I want them all, but yes - it is hard to imagine a game on ancient warfare without the "Swifter Than Eagles" expansion.
CharlesRobinson
I fully agree with Charles and hope his suggestion about the plastic soldier of the review could be part of the solution.
It's also great to hear that the Slitherine guys are looking for ways to publish all the expansions.
I'm sure that also books like "Swifter than Eagles" and "Empire of the Dragon" would be a real success, probably greater than expected if you think that no other game covers these periods!
Forget new armies, what FOG needs is a campaign mode where the player's army persists over the course of several battles.
Right now, the game has no worthwhile single-player at all. The game furthermore cannot simulate any ancient campaigns unless the user literally creates a new scenario map for each stage, and plots it all out himself.
Slitherine has made games with persistent campaigns before, where the units can develop over time and new ones can be brought on board. Just look at Great Battles Medieval or Legion Arena for examples. Those games had real, enjoyable single-player modes. Those games brought out the strengths of computer gaming. Was Panzer Corp a success for Slitherine? What did gamers like most about that title? Was it that they got the digital equivalent of a bag of miniatures, or was it that they got to use and develop those miniatures over the course of a persistent, interesting historical campaign? Look back to Fantasy General; I actually went replayed that game a month or two ago.
FOG really fails to take advantage of the PC's strengths. When you play a game on the computer, you usually have dynamic campaigns and storylines that a player can just jump right in to and enjoy. FOG doesn't have any of that; instead, there are only single-battle scenarios, or user-arranged tournaments that are designed and run outside of the game itself. Those things play to the strengths and weaknesses of a table-top setting, but this version of FOG is a PC game and as such has other potential that needs to be developed.
If Slitherine wants to make a new expansion pack or develop this game, they should be happy that they've ported over a table-top experience, and look ahead to bringing out what the PC does best. Make FOG a PC game with historical campaigns and rpg elements. If sales are a problem right now, it's possibly because the current expansion packs don't bring anything fundamentally different to the table; you have more miniatures, but that only appeals to a certain, limited segment of gamers. Seeing as you apparently don't get enough attention from those gamers alone, why do you continue to focus solely on them and not make FOG a more diverse game?
Throw in persistent historical campaigns and rpg elements and then you'll get a lot more attention; plenty of gamers like single player campaigns, especially when they're historically accurate and have well written storylines, yet you've left that section of the market out in the cold. I assume gaming sites aren't interested in writing articles about how FOG will have a new chinese miniature army in an upcoming expansion pack, but I bet they'd be interested if FOG was including a campaign set in the warring states period, where the user plays through a 12 mission long, multi-branched, well-researched, persistent campaign to unify China.
To keep with the Chinese theme,
“There was a farmer of Song who tilled the land, and in his field was a stump. One day a rabbit, racing across the field, bumped into the stump, broke its neck, and died. Thereupon the farmer laid aside his plough and took up watch beside the stump, hoping that he would get another rabbit in the same way. But he got no more rabbits, and instead became the laughing stock of Song. Those who think they can take the ways of the ancient kings and use them to govern the people of today all belong in the category of stump-watchers!”
You caught your first rabbit by doing a great job of bringing the FOG tabletop experience to the PC. I'm not going to call you stump-watchers yet, but if you want a new spark of success then it's not enough to just release more miniatures over and over again.
If you make FOG a real PC game, I will buy the expansion. If you don't, I won't buy the expansion.
Last edited by grumblefish on Sun Nov 06, 2011 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks; once they create the campaign framework, they could even release additional, well-made campaigns as DLC. Perhaps each DLC campaign could feature one or two new units, as well.
Also, if attention is needed badly enough, I would suggest releasing a free, limited version where you can play online with a single army. They could design a 500 point Roman army, using the units from when the game was first released. 500 point battles seem pretty popular and get snatched up quickly, so people would see there's a lively community and the game is fun, but just having one army would force you to pay money to really feel like you're playing the full game. People would get a feel for it all, and when they see an army they like they would go drop $25. That might kill the $39 base version of FOG, though.
Last edited by grumblefish on Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:38 am, edited 3 times in total.
I would also buy a campaign expansion. I've stopped buying the book expansions a few releases ago for the reason mentioned above -- they bring nothing new to the table.
I will add that a single-player, storyline campaign system is not what I'm looking for. Several good (and not-so-good) player-moderated campaigns have been tried with varying degrees of success, but they all share one thing in common --they all petered out when they organizer lost interest.
A computer never loses interest so why not create a computer-moderated multi-player campaign? It could be somehting as simple as a stylized six-player area movement system with 10 year turns lasting about 10 turns. The player controlling the most areas wins. Simple yet allowing for continuity and diplomacy.
Possible campaigns: Punic Wars, Successor Period, Hundred Years War, etc. Players would selected a campaign map, post a challenge and (when enough players join) have at it.
Grumblefish's 500 point Roman army is a great way to recruit new players. How many people dont like FOG once they have tried multiplayer? Limited extra cost to Slitherine of creating a stripped down version and will get the game PR again
Multi-player and Singleplayer campaigns would not have to be very sophisticated to be successful - look at Panzercorps to see that.
The fun comes from personalisation and linked battles, not strategic decision making/diplomacy.
The next army expansion rabbit is not going to hit the stump. Slitherine should:
1) Make the next release Grumblefish's single player campaign MODDABLE, Slitherine provides the platform, great researchers/designers like stockwellpete can create linked campaigns
2) Release Deeter's multiplayer campaign engine - again, Slitherine provides the base platform, tracking recruitment, money, standing armies, calculating battle casualties etc - let players/umpires provide the diplomacy/colour. As Deeter says, players love linked campaigns, but the hassle kills them at the moment
Thanks for the ideas. Once we resolve who is going to be doing future development we'll have a much better idea of which direction thigns are going. Until then feel free to keep posting ideas but we're in a bit of limbo right now.
I agree entirely about the need for some sort of campaign module (and an improved AI to go with it). I think maybe an interesting space will start to open up in the middle of next year when HexWar has completed its contribution to the game and the scheduled next three expansions have come out. There are a lot of us who would happily contribute to a "support group" to help continue the game's development and Keith has also indicated that he is currently working on documentation for "modding".
So, I do think we need to be a bit patient - and support the new expansions where we can - because there do seem to be some very interesting opportunities appearing on the horizon.
I´m totally agree with grumblefish.
I always prefer multiplayer game mode instead of sigle player mode. But nowadays I´m very busy at work so I haven´t too much time for playing in multiplayer. I mean, in single player you can adjust your free time as you wish (in multiplayer you have to adjust your free time to your opponent´s).
I bought FoG and RoR but that´s enough for now. If Slitherine makes a campaign module for FoG I´ll buy it inmediately, and then I´ll buy more expasions, of course. But right now, I cannot find a good reason for buy any other expansion for my FoG and RoR
Anyway, I believe in Slitherine´s good work (there´re great wargames in its cataloge) so we need to be patient, I´m sure of that
iainmcneil wrote:It's TBD on those. There are some very large books with so many troops types we're not sure we can do them 1 for 1 so might have to pick the most popular parts and combine them together in to a couple of Lost Scrolls type releases.
Well, as much as I'd like to see all the FoG book armies for PC, I can understand and agree with the "it costs too much to produce all the images to make it profitable" reason (especially in the case of armybooks like "Blood and Gold" or "empires of the Dragon" that have a few popular armies and a host of obscure and rarely-played ones).
So I do agree with your philosophy. Its better to release a "lost scrolls" type of cherry-picked popular armies from the different armybooks, as this is better than not having popular armies like the Aztecs or Ming Chinese just because the armybooks they happen to be in are not profitable enough as a whole.
I'd personally nominate the native mexican (Aztec, Tlaxcallan, Tarascan, Chichimec, Zapotec) group of armies and the east Asian (Tang, Song, ming chinese, Koryo Korean, Heian Japanese) group. Both contain very popular armies and you could release them without an overwhelming amount of unit images (especially the mexican region armies can share some images between one another).
