Wars of Succession, First Look - My Wig is Bigger Than Yours, And So Is My Army

Welcome to the crazy world of the early 1700's. Wars of Succession (an AGEOD game produced in association with El Gran Capitan and published by Matrix/Slitherine) has been out since a few days already. In this first look, let's see what this game brings into your virtual war room.

Wars of Succession is a WEGO turn-based game with an emphasis in warfare. Turns are one month long and the military forces move in partitions of the terrain that feature military-geography oriented characteristics. These characteristics affect movement, supply and combat. If you have played any of the AGEOD games before, you will find yourself at ease from the beginning. If you didn't, you will have to be patient and learn the basic and advanced features of the game system. Fear not, is not that difficult to start moving around armies, generating new combat units, and making a few political decisions too.

There are a total of 5 campaigns in the initial release of Wars of Succession (see screenshot below). I choose the 1706 campaign for the Spanish War of Succession to explore a few game features.

AGEOD was never short of talent in the art department. As seen in the screenshot above, the maps are very pleasant to look at and the interface is appealing and functional. The information bar below is showing a unit, its leaders and its subunits (regiments in this case).

Distant lands like present day Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are also represented. I haven't experienced too much naval warfare in any AGEOD game so far, so I can't comment.

The one-month turn duration may seem a bit too long, but movement takes a considerable amount of simulated time. In the screenshot above, moving a regiment of Spanish Royal Grenadiers to go for a Segovia’s Roast Suckling Pig will take them 19 days. Moving all of Felipe V's Army would take some 29 days give or take. In some cases, getting too many units on a single route or region will cause gridlocks.

So how is warfare in Wars of Succession? Campaigning takes long (simulated) periods of time. In the screenshot above, I'm concentrating all forces loyal to Felipe V for an offensive against Valencia. The King's command (icon in the north of the screenshot) is making good time. But the other two units are slugging at glacial pace. The reason for the delay is the lack of good leaders for the two units I'm trying to bring from the south.

There is a lot of gameplay ahead. Only thing I can wish for now is more shorter, smaller campaigns like the ones included in other AGEOD games.

Cheers,