Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General 5 more weeks !!!

Larian certainly does sound confident in that video, and I don't really know when it was recorded, but some of those things still out seem like bit of a big deal. The single-player maps are still being built, there is only one setting for the AI on the strategy map - fast expand and act defensively, and other types are still being built.

I don't really know how fast or complete they are, but getting those things right and polished sounds potentially time-intensive to me.

That depends on the tools you have at your disposal and how much is simple placing stuff that is premade in some libary. Also, you could do global layout and placement of objects by person A and let others do the rest.

I think it is how dc is marketed. It really isn't an RTS; it is much closer to total war series of games. Also it is not military it is fantasy; company of heroes is a true RTS that is military (war) oriented.
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There will always be new games and I don't really see DC competing with company of heroes.

Agreed. Strategy is only a part of the game but it's nevertheless a big part. Total War is in fact a strategy game (RTS and turn-based) and it's very similar to DC. DC adds this RPG elements on the mothership but only in SP. In MP DC will be very much a strategy game.

So if you have to decide whether the strategy guy (who usually also reviews the Total War games) or the RPG guy should review DC I would vote for the strategy guy. So if a magazine/site only has one dedicated strategy guy making reviews of this stuff usually you might have a problem if this guy is occupied with Company of Heroes 2 at this very moment. I don't think CoH 2 is a real competition to DC, especially because there aren't that many strategy games on the market (apart from SC2). I just talk about the review problem which Swen mentioned on his blog.

But it's still better to release DC at the same time as CoH 2 than releasing it at the same time as Rome II....

DC is a mishmash of many games, but I think generally marketing it as an RTS and hoping the RTS guy will review it is the best idea, because yes, there are RPG elements, but from what I can tell, the benefits they provide support the Risk-like and RTS gameplay, not the other way around.




Yes, that's true, but the video itself said that making the levels was a bottleneck, and they take a while to make. I'm sure the levels will all get made, but if they're still working on making them at this point, will they be particularly polished?