Does anyone still plays CoW?

[applegarth]

hi all,
new to cow myself - playing as hittites - great fun, real beer and pretzels game. also enjoy paradox games such as EU rome, but cow is good light relief by comparison. would be good to see more aar's on this forum.

[honvedseg]

CoW is still my favorite of the Slitherine games, despite its "dated" combat engine with a total lack of control, diplomacy that really doesn't appear to have any effect beyond spying, and unit graphics where you can't distinguish your own units from the enemy's.

I'm playing the Assyrians (again), since they seem to provide easy access to a wide range of resources, while offering sufficient challenge to make getting and holding onto those resources meaningful. If you expand quickly at the expense of the Mitanni, they usually do pretty well, otherwise the Assyrians become nothing but a brief footnote in the history books. Things usually go smoothly until I bump into those Hittites you're currently playing; they've got plenty of metals available, making them a tough combat opponent but a little bit shallow economically. Egypt is the other extreme, a solid economic base but a shortage of metals until you expand into the Arabian Peninsula. If you're up for a REAL uphill struggle, try any of the small city-states along the eastern Mediterranean coast: it takes a while to build up to the point where you can defend yourself against the major powers, and you've got a serious metals shortage to add to the difficulty.

[donkeyoti]

I still play the game. Not as often as I should but CoW still gets a run out now and again. I tend to play the harder countries such as the Israelites. Much more of a challenge than the Eqyptians.

[glorious_hoplite]

hi guys. i just got the game and currently having a blast. despite the limitations in diplomacy and combat, i like it very much. and i think a great part of the reason is that i like this time period very much. there are very few games in this time period. can anyone name any other game in this time period? and another thing. the units in combat seems to be in a hurry in their movements. is it how it was meant to be or is it my PCs folly?

[honvedseg]

The units start out at a walk, but break into a charge after a short amount of time. From then on, all tactical considerations are out the window and it becomes a giant furball between unruly mobs. I can't wait until Slitherine introduces the Arena combat engine into an empire-builder game (CoW II?, PLEASE?), so shieldwalls and phalanxes don't collapse and behave like untrained warbands (although this behavior is probably perfect for skirmish units).

As far as I know, the only other games that touch on this time period focus on Egypt, and aren't really in the same genre (more like Sim-City).