A common problem arising in the rating of games occurs because of the unfair comparison of "apples and oranges" : if a gamer has a passion for apples (such as Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations), he will tend to be biased against oranges (such as much slower, turn-based strategy games). Is it really fair to rate the latter genre in comparaison to the much more popular RTS genre ? It's a relativistic question of taste : many prefer the fast-paced action of RTS, and a minority of obsessive-compulsive managers loves quiet, careful, slow-paced empire-building games of the TBS genre. I did play CoW's precursor (Legion) and I find that CoW represents a great evolution of Legion's style of strategy and play, and I look forward to trying out the third title in the series (Spartan). I believe that CoW has to be compared to Legion, not to Age of Empires. Of course, if you didn't like Legion's style because you prefer Rise of Nation's style, you won't enjoy CoW (or Spartan). Chariots of War adds a lot of new content to its predecessor (Legion). If you play the Grand Campaign (which covers the whole Middle East : from Sudan to Arabia to Turkey to Iran), you will be immediately awestruck by the immensity of the map : there are about 200 "cities", distributed in more than 70 regions, with a lot of different and precise nations to play (for example, you don't just play the Egyptians : you select Egyptians of the North or Egyptians of the South, which corresponds to the correct fact that the Egyptian region had a "lower" part and an "upper" part before it was unified in one single kingdom). Consequently, you can start from many angles, in this widespread map, and try out many different nations and ethnic types. Diplomacy is better. You must send diplomats (who have to take the time to travel and who gain experience) to influence other countries instead of simply clicking on a button to abstractly cultivate very basic forms of foreign relations (give tribute : make the other guy happy). The manual states that the diplomatic model uses "a complicated equation that takes 4 main factors into account" (trust, common cause, opportunity, threat), so I can't easily resort to my usual tactic from Legion, which consisted of regularly sending small gifts of resources to a foreign nation to make it shift from orange to yellow to lime. Operating armies in the field is more realistic and challenging. In Legion, you had no economic penalty if you moved an army in the field, outside of a city. Consequently, I could mobilize and make converge most of my armies, on turn one, to march towards a neighbor to crush him : the Italian peninsula beign so narrow, it did not take too much time and it didn't cost anything more than if you let your armies sit idle in a city. Whereas, in CoW, some starting positions (such as where Saudi Arabia is now located) impose greater mobilization distances. But more significantly, armies operating in the field must be supplied with important amounts of food, which is much more realistic and challenging. The economic model is more complex. There are more types of resources than in most empire-building games (including RTS) : gold, food, building materials, wood, copper, tin, incense, horses, gems. There is a dynamic, regional market which obeys to the law of supply and demand : so prices will fluctuate instead of being static (such as in the HoMM series). To those who do not like the tactical-combat model (which is still quite like the one in Legion), because the gamer cannot micromanage each battle on the field, I will say that Ancient warfare worked that way : two armies met and once the general orders had been given by the commanders, there was very little they could do besides watching (from a hill, in the rear) the more or less chaotic execution of their plan. In CoW, there are no legendary heroes to inspire and rally the troops (as it was the case in some battles of Antiquity : heroes such as Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar), but for the most part the Legion/CoW tactical-battle model is much more "realistic" than the RTS one, where the gamer is set as a kind of celestial deity who has the power to directly command each and every unit of the field, in real-time. To make a long story short, I strongly recommend CoW to those of you who want a slow-paced holiday from the wrist-and-index frenzy of RTS. Chariots is much better than Legion, and its tactical battles are certainly much more entertaining than those in many other turn-based games (such as Galactic Civilizations and Warlords IV).
Gameplay: So in Chariots of war, it has being improved from Legions original gameplay this time. It is structured similarly to Paradox's award-winning Europa Universalis series, in that you can choose to guide any civili... Read Full Review
This game is not all that bad to what people rate this game as. People compare this game to other games that are not turn based which this game is which is like compareing Apples and Peaches which are two diffrent things... Read Full Review
