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Exotic and Exciting Setting, but Obnoxious Battle System

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: April 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

`Chariots of War' is, to my knowledge, the only pc strategy game set in the Ancient Mid East. By monopolizing the trade and conquering your enemies you can make an empire with the Hittites or the Assyrians, reunite Egypt, or recreate the Kingdom of Solomon, or descend on the civilized world as a band of Thracian swordsmen or Scythian archers. With 50-some nations, most of them known historically only from vague references in the Bible and ancient records, and about that many troop types, there are pretty much unlimited possibilities in this game. You can raise all sorts of exotic units, including Arab camel-riders, face-painted horse-archers, and battalions of Egyptians with their wickedly hooked khophesh swords. The only historically prominent troop types that are missing are the Israelite slingers and the Sumerian pikemen. Other than that, the military units are excellent and well balanced, and the chariots and archers can crush all before them. The game is also a great challenge, especially when playing the extended campaign in which that map covers the world from Thrace to Persia, Arabia to the Black Sea region.

Why then, do I give it only two stars? To reasons-diplomacy and the battles.

Diplomacy, almost as important in most of these types of games as the warfare itself, means nothing in this game. Having a diplomat with a rival nation for years at a time usually avails nothing; sometimes, if they are very powerful neighbors of yours and your nation is small, they may not attack you - often, but never to they help you against your common foes, even when they call you their `best friend'. Also, it is impossible to form alliances or declare war-there are only two options for relations with your rivals-attack them unannounced or ignore them and hope they do the same. You can expel rival diplomats, however, if the conduct of their nation displeases you-you can send them home as they arrived, or you can send them back in pieces after being horribly tortured. The game tells you to `expect a reaction!' if you do the latter-but rarely do you get one.

The battles are even worse; it is not possible for you to intervene and change your troops' orders; they act on the word of their imaginary officers alone and you can do nothing to send them at a certain foe or increase their fighting spirit. Also, the battles have a bad habit of freezing the computer; they do this on mine so much I don't really play the game anymore.

Overall, someone who likes this time period in history or strategy games that are more strategy and economics-oriented then command-and-conquer-oriented might enjoy this game, but I wouldn't highly recommend it.

More of the same from Slitherene

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is inferior to Slitherene's "Spartan" and "Gates of Troy". At least they had real Diplomacy and you could skip the silly battle action by using auto resolve. I have given Slitherene every chance, beginning with Legion Arena, Legion Gold etc. In doing so I have wasted a lot of money, and actually not even played beyond a few turns in some of the games once I saw what the game was all about. There is virtually no attempt at historical accuracy. The campaign maps are basically just variations on a the main theme. For someone who is used to the Total War and Stronghold type games, these games by Slitherene are a real come down. If you are older than 14 this game and most of the rest of what Slitherene puts out are not worth your time and money.

Good Strategy Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 25 / 27
Date: June 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is not a deep, deep sim of ancient life, warfare and economics.

It is, however, a deeply engaging game that has a lot more complexity that first glance would make one think.

The game mechanisms include city management: handled by the usual mechamism of building and upgrading structures by city. The most compelling part of this is that at each level of development your city can only hold so many structures. Build too many farms and you can't build barracks for better troops. Same in reverse, build to many troop producers and you'll startve. Getting this balance right across your empire is critical.

Economics are handled by a simple trade interface that allows you get buy resources you need and sell goods you overproduce. The concept is simple but reasonably dynamic in terms of supply affecting demand.

Combat is handled a la Legion where you deploy your troops before a battle and then turn them loose and they are outside your command. This feature aggravates a lot of gamers but it is a very unique feel that keeps this game from being another same old, same old. I love it despite some nits about it. Troop types really matter and failure to balance an army is a fatal flaw.

Diplomacy keeps this from being a 5 star type game. Simply put, there is no diplomacy. The designers claim that treaties and such things meant nothing in this age (likely true) but it means you are, in effect, always at war. You have relationship levels with other countries but good or bad relations do not, to me, appear to mean anything.

Overall I liken this game to the old Conquest of the New World or maybe, on a more well known level, to Axis and Allies. Games that are not of the depth of a Civ or Europa Universalis but aremore accessible to all gamers but still really fun. in the end, that is what matters and this game is fun.

Excellent choice for strategy game fans!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 27 / 29
Date: May 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm glad to be the first one to write a review about this game after all the hard work developers, programmers, producers and betatesters (I was one of them!) put into it.

The game is located in the middle east at 2500 BC. A complex mosaic of tiny nations which recreate from the most known realms and empires (such as Egypt, Hitites, Assyria, Ur, etc) to the least known (Makkan, Dahae, etc). The game situates them all together at the same historical time to enable you to possibility to live the hypothetical clash between those different nations. Purists will complain about it, but it's fun to have the choice to see a battle between Sumer and Persia for instance. And I like to call them the "what if" possibility.

The game has a similar concept to Legion (it's made by the same designers, Slitherine) which will enable Legion fans to quickly be comfort with it, BUT it has many new features and a new front end:

New features

* You have a trade addition which will allow you to sell your surpluses of stuff and buy the items you do not produce or own.
* Happinesss is now a serious problem to deal with! Keeping your citizens happy is a must. Consider building a strong religious concept or your population will start revolting and halting production.
* Diplomacy now contemplates the ability to send diplomats to foreign nations and accept other nations representatives as well.
* Grand campaign scenario (to play the whole middle east from Egypt to Persia) or regional scenarios (Asia minor, Egypt, etc)

The graphics are really good, the music is nice and you do not a "super computer" to play it with lots of Ram MB or 3-D board.

Overall, the game will assure you lots of hours of action and entertainment with multiple nations to choose and scenarios to play at a reasonable price.

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