[shatner]

Yeah, here's my contribution to a CoE3 thread from another forum:


Conquest of Elysium is actually pretty underwhelming. I was stoked at first but having soaked six or so evenings into it, I can say that it feels a little flat. The various factions are interesting and they really do play quite differently from one another, and trying them out has been the main thing that's been holding my interest so far. However, the game is incredibly unforgiving about going into combat without enough troops/support/mage power. That all-encompassing fact makes the early game quite slow and punishing and the mid game feel kinda the same regardless of faction.

The thing is, for almost all nations, troops are expensive and hard to come by (5 bottom of the barrel spearmen cost 50 gold and in the beginning you are generating 3-4gp/turn). You will lose 2-3 troops in a good battle and often times more than that if bad luck so much as glances at you. That means it takes a long time to build up your forces to critical mass so you can conquer without taking inordinate losses. Also, your two starting commanders are, for almost all nations, indispensable (the game is more-or-less about your head commander's rise to power and losing him is generally cause to call it quits), which is fine except that combat is always an all-or-nothing affair where both sides fight to the death and, unlike Dominions 3, there is no running away and regrouping later if you underestimated your opponent or had a run of bad luck. Therefore, the game heavily, heavily incentives conservative play which I find a little boring. Plus, it really doesn't feel like the AI knows how to play this game, so I'm often playing against indie-mobs and opponents who flail around more-or-less at random.

Since it lacks almost all commander scripting, all troop placement (and troop scripting) and nearly all research, I find combat to be mostly just getting enough dudes to overwhelm the enemy. If it had even half the tactical depth of Dom3 I could see myself enjoying it a lot more. Once the joy of discovery runs out, there doesn't seem to be much left to sustain the player's interest.

I don't know. Maybe I need to give it more time to grow on me... some games are like that. Or maybe it'll take Illwinter a few feedback cycles to get the game in it's proper form (Dom3 has certainly undergone extensive changes over it's lifespan). Regardless, I'm leaving it alone for now.