[Noob Question] Wars & Surrender

[Becket]

So...how does this game work? It seems most mainstream games (total war, etc.) work on the "conquer the world" principle where you have to take all or a substantial amount of territory on the map and hold it.

Reading the AARs, it seems CoG is more focused on fighting wars than on taking provinces...can one of the testers give a quick summary of how the game plays, what the objectives are, etc.?

[Ralegh]

A factoid would be to say that you aim to accumulate GLORY, which is how you win - and there are lots of ways to get glory.

But to cut to the heart of the matter, what you need to know is that when you surrender to someone you lose lots of glory. So you can easily go from first place to last place if you are France and have to surrender to a whole darn coalition.

That makes glory more ephemeral than "usual" strategy games - which is frustrating at first, but then becomes very interesting. You can always try to stop the person who is leading (and if they are leading by enough the AI will help!), as well as furthering your own cause.

Last comment from me: the 'builder' strategies from many games aren't enough to win COG: its not simply a matter of manipulating the games economics until you have overwhelming force and conquer the world.