The sequel to Koiosworks’s Tin Soldiers: Alexander has been announced. Unsurprisingly, it is Tin Soldiers: Julius Caesar. As I said in my review of the Alexander game, Koiosworks is doing the first real ancient wargames since I-Magic did their Great Battles series all those years ago. Rome: Total War, after all, is not really a war game and is hardly a tribute to realism.

Julius Caesar, to my mind, has always been a little overrated as a military leader. His greatness was earned in battles against Gallic rabble no more talented than the Eastern armies that Lucullus and Pompey fought. Caesar had a reckless tendency that almost led to disaster at Dyrrachium and Ruspina, and his final battle at Munda – against an army rapidly assembled by Pompey’s less talented sons – was almost the end of him. The only flash of true genius in his battles was at Alesia.

As a leader of men, though, Caesar is almost unparalleled. I’m challenged to think of any ancient general aside from Hannibal who was more able to lead his men where they did not necessarily want to go.

For game designers, Caesar’s battles are excellent because we know quite a bit about them. Though his accounts of some of his encounters are frustratingly abbreviated, and the Spanish Campaign is a complete muddle written by a near illiterate soldier, we know more about his battles than probably any other ancient leader. Though the battles in the Roman Civil War lack the variety of troops that the wars of Alexander and Hannibal have, they have an epic feel of settling old scores that should work well in a campaign game.

And the Tin Soldiers campaign game is excellent. It’s a little disappointing that you have to fight your way up to all the big battles, but it does give victory in the campaign battles an importance that they might not otherwise have.

I recently submitted my review of Hearts of Iron II to Computer Games Magazine, so look for it in a month or two.

I’m not going to cut into my master’s profits by giving away much of what I said, but I will confess to being a little disappointed by the the game’s AI. Once again, Paradox Studios has shipped a computer opponent that simply stops doing stuff. The sleeping AI is a characteristic of all their games, but they’ve done nothing to fix it. Ever.

This is not a crippling problem, since you can always play it MP. But a Paradox Grand Strategy game played online is asking for trouble. The games take forever as it is. Put all the vagaries of the multiplayer world into that and you may never finish unless you are one of the dedicated fans of these games. I am one of those, but one of those who knows his limits. Heavens, I’m still waiting on turns in two War: Age of Imperialism games.

These games are designed for single player and play best in single player, but a computer opponent who can’t do the one thing that HoI2 is about – fight a war – isn’t much fun after a while.

Anyway, this is far from my only opinion of the game, and in fact my opinion is mostly positive. So check out that review if and when it is printed.

New review at DIY added to review archive on the right hand side. It’s of Destroyer Studios space combat sim Starshatter. I gave it four stars. The text of the review may seem a little unenthusiastic, but I do like this game a lot. It’s just that I suck at it. I’ve lost whatever talent I had at space sims, and that was minimal to begin with. Plus, Starshatter’s mouse control is far from intuitive.

Another patch for Rome: Total War is on the way. Get the news on the upcoming fixes here.

In spite of the long list of bugs of fixes on the readme, I can’t say that I have encountered many of these. Fixing the frequency of ambushes is nice, since this means a little more variety in the types of battles. The alternate weapon issue has been a problem for a while, too.

So another patch is good news, but not necessarily major news. I guess it could be interpreted as another sign that they want to get everything right. In today’s internet driven game world, it’s ironic that gamers complain when a game has to be patched and also complain when there is no patch to address what they think are critical errors.

Such a generic title, but such good news.

The Seven Kingdoms series is getting a boost with the announcement of another sequel. Though not the most famous strategy series by a long shot, there are lots of fans of these games. It has been seen as just a poor-man’s Age of Empires, but this doesn’t do credit to the Seven Kingdoms franchise. It’s been five years since Seven Kingdoms II, an excellent sequel to a good game.

The new Seven Kingdoms game should be available in the fall. If you haven’t tried any of the games in the series yet, do so before the new one come out.

The big news in the strategy world is Take 2 Games’s announcement of its purchase of the rights to the Civilization franchise and the consequent committment to publish the upcoming sequel to the storied franchise. Civ IV will be pubished by Take 2’s 2KGames division.

Take 2 has a fair record of strategy games under its belt. The Age of Wonders series and the Stronghold games are their doing, with a new Stronghold game coming later this year, also under the 2KGames label. Take 2 has also published Railroad Tycoon II, the Tropico games and Kohan 2.

So I’m all for this. Take 2 has lost its rights to publish NFL games, so it needs to shore up its bottom line (as if Grand Theft Auto isn’t making tons of money for them already…) and Civ is an established PC franchise. The 22.3 million dollar price for the Civilization name sounds like a deal to me.