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The Conquest of the Aegean review has been posted at Out of Eight PC Game Reviews:
http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2006/06/c ... eview.html
Enjoy!

Well, interesting review, I wouldn't agree with him regarding the pathfinding, in some cases, hehe.
Also, he's talking about the AI not being aggressive enough, well he is mistaken, since it's a question of how scenario objectives and their respective priorities have been arranged by the scenario designer - so, it's not about the AI (which is really stunning) but about scenario design, imho.

Gotta love phrases like this:

......In fact, most specialized units aren’t attached to any subordinate commanders at the beginning of the game, so that you can play around with them for a bit........

[8|][;)]

The reviewer stated:

"You would think that by now every battle that took place during World War II has been simulated in at least one computer game. It seems that a World War II title comes out every week or two; it’s by far the most popular war to simulate (second place goes to the Agacher Strip War)."

I was shocked... SHOCKED I tell you, when I realized that the all important Agacher Strip War has been totally ignored by Matrix! How can this be?

Is there a TOAW scenario in the works? [:D][:D][:D]

Seriously, 8/8 review rating ain't bad! [&o]

I've only played as the Allies so far, and have yet to win a victory against the AI.  They seem to be taking/holding what they need to, so I'd say the AI is plenty aggressive.

I think one of the hardest things in game design is making game play challenging both to the new customer and the veteran. There are many considerations as to how to do it and finding the right balance. Do you just play with force ratios, disable some of the AI abilities, lift some restrictions for the player, or permit rule cheating by the AI? IMHO, one of the tough issues in game design and product marketting.

And once you have landed on approach, then what about testing it. The reality is that more often than not your testers are experienced hardcore players. Do you think any beta testers play a flight sim with the arcade flight model enabled? I don't.

I have no doubt that for some COTA AI will present a challenge like banging your head against a wall and for others the scenarios will seem at default settings quite approachable to secure victories. The later can even be the case, I suppose, as a relatively new player depending on what skills you bring to the playing field.

Myself, when I started with RDOA, I was hard pressed to win any of the scenarios even after six months playing the game. It took a long time for the basic principles of ground combat to become apparent to me.

So, Crimguy, you are probably doing much better with COTA than I did with RDOA at the start. The principles will come. The nice thing about this engine and the scenario; there are no puzzles or riddles. Anything you learn will be a general principle which can be applied to good affect some other time and place.

Yeah but I'm an owner of RDOA and HTTR - you'd think I would fare better?  The biggest challenge is planning in this game, and when you do things at painfully realistic, if you don't spend the time planning, you will get walked over by your opponent.

Not to mention I did a couple of dumb things in the process . . .