Slitherine

For those interested: express your ideas if COW II was ever to be released:

Here are some of my ideas:

Playable Nations: Egypt, Greece (Athen, Sparta, Rhodos), Babylon, Sumer, Hittites...

A city-building aspect but only for the capital city. The CB would be real-time but the evolution of the city would freeze when you go on the strategy map...every civilization would be able to create one Wonder which would give a bonus.

Battles would use the latest battle engine

How about, all nations playable, (like in CoW1) and include just as many nations, no matter how obscure.

My suggestion would be to take the map a little further north, so that the steppe nations meet in the north. You could also expand it east to the Indus valley, as the premise of CoW is to cover the very first nations, and the Indus was just as saturated with city-states as Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Levant, and NE Africa were.

One small change I'd like to see is, rather than grouping the "Hill Tribes" together, split them into some small factions- as is, they all too often become a superpower, which seems wrong.

Also, if navies were included, the Sea People could be included accurately, the Poenicians would not be the minor power they are in CoW, and the minoan culture modelled if the map were extended.

The biggest addition, though, is time-specificity. The CoW1 map includes a bunch of nations from the 3000-1000 BC period all thrown together at one point in time. For example, Judah and Israel were not nations in 2000 BC- this was before the exodus. Rather than pick one start date and put all nations of interest at that one point in time, have numerous start dates, with historically accurate borders for all nations.

Hi,
1) I like the game, but one thing is definitely missing and that is map editor!! So It would be great if you included one! Style of the game is not bad... but it would greatly improve play if I can design my own maps... strategic solutions etc. It does not have to be fancy: just to paint the map, give there cities, specific buildings into cities and selection of players (to whom it belongs).
I am currently trying to edit text files.. At first glance it looks like I can change the position of cities on the map (I will give it a try at the weekend), but if so I need to paint the map somewhere and I believe that it is not possible without knowing the correct format.

2)Anyway another idea: What about diplomacy? Again a little improvement would be nice to have.

I think COW II would be the way to go for Slitherine, as I've just got Rome, barbarian invasion, and Medieval II, and it seems so close to Spartan. They've improved the map as well, it looks a lot better. So I think the market for Roman'esc games have been taken and suspect that's why Slitherine have taken so long getting started on Legion II, and that might never happen. The COW egypt/babylon/persian area is not covered by the others. But I must say that COW would have to be a lot better. The diplomacy is hopeless, and so is the AI for little armies running around attacking big strong cities, and no auto resolve. Too frustrating and hard for me to play.

My own preference would be to have a map full of independent city-states at the start, with a gradual build-up into empires as the game progresses, or for later start dates. Until 3000-4000BC, there were no lasting conquests, as the conquered cities would soon tend to break off into autonomous entities again. I believe it was Hammurabi who laid out the principles for maintaining control by: (1) having the governor be foreign to the city he oversaw, (2) preferring governors directly related to the King (or with relatives held as "guests" by the king), and (3) having the city guards paid by the King, not by the Governor (the King's face was on the coinage, so the soldiers were constantly reminded as to whom they owed their allegience and wages). It should probably be harder to "assimilate" a conquered city, requiring a large garrison for a substantial amount of time before the residents finally considered themselves an integral part of the empire. Most successful attacks should lead to "significant" plunder in terms of rare commodities and resources, and a rare few sieges to the extermination of the vast majority of the populace in the captured town.

Diplomacy may have been a lot cruder than in later eras, but there were treaties, trade deals, and various calls for assistance or offers of the same.

One of the things I liked about CoW, which was changed in later games, was that the size of a city was not "capped" by some arbitrary "brick" resource figure. I feel that some limitations should be in place, but a "soft" limit (which increases all building costs if exceeded) would be far preferable to a "hard" limit or none at all. After all, if the King of Whatsitcalled orders his workers to expand the town of Nuthingmuch, they are going to do so, regardless of whether or not it's economically "practical".

Trade should also be "soft limited", where a certain amount of trade "caravans" would be included with each settlement, and any additional ones would need to be funded by you.

One minor peeve about the original CoW is that its hard to tell your Hupshu skirmishers from the other side's Hupshu skirmishers. There were no visual distinctions between the two sides, and the units available to each were pretty much identical, except for one "racial" bonus troop type which might not even be available to some factions until fairly late in the game. Having two or three different versions of the basic troops would allow different factions to field "functionally similar" but visually unique units, perhaps marginally different in stats (one a shade better in melee combat, one slightly more accurate at range, another with an extra javelin, etc.). Having each nationality with its own color (perhaps a sash, armband, headband, or some other item on each figure) would allow you to distinguish between troops of the same "racial type", while different racial groups would have partially or entirely different icons and animations for units with the same basic function.

Finally, linking "Arena" tactical combat to the CoW setting would be the ultimate. I'd really like to see a 4 Horse Chariot bearing down on a group of skirmishers......