My most recent editorial for DIYGames was partly about how the confusion between realistic graphics and good graphics gets in the way of appreciating how a distinctive, if stylized, look can add a lot to a game. I cited Outpost Kaloki and Darwinia as good examples, and Dominions II as a cautionary tale.

Now a word or two on Koios Works’ Tin Soldiers games. They have released two ancients war games in the last six months – Alexander and Julius Caesar. Both are, in many ways, your typical wargames. They are turn based, they emphasize maneuver and flanking and are aimed at a niche audience.

They are also very attractive because they have decided to make this game as close to miniature wargaming as possible. The units are drawn like painted miniatures and a giant hand descends from the heavens to pick up the eliminated stands. Even the ground looks like it is made of plastic matting and styrofoam.

The entire effect is very convincing. It does a lot to make an average wargame and above average wargame. My review of Alexander sets out my main objections, some of which were addressed in Julius Caesar and some that were not. (More on that if and when my review gets published.) Both could use an editor and the chance to paint your own units, but I have no critical complaints against either.

The Tin Soldiers games are an exciting opening move from a new developer. Both are available through Matrix Games, and at a decent price too. If you have any interest in these types of games, check them out.

These days, every decent strategy game comes with an editor of some sort. You can customize scenarios, build campaigns or even modify the units to your satisfaction. Even those games without decent user tools (like the Paradox and Total War games) have populations devoted to fine tuning their favorite games.

I want to be part of the fun. But I can’t.

I have a terrible for sense for how this sort of thing is done. Even with the best modding tools or scenario construction kits I get easily confused and lost in the mess of what I was trying to do. I have no sense of pacing, a poor idea for how I can incorporate base building into what I want to be a big battle and not a great sense of scale.

This is truly a shame because I like the idea of remaking historical battles or editing maps to reflect ahistorical possibilities. But when confronted with the not-too onerous task of actually doing it, I freeze.

I shouldn’t. I am sure that less adept hands than mine have made mods and custom scenarios, but I just can’t get the hang of it. Part of it could be my love of instant gratification in games; I don’t waiting for something to happen but I better have the feeling that it could happen at any time. If “something happening” depends on my schedule, though, forget it. I’d rather not put in the hours.

That said, I do want to learn how to make custom historical battles in Rome: Total War. There is an excellent historical battle mod out there, but it can use some tweaking.

Meh. Someone else will do it.

Tony Rice over at Button Mashing has graciously invited me to participate in a game-blog-wide semi-regular party called Carnival of Gamers to link the gaming blog community.

No, I don’t quite understand it either, but doesn’t it sound neat?

So I have to come up with a clever idea that I want to share and that I haven’t discussed already. I’d rather not recycle an old editorial or rant about how much I am looking forward to Age of Empires III.

Please feel free to submit ideas for a column or contribution. And please follow the Carnival of Gamers. There are a lot of people writing some great stuff out there, and I only wish I could link to it all. Hopefully this will give you a chance to read a wide variety of opinions and introduce you to writers you might not know.

My review of Empire Earth II is now up at Game Method.

What a disappointment. (Yes, I know that 7/10 is pretty good in mathematical terms, but you know how the 7-9 scale works in game reviews.) It is a corporate monolith with nothing novel, interesting or moving. There is no sense of wonder and no feeling that the game is anything more than a bunch of stuff.

Look at the other RTS out there. Act of War has some interesting unit match-ups and a great story. Darwinia (now reviewed at DIYGames) is a much smaller production that does a better job of sucking you in to the game. Warhammer had a style all its own plus frenetic game play and Kohan 2 is just a winner no matter how you cut it.

Of these, only Empire Earth II is a true historical strategy game. Could it be that people who make these games are running out of ideas? Do they truly think that bigger and broader is the same as better?

It is official. Big Huge Games has announced their new RTS, Rise of Legends – a steampunk world with a character driven campaign. This IGN preview does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for this title.

Though I love historical strategy games almost as much as life itself, the chance to play in a pseudo-historical Jules Verne type of universes is too appealing to pass up. I will confess to having a poor knowledge of steampunk in any detail, but the clunky elegance of Victorian-era machinery designed for modern ends is irrresistable.

Like Arcanum, Rise of Legends posits a world where magic and science uneasily co-exist. Some of the screenshots look like they are from a Dickensian nightmare and others from a fairy story. Dan Adams, the preview writer, comments that the cities look important (and the screenshots bear this out). In all, there is a lot to look forward to here.

And, most importantly, it has Brian Reynolds and the Big Huge brains behind it. Though I thought Age of Mythology was a better game in many respects, Rise of Nations was clearly the more important game. It subtly messed with the RTS formula and did some really interesting things. No historical strategy game had ever made the factions so distinct, and Thrones and Patriots showed that the brains in Timonium were willing to keep taking risks with how much power a particular side should have. The campaigns were, I think, less innovative than was claimed at the time but this in no way made them less enjoyable or varied.

So, if I had to choose between news on Age of Empires 3 and Rise of Legends, I’d have to go with the latter. I am truly excited about this new game and look forward to writing more about it.

German game maker Sunflowers has announced the third game in their Anno trading/building sim. Titled Anno 1701, it promises to bring a prettier version of the near identical gameplay we saw in Anno 1602 and Anno 1503.

Like Cossacks, this is another European game thing that I just don’t get. The economies in the Anno games are incredibly hard to balance and shortages happen very quickly. Even more than the Impressions city builders, the Anno games are complicated math problems that require nearly perfect planning for a city to be viable and self-sufficient in the long run. Like Settlers, there is a long chain of production from one good to the next and satisfaction of the upper classes means meeting all their needs. I always found it easier to just take someone else’s city than to make my own viable.

Target release date is late 2006.