Slitherine

Must say, right at the beginning, that I love this game. At scale from 1 -10 (where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best) I will give to CEAW 7, 5 points. Still, why this game is not major hit, between turn based games, of course? To my humble opinion, there is only one criteria that game makers must satisfied to produce major hit and this is long game lifetime. To achieve this goal, game should have following features:

GOOD REPLAY ABILITY- to achieve this, game should have numberless combinations at global, strategic and tactical game level. To be clear – I don’t think that game should be complex for play, on contrary, it should be simple for play hard for master. In CEAW case, here are some examples: diplomacy is missing at global level, Vichy France is missing at strategic level, paratroopers are missing at tactical level. Also, more ports and cities on map will definitely give more strategic and tactical options. Even game makers have some good arguments why these features/options we don’t have in game I still thinking that they are missing. One more very good option which is missing and which will increase, for sure, possibility to have more combinations on tactical level is semi-automatic set up at start. This works absolutely great in Third Reich game, for example.

GOOD MULTIPLAYER – with all due respect to all singleplayer fans you must admit that there is no fun like fun when you play against human opponent. Also, today’s computer technology and science is still not on that level that we can have good and smart AI so , in singleplayer case, gameplay lifetime and replay ability is short. Game should be oriented to good multiplayer. In CEAW case, multiplayer is good but game developer made one huge mistake – they did not adapt multiplayer to working people which are large part of turn based game player population. To my opinion CEAW has too many turns for online or PBEM play. It should have had less turns with more additional actions/phases and counter actions/phases in one turn. Good example is, again, Third Reich game – 1 turn per season with many additional phases like intercept or counter intercept air or naval units, breakthrough phase for armor units etc. With this, game is more dynamic (player have lots of option and action in one turn) but shorter for play so players actually have chance to finish it.

GOOD AND SIMPLE INTERFACE AND GAME SUPPORT – CEAW has good interface but still not good enough. Best example for very good interface are Strategic Command games. Left click, right click point and shoot, windows with lots of information’s, most important information’s visible without additional clicking, etc. All of this is very important for players. CEAW example: it is very irritating that I can’t see range for air units on main screen. I must go to purchase screen and click on air units to see details to see range.

As for game support, game makers should not wait for players to create fan web sites for finding opponents or organize tournaments and ladder play. They should have this at the moment when game is released. Also, to my opinion, with today’s internet technology, game makers should have some tools or other online solutions for preventing reload cheating or any other cheating in PBEM play. Hell, with today’s ASP.NET technology you can create strictly web based game for online and PBEM playing.

At the end, don’t get me wrong, I wrote this not to criticize, I wrote this to CEAW game makers as guidelines for CEAW2 game.

And here was me thinking the game was doing extremely well.

It has released in 10 languages at retail and selling significant numbers - way more than we expected. There will be lots of good news about Commander soon

iainmcneil wrote:And here was me thinking the game was doing extremely well.

It has released in 10 languages at retail and selling significant numbers - way more than we expected. There will be lots of good news about Commander soon

Excellent! Can't wait to see where the game and the series are going!

You've raised a lot of points that probably deserve a detailed discussion, so forgive for just touching the surface here.

vveedd wrote:Still, why this game is not major hit, between turn based games, of course?

Is it not? Such games do not reach the peak of their popularity at once, it often takes a lot of time (and patches) look at SC2. That said I think the game fares really well.

vveedd wrote: GOOD MULTIPLAYER – with all due respect to all singleplayer fans you must admit that there is no fun like fun when you play against human opponent. Also, today’s computer technology and science is still not on that level that we can have good and smart AI so , in singleplayer case, gameplay lifetime and replay ability is short.

It is a matter of opinion. Many (and probably it's a majority) do prefer SP. There are games that I have been playing in SP for more than 10 years, game's lifetime depends on the challenge (which does not have to result from AI alone) and its ability to present different gameplay in each play-through, which indeed is a area that CEAW could improve upon (e.g. less predictable joining dates of different countries - either through diplomacy feature or randomness).

vveedd wrote: It should have had less turns with more additional actions/phases and counter actions/phases in one turn.

I think part of CEAW's appeal is it's scale - i.e. the number of turns (btw I'd personally prefer it to be longer) and the number of hexes. Plus the time needed to have a MP game in CEAW is still much shorter than e.g. HOI or Civ, and still those games are very playable in MP.

vveedd wrote: GOOD AND SIMPLE INTERFACE AND GAME SUPPORT – CEAW has good interface but still not good enough. Best example for very good interface are Strategic Command games. Left click, right click point and shoot, windows with lots of information’s, most important information’s visible without additional clicking, etc.

Not that there's no room for improvement (like moving interface to the sides, undo function) but I think CEAW gives all the info with less clicks than SC2 does actually (as mouse-over is enough)