James Allen at Out of Eight Games has written what appears to be the first review of Western Civilization’s Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War. Allen has a firm 5-8 scale (it’s rare for a game to score in the 4 or lower range) and Forge scores a 7. His comments are usually worthy of notice. He’s not a complete fool.

I haven’t played Forge of Freedom yet (too much other stuff to do) but one of Allen’s comments gives me pause.

Forge of Freedom allows the player to tailor how many of the game’s rules they want to have activated. This is probably one of its greatest attributes as it changes how complicated or straightforward you want to game to function. Forge of Freedom includes three pre-set levels of difficulty, but it also allows you to customize each individual setting. Is unit attrition too annoying? Is Fog of War dumb? Don’t care about European intervention? Hate governors? Forge of Freedom allows you adjust 30 different facets of the game. This is unlike Western Civilization Software’s previous game Crown of Glory, where everything in the game was piled on top of you from the beginning. Flexibility is always a good thing in computer games as it allows a single title to appeal to a large range of people. Thus, Forge of Freedom is not just geared to grognards, but also to people who just want to order troops around and not have to worry about supply or unit attrition.

Doesn’t there come a point where too much rule switching reveals a lack of confidence in the game design? If you can ignore 30 facets of a game and still make the game what you want it to be, how crucial are these to the basic game design in the first place? When does flexibility become lack of confidence in the initial design document?

In other words, can a game be too customizable?

I’m playing Neverwinter Nights 2 for review purposes, and I’m mostly enjoying it. I’m still in the first chapter and am just about to go into the endless orc caves of despair. My paladin has a pony tail, my dwarf wants to beat people up and my mage keeps dying. Standard RPG stuff. A full report should be available in the next week or so.

But I really miss drag-select.

When you play a lot of real time strategy games, you rely on drag-select. It’s fast, easy, not-too-specific and, most importantly, it happens on the playing area. You manipulate the fighting beasties by lassoing a bunch of them and throwing them in the right direction.

NWN2 doesn’t have that. You can click on your rogue in the action screen, but the pointer isn’t precise enough. So, you have to use the portrait on the party bar to the right, which automatically takes you out of the action. You aren’t selecting that person with the shortbow, you are selecting the picture of the person with the shortbow. You should always keep the players’ eyes on the action, not the sidebar.

This is not how interface is supposed to work. Baldur’s Gate had drag-select, so this isn’t a genre convention, either, except that NWN2, Baldur’s Gate and Age of Empires 3 are all real time. And real time requires shortcuts to keep the player moving forward. Bit by bit, games are moving towards standardized features and interface options and ignoring them in favor of something that is not clearly superior seems a little selfish to me.

The year comes to a close with a bit of a whimper, most of the big seasonal titles having already come out. There is no late flurry of releases at all. Gamespot has a single firm date for a strategy title.

December 8 – State of War: Warmonger (Alten8/Cypron)

Seven Kingdoms: Conquest (CDV/Enlight) and Spellforce 2 (Aspyr/JoWood) are both listed by Gamespy as “Holiday 2006” releases, whatever that means. Sparta: Ancient Wars (Playlogic/World Forge) is listed in some places as a late December release, but there hasn’t been a Gold announcement yet, as far as I know.

So the year of strategy gaming is pretty much done. I have a bunch of games to play from the last month, though. Yet another Euro-RTS arrived today, and I still want to get my review of Dominions 3 out there. Warhammer: Mark of Chaos is on its way, too. Plus all these hex wargames. And Forge of Freedom.

The first Europa Universalis III Beta After Action Report has been posted at the official forum. It’s worth a look if you want to see somebody having fun with a game the rest of us won’t see for six weeks.

The preview build that I have on my desk is clearly way past obsolete, since a lot of the things discussed in this AAR weren’t working in that build. Military tradition is the big one. In the new EU, you don’t get historic monarchs or leaders as you move through the campaign. These will be generated randomly based on a number of factors. For military leaders, the big one is Military Tradition. As you fight battles, you build up Land or Naval tradition which you can then “spend” to recruit a general or admiral. The greater your tradition is, the better chance you have of hiring a strong leader. Other policy settings will affect how quickly you accumulate “tradition”, but it does mean that a France constantly at peace won’t just stumble upon Vauban.

If you check the recent screenshots, by the way, you can see how much better looking the game is.

Even though I am eagerly awaiting EU3, I still have serious misgivings about the end of the Pageant of History design that made the first two games in that series so memorable. Conquering the Aztecs with Cortez or Kazan with Ivan the Terrible will now only be possible if you start the game at the right date. I fear that this could be one of those instances where a completely defensible design decision diminishes the very thing that set the series apart.

Of course, it could also be brilliance. I’m all set to order the Collector’s Edition, in any case.

Right?