Is Pride of nations a good first game?

[matrim_cauthon]

Hello, a newbie here.

I've never played an AGEOD game, but I'm interested in playing one. The period that most interests me is the 19th century and early 20th century.

I'm interested in the grand campaign, sandbox style and scope of Pride of Nations, but I heard this is one of the most complex games, since it has economy on top of military actions. Also, the wiki says the player must sometimes intervene using scripted commands, which seems hard for me to do (especially in a first game).

So, should I start with PON or should I try first one of the operational-level games, to first learn how military is handled in AGE games? If the second is true, what games do you recommend?

I'm a fan of Paradox games, like Victoria 2 and Hearts of Iron 3. Will the learning curve be as steep as HoI3, or even more? Will anything I learned from these games be useful in AGE games?

[Jim-NC]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

PON is in some ways the most complex game from AGEOD. With that said, it's a great game, which several of us love, and discuss/attempt to make better (the biggest contributors are Loki100, Kensai, Christophe.Barot). This game is not about only war, there is a complete economy to run as well.

As to scripts, if you ask the above experts will freely help you with any script needs (they can write the scripts and help you implement).
Each person has his own favorite game (there are the 2 civil war games, RUS, ROP, AJE, and others), so asking which is the best is like asking which child do you like best.
The game has a steep learning curve, also, it has a huge time commitment (like 1,680 turns in the grand campaign).

If you are interested about how the game feels/runs, I would suggest reading the AARs (especially Loki100s). You can see that it has taken him almost 1 year here on the forums (and he started his AAR in the old Paradox forums). He is in approximately 1915, and thus still has 5 years to play.

[Lindi]

If I can propose one game for begin :

Birth of America 2

Why :

Because you are only play in military and option, so no recrut/industry gestion. For a real beginner it's my favorie. After for the best game of Ageod I said same thing of Jim-NC said, I can't chose.

Just for you can understan paradoxe are very simple military, but ageod is the first gameplay it's with that, supply, ammo, temperature, and tactic chose.

[loki100]

Just to add to the above.

PoN is in some ways the most complex of the AGE games in that it has economics, diplomacy, colonialism and warfare. In addition the AGE model of movement and combat is different to that of Paradox so there is sense to trying out one of the campaign style games first as Lindi suggests. The first I played was Rise of Prussia and a combination of the period, scale and flow of that game makes it still one of my favourites. It is probably better to learn the mysteries of stances, CPs, EPs, NM, march to the sound of the guns, supply push et al in the framework of one of their other games.

Having said that, PoN comes with a set of short scenarios that are good to learn the combat aspects. So the Boer War scenario will teach you a lot about how to fight an irregular enemy with a European army - this is something that will happen a lot in any game, PoN models the frustrations of colonial war superbly.

So its a matter of choice. Compared to Victoria 2, PoN stresses realism, if you play Russia, you can't become a liberal democracy, so you have to cope with the problems of Tsarism (at least till Lenin otherthrows you). Its pretty much impossible to take provinces in Europe if you have no claim, so the overall map stays realistic.

If you enjoy V2/HOI3 then there is nothing daunting in the AGE games, they are no more complex, just things are put together differently. In particular the process of putting in your orders and then watching if unfold is very different to Paradox's real time strategy. its also horribly addictive, especially if things are going wrong before your eyes - and there is nothing you can do about it.