating potential, because of a lack of visual objectives that let the player bond with the game.

I have seen over the past 35 years many games that were great but bland fade away while mediocre/average game thrive due to user friendiness and map chrome.

ORIGINAL: CSS

Although the scale in this game is massive, it is the chrome of eye candy that does vastly help sales. For 95% of the code and 5% of the effort, the biggest payoff is the eye candy that the buyer SEES that does makes them WANT to buy the game.

I have zero doubt the rewrite of this game will be excellent. I would hate to see it not live up to its income creating potential, because of a lack of visual objectives that let the player bond with the game.

I have seen over the past 35 years many games that were great but bland fade away while mediocre/average game thrive due to user friendiness and map chrome.

Space Aliens sell games. So does Napoleon or Bobby Lee. If we really choose to invent stuff that just isn't there at the scale of the game, why don't we include a duel to the death between Napoleon and General Lee mounted in flying saucers? (Hell, I'd pay real money to see that![X(]) There just isn't anything out there! That's why it's called a steppe!

[center]"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."[/center]

In ToW there are some eye candies (like grain, palms, oil wells, factories, mines and so), but we also prefer cautious approach as we don`t want to over use them.

One of the most successful and long-lasting games of this genre was The Operational Art of War.  Please take a look at a TOAW 3 map (checkout the Boardgame mod as well) and compare that to this game.  TOAW is way more appealing and engaging, IMO, while covering the same geographic areas, but that game is about 10 years old now!  Better still, in my opinion, are the strategy maps used in games like Empire, Total War - a bit less realistic but nice to look at.  Even a niche grognards game like Russo-German War (RGW) or the newer AGW looks way better than this new release. 

I own RGW, AGW, TOAW and Empire and I play them regularly, and so do thousands of other players.  I did buy the original ww2 road to victory game, played it once and gave up.  I don't think I'll be investing in Time of Wrath because I felt I got burned last time, and this new release doesn't look a whole lot better to me.  I don't want a distracting amount of eye candy, but I do want a map that looks at least as good as the maps in competing games...

But I am only a humble customer.  Flame me if you feel like [:)]

@ redmarkus, but the Time of Wrath is free for you so why don't you give it a try
there are many things beyound the graphic that has been changed

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4
I own RGW, AGW, TOAW and Empire and I play them regularly, and so do thousands of other players.  I did buy the original ww2 road to victory game, played it once and gave up.  I don't think I'll be investing in Time of Wrath because I felt I got burned last time, and this new release doesn't look a whole lot better to me.  I don't want a distracting amount of eye candy, but I do want a map that looks at least as good as the maps in competing games...

Seriously, it's a free download if you own RTV. Give it a try. [8D]

I bought ToW last night and spent an hour just looking at that gorgeous map! Seriously, the game map is a thing of beauty. The best thing is that I could play it at my monitor's native 1680x1050.