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[ChairmanPoo]

It's a game by Illwinter, the makers of Dominions 3 for those in the "in". In fact, CoE could be dubbed an ancestor of sorts, but it's different enough to warrant interest despite its tech being fairly outdated.

The best way to describe it, I think, would be to call it a hybrid between a roguelike and "risk". You select a character from among many different classes (basic categories are warlords, wizards, priests, and nonhuman, with subcategories in each), and start in a citadel somewhere in the map. Your starting class determines your special abilities, avaiable troops, resources that you need, etc.... Then, you hire/summon/whatever troops, and assign them to a commander and send him around the map to explore and battle for different sites, of different strategical importance (income sites, resource sites, fortresses, etc...). The goal of the game is to defeat all your enemies. And by the way, you can play hotseat coop if you like, like in the Heroes games (that would be another game to compare it with).

All in all, it's a fun little game that is very little demanding in terms of resources, can run in many different OSs, and provides fast entertainment for when you are bored.

the forum is here
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=161
but the link they provide for CoEII download is broken (they restructured the webpage and forgot to relink it, apparently), but the game is still avaiable elsewhere.

[Muz]

I wanted to make a thread on this, but too lazy to describe. This is still one of my favorite games. I'm surprised more people haven't heard of it. I've got the full version. They released it for free some time shortly after Dominions 3 was out, but I think they want to start charging for it again

IMHO, this has the best hotseat of any game. Dominions/Heroes/AoW/Disciples takes like 5 minutes between turns, with up to 15 late in the game. With CoE, it's only like half a minute between turns at the start of the game, and it's only a bit slower way later on when you have a lot of commanders and castles. Even then, if you know what you're doing, it's not that slow... only the bosses (and apprentices) can do the major summoning, so you don't have to coordinate 5 people casting spells, unlike some other games.

[ductape]

download link is dead on the forums, cant find the download on the main website. No screenshots available...

does it really exist?

[Muz]

If I didn't have the full version, I'd give it to you guys. But then again, I got the full version from the site.. that was when they gave it out for free and added those one eyed guys from Dominions as a bonus race

[AussieGuy]

Found the download link 

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Our_Games/Free_Games.html

[ChairmanPoo]

for the record, there are many other sites mirroring it since they released it for free. In fact, while I have it at home, I redownloaded from one of these for my netbook.

Anyways, I see that you found the webpage download link.

Yeah, it's a pretty cool game. At first I was reluctant to even try, but (like with roguelikes, and Dwarf fortress) once I got into it, I got hooked badly.

I keep it and a bunch of other games (havent added DF yet, as I am concerned with the performance though I might) in a pendrive, and carry it around as portable fun.

[ChairmanPoo]

As an addenum, I'd like to mention that necromancers are really tough to play, but really fun. The start is very weak, because you have a really crappy army, no income to speak of, and your special ability "raise dead" graduallly renders the one who uses it insane and hard to control. So, you have to sneak around, capturing and holding sites temporarily simply because you cannot afford to defend them against enemies that will be stronger than you (even independents, often!), to gather enough resources to cast the more expensive spells, and/or more likely, find the special sites that cheapen them enough to be affordable.


And PD: Big Box of Blox is another freebie game from that page that is really fun

[Muz]

Heh, necromancers have always been my favorite. I usually try to kill them off ASAP. They stay pretty weak throughout most of the early game.. until they turn into vampires and get the damn immortality + sanity back thing.

[kcwong]

It sounds like a Heroes of Might and Magic Lite... is it?

[ChairmanPoo]

that's not a bad analogy

[Muz]

Eh, I certainly wouldn't call it HoMM lite. Dominions Lite is far more accurate. It's got a lot of neat details, but playable and winnable quickly. And random maps. I dunno, I'd rate it as more fun than HoMM, with less graphics. Doesn't go into the degree of realism that Dominions does, though.

It's a pretty great game. I don't know why you guys aren't playing it yet or even why it's not featured on a lot of sites. I'd expect something like this to have a cult following

[getter77]

Yep, heard lots of good things about this and really need to get around to giving it a proper spin.

[ChairmanPoo]

Actually, I think it beats dominions 3 in some ways. At the very least, the characters are far more "unique" than dominions' nations are.

[chaoticag]

Is having deer walk into your town and take over par for the course? It takes a while to get used to this game.

[ChairmanPoo]

yeah, the rampaging animals are kind of annoying....

Of course, arguably for an undefended, unwalled town in the middle of the wilderness, rampaging animals (predators, that is, not gddmn deer) should be a serious threat, but this should not be the case for citadels