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| Learn to love this view of the world, you will be spending most of your time here | Those who enjoy the day to day trappings of running a country will love this portion of the game |
WARNING: I am not a hardcore war gamer, strategy gamer. I don’t get any pleasure from trying to take over the world by force or diplomacy. Also world politics and running a country hold no interest for me. Now this may lead you to ask “Why is this schmoe reviewing a genre he professes he has no love for?”. Frankly it is because I do enjoy the occasional game of Risk and Stratego, plus not all games have to be the type that requires me to take some pain meds so that my carpal tunnel pain can’t be felt when I play, I do like having to think occasionally. This is where games of this nature have a place in my library, and Crown of Glory: Europe in The Age of Napoleon does a fine job of finding room in that library. From the title alone one should be able to figure out where in history this game takes place, and if you have any desire to follow in the short foot steps of Napoleon this is the game for you. It is not just a war-game, or a political sim. It walks a fine line of being both types of game and still have enough depth for both the generals and the would be non-warrior kings to enjoy this game. This is not for the Warcraft, C&C crowd, this is a thinking person’s game where gameplay takes precedence over flashy graphics and bleeding edge audio.
The game starts you off by giving you the option of playing a single player game, a PBEM, or via a remote connection. I personally chose the single player game for this review, but the community for the game is a solid one and you shouldn’t have any issues finding a human opponent. In single player mode you can chose from several scenarios: 1792, 1796, 1805 (default), 1815 and a balanced game 1820. You will be able to choose from France (the default if no other choice is made), Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Spain, and Turkey to be the country you use to become ruler of Europe. Once you have chosen your country it is onto the real game.
There are 3 main screens you will see the majority of your time in the game, some more than others depending on what type of player you are. The main screen will be the one where you give your orders to the generals and politicians who are working with you to expand your empire. You will give troops their marching orders, tell your navy where to anchor itself and what you would like your officials to do and where to go to expand your empire and political alliances. The map is a general overview of the territories you control with an expanded view of Europe and of where everyone is currently situated in the world. For those of you who would rather deal with the nitty gritty of running an empire you will spend most of your time outside of the battle map and dealing with your advisors and making decisions about the things that affect all the little people in the country: food, roads, taxes, etc. This is a perfect place for people who love pouring over little choices to keep the masses happy and yet still run a profitable country, some of our current group of politicians should be playing these games as training tools, we may be better off that we are now.
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| An alliance is formed? | The white, curly wigs just make rejection so much easier to take don’t you think? |
For those of you who may not enjoy dealing with the day to day nuances of running a country there are AI advisors who will take care of this for you. For those of you who would rather take charge of the military they developers did not skimp on the battle portion of the game. The battles are as good as in any game that focuses on just the war aspect of a game. There are two views that you will come across when doing battle, the general battle map allows you to arrange your units and give them very general orders and then let the battle it out. This is the primary view for both land and sea battles and they are usually over relatively quick. However when it comes to land battles you have one other option, a detailed battle. For those people who are into tabletop war-games you will the detailed view very familiar.
Once choosen you will be shown a detailed hex map with your units prearranged and you will be shown which unit you can move first. This is where the hardcore war-gamers will find most of their enjoyment because the ability you have to affect the battle is greatly enhanced in this view of the battles compared to the general battle screen I mentioned before. Here your units are more defined and you have many more options as far as giving orders goes. For instance here you can change the formation of your troops, and various other options to give you a tactical advantage over the opposing forces. Battles can last upwards of 60 real-time minutes, and each turn is about 40 minutes game time and can last several game days. You can turn the detailed battle over to the AI but even then the battle will last a great deal longer than in the general overview battles discussed earlier.
In a game like Crown of Glory graphics are not the main focus, nor are they a deal breaker when it comes to purchasing the game. In all honesty the graphics are serviceable with a few minor glitches on the menus where the text would flow out of the menu boxes. This will not put too much stress on your graphics card, so don’t worry if you don’t have the latest and greatest hardware in your machine. However the number crunching that goes on behind the scenes can cause a stutter here and there, but nothing that should make you shy away from the game. The sounds and music are also on par with the games in the genre. While the sound effects are accurate and the music is on par with the majority of games in the genre you will not be mistaking things for a Lord of The Rings caliber movie or game, but really do you play strategy games for the music?
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| Would be generals will find themselves studying this screen for hours and spending more time here than anywhere else | In a game like Crown of Glory graphics are not the main focus |
So is it worth a buy? That is the million dollar question isn’t it? On gameplay alone I would say it is a resounding yes. Crown of Glory: Europe in The Age of Napoleon is deep enough for both the empire builders and budding generals that either of these types of players will get satisfaction playing the game. Once again Matrix Games and the developer Western Civilization Software bring the strategy crowd a solid gaming experience just beware of the learning curve and you will not be disappointed.
CROWN OF GLORY VERDICT
So is it worth a buy? That is the million dollar question isn’t it? On gameplay alone I would say it is a resounding yes. Crown of Glory: Europe in The Age of Napoleon is deep enough for both the empire builders and budding generals that either of these types of players will get satisfaction playing the game. Once again Matrix Games and the developer Western Civilization Software bring the strategy crowd a solid gaming experience just beware of the learning curve and you will not be disappointed.
TOP GAME MOMENT
After losing my first battle and thinking to myself: “Hey this is just like playing Risk back in the days except my friends aren’t taunting me for getting my a@$ handed to me.
