Recently, as you may have heard, Paradox hold the Paradox Interactive Convention 2010 in which all the Paradox partners presented their projects. Obviously, AGEOD was part of that...
Well, this thread is about part of the AAR that Monnikje is doing... Monnikje is the forum member that got the "golden ticket" to comment about the convention...
Monnikje wrote:[size="4"]A Paradox fan thoughts on Rise of Prussia and Vainglory of Nations[/size]
[indent]Last week I've been to the Paradox Interactive Convention 2010, being the lucky winner. During my stay in Stockholm, I reported back on not only my whereabouts, but also on the games I saw. I thus did a review on both Rise of Prussia and Vainglory of Nations, from my perspective. Because not everyone would find their way to my AAR, I was asked to post it also here.[/indent]
Philippe Thibaut was the first on the convention to present his upcoming game: Rise of Prussia.
A really nice person I met at the Paradox Interactive Convention 2010 was Philippe Thibaut. On Thursday he was, unexpectedly, the first one to present his upcoming game: Rise of Prussia. I have seen that you already got all the screenhots I got my hand on in the Rise of Prussia subforum, so I won't repeat them here. Well, maybe one, to give you a taste: one I like much. But you experienced Rise of Prussia followers shouldn't espect something fancy new.
Rise of Prussia is a game about the Seven Years' War - from 1756 till 1763 - which is often called the first World War. Not only did Europe lie in ruins, but fighting also erupted on all the other continents. In this game you'll concentrate on just Europe, and play as one of the two involved parties: Prussia and all its allies, or the combined forces of its enemies. Afterwards Philippe showed me on his laptop the game, and there is really much detail in it.
Rise of Prussia is a turn-based game, where you play your turn at the same time as your opponent. The moment you are both finished, the computer calculates what has happened. This whole concept with turns and moving reminded me a lot of the last Heroes of Might and Magic games. Philippe said also that he liked those a lot, so it's not that surprising. This turn-based gaming also allow you to play by email, a really inetresting feature for busy people who can't seem to be online at the same moment.
A screenshot from Rise of Prussia, where you replay the greatest conflict of the 18th century.
Rise of Prussia is like chess: you play one against one. But it would be great if you could join in with more people. There's where Vainglory of Nations comes peeking around the corner. You can play with up to eight players against each other. That sounds more like a game of Risk than chess.
Vainglory of Nations is a counterpart of Victoria 2, since it plays from 1850 till 1920. Instead of just a part of the world, you will take up one of the great nations and spread your influence over the entire world. And while Rise of Prussia has the look of EU2, the upcoming Vainglory of Nations gave me a EU3 feeling. The same depth in details as in the other AGEOD games are put in this one, only then even greater.
A screenshot of Vainglory of Nations: people following this game will already recognise it. Please notice the clock in the right upper corner: it displays the actual time, giving you no excuse to stay up late and ignore that beautifull lady in your bed waiting for you to finish just one more war.
There will be around a thousand turns to play in this game. That's around two or two and a half times as much as you'll get in for example the Civilization games. That's a lot of space to move and do stuff. Of course it's easy to compare this to Victoria 2, but you really shouldn't. The gameplay is completely different, and it's not such a great social reform simulator as V2. It's something completely different: a turn-based wargame in the Victorian period, including the First World War.
Philippe Thibaut is a really nice person, and it was great talking to him. The acquisition of his company by Paradox is also a blessing for everyone. Not only for Paradox, who has now the creator of Europa Universalis under its wings, but also for AGEOD. The previous years Philippe had to do a lot of promotion and such by himself. This ate a lot of his time, leaving less for working on new titles, delaying them more and more. Now that Paradox has taken over that responsibility, he can concentrate more on the games, and they will come out on time. Hurray!
If you want to read more about his AAR, you can check it here:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=456728
