With the exceptions of
World War One and maybe
Napoleon's Campaigns,
AGEOD has been doing pretty darn good with games sharply focused on wars that were limited to just one theater of operations during relatively short periods of time.
Pride of Nations breaks the mold with a massive grand-strategy/operational warfare game in which you can roam your armies and sail your fleets through the entire globe from 1850 to 1920.
Pride of Nations is not just a game with a bigger map and more turns. The economic and trade mechanics are deeper than in previous games. Fear not, you don't need a Ph.D. in economics to handle the economy and trade of a country: AGEOD still sticks to a game design school that does not sacrifice game play in the altar of the gods of unlimited detail . I have to confess that I'm not too much into the economic aspects of any strategy game. But I was really impressed about how easy to use and understand was "all that stuff I'd rather not deal with" in
Pride of Nations. Sure enough some professional strategy gamer somewhere in the world at certain point will question the price of opium ... I see myself answering to that guy because, hell, before
Pride of Nations I never made a trail in the jungles of economic management in any strategy game. Or at least I will understand what he's talking about.
 |
| These are the countries you can play in the engrossing grand campaign. |
Pride of Nations is a game about war, and thank you AGEOD for not downplaying neither our military options and armies nor the good fights we carry out with them. AGEOD's engine is a known quantity when it comes to strategic and operational warfare. In
Pride of Nations you will notice new unit icons and a map zoom level that shows just the military units. I'm looking forward to see how military advances are factored through the years. In real life, the 70 years where the game's campaign take place were quite prolific in military innovation.
 |
| Available scenarios. |
If you are not feeling like spending 70 years of simulated time in the grand campaign,
Pride of Nations has four shorter scenarios (see screenshot above) in which you just wage war and nothing else. These scenarios are more intimate war affairs with other parts of the world grayed out and play pretty much like the previous games. I've played the Second Boer War and the Russo-German War scenarios and they captured the military decision making and challenges of the real wars.
 |
| Your Majesty's Empire expands in Africa. |
 |
| The British Empire in India starts in good shape military-wise. I had a couple of skirmishes with the locals and I couldn't find many diplomatic options to deal with them. On to crush them! |
 |
| The Second Boer War. I've never had so much fun with so few chits on the board! Kudos for this scenario. |
 |
| Europe at the start of the grand campaign. At this zoom level you see only military units and not other things like resources,cities or depots. Great for military planning. Note the railroad lines. I have activated the military control filter and I'm ready to play as the Prussians (grey area). |
 |
| Same as above, now with the supply filter on. Green areas are within our supply grid. The dashed areas are near railroads, which are important for strategic mobility and supply. The lack of a sensible railroad network in other countries will slow down your military operations there. Yeah, think twice before declaring war on Russia. |
There is downloadable content (DLC) coming our way. Those who pre-ordered Pride of Nations will get the "Spanish-American War 1898" DLC for free. The DLC modality is also something new for AGEOD and I'm hoping for a Franco-Prussian War scenario sometime in the future!
Pride of Nations was released yesterday at the
AGEOD's store and it's expected to be released later today at
GamersGate.
Cheers,
No comments:
Post a Comment