MG/WC: As with the first release, our game features all these aspects, and we’ve made changes to each.

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Socially, we’ve added historical events for the player to deal with—some are mandatory, like famines, and others are optional, like the abolition of colonial slavery. Some are random events, but others turn up on a historical schedule. Each nation has its own-the bulk of them are French, but even nations like Sweden get their own small set of historical events. And as a little bit of fun, we’ve made sure each event bears an illustrative graphic almost always taken from a period document.

Economically, one of the biggest features of Emperor’s Edition is a simplified economy, letting the player focus more singly on the art of warfare. However, we’ve left in the advanced economic rules for those who enjoy a more immersive experience. In fact, with the addition of numerous provinces, we’ve had to almost totally revise the economic resources. We also give players who are dedicated to the advanced economy some alternate economic scenarios, providing for sparser or more generous resources, as the player prefers. And we’ve added inflationary effects to the cost of units.

Diplomatically, we feature the same diplomat unit and treaty-drafting options as last time (the latter of which in particular won us praise), though we put a cap on subsidies to minor powers to keep the Attitude system in line. We’ve also changed the ownership graphics on the main map, helping to clearly show what territories a player controls and in what way.

Militarily, we’ve added so many features it’s hard to know where to start! Feudal levy units are more powerful now. Military upgrades are based on an experience-point system generated from battles, surrenders, barracks, and some events, and we now have naval upgrades. We’ve imported the special abilities feature from our US civil war game, Forge of Freedom, giving units access to a huge variety of customizations, providing a variety of advantages at both the strategic and tactical level. At higher difficulty levels, we’ve added March Attrition, inflicting strength losses on units moving strategically. Wars now lapse after a year-and-a-half if players don’t keep up the pressure and commit the troops. We’ve put limitations on AI behavior, making it harder for nations like the Ottomans to deviate from their historical roles. We’ve made it possible to resolve battles instantly-even from within a detailed battle that’s already begun. You can fight battles at the brigade level now as well. And, finally, we’ve implemented detailed naval combat, on a hex grid just like land battle, with new rules and new graphics, which we think players will find a real treat!

ACG: What can you share about any new troop types and their strengths and weaknesses?

MG/WC: We made some changes to a few, most notably to our militia units, giving them more maneuverability, but still restricting them to their national borders. Generals can also be promoted now, and players can get new generals after victory in battle. And when you play the brigade-level detailed combat, you get brigade-sized units, splitting specially equipped brigades like riflemen off from the regular brigades in a division.

Our naval units have also been changed: we now use ship-rating terminology. We’ve got first-/second-rates, third-rates, and frigates, and we’ve replaced transports with fourth-rates. Fourth-rates are about as cheap as frigates to build and can fight other ships-of-the-line head-to-head, but are still much weaker, and lack the maneuverability of frigates.

But the biggest thing we’ve added to units are the special abilities mentioned above-several dozen options to make your units stronger, more maneuverable, deadlier, or more resilient, customizing your entire army if desired, though it will cost your nation resources to purchase them.

ACG: CoG had one of the best morale models for a PC wargame since the Close Combat series. Has it been improved in CoG:EE, and in what way(s)?

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