Reviews - CC2224

Very well done mod. Beautiful space battles, pretty well balanced fleets, fast paced campaigns. I'm giving it a 10 even though it's unfinished because very few unfinished mods run without crashing like this one did or display the level of polish this one does. My main complaints have to do with some ships - particularly the mercury and odin battlestars, but also the arvaks and standard jupiters; it's happened once with most others too - not wanting to shoot at enemy ships that are in the firing arcs for their main weapons. Not game breaking, but frustrating when a battlestar spends an entire battle shhoting at random fighters.

I'm only giving it a nine because some factions need some polishing (i.e., more building images on the campaign map for the Etruscan League) but anyway this mod is just delightful. Despite the time period and scope of the mod necessitating a limited variety of unit types, the creators found a way to keep hoplites v. hoplites v. hoplites v. hoplites from being boring. There are serious differences between (an obvious example) Spartan hoplites and Athenian hoplites, or Argive hoplites and Boetian hoplites. It's a joy to watch two lines of hoplites, each 4,000 strong, just slam into each other, and that's just in open field. The sieges in this mod are even better. Normally, I find sieges in TW games pretty tedious (mayhaps I've played too much M2TW/vanilla RTW) but the thoroughly redesigned cities make sieges fun in a way they haven't been for me in a long time. Turning the town square into an elevated position and adding structures that units pass through - but which break up their formation - adds a lot of depth to siege battles. Also those cities are downright gorgeous so tactical depth + eye candy = perfect execution. Strategically, it has an AoR recruitment method that allows you to add even more character to your armies as well as giving you your favorite warriors of antiquity (hellooo Samnites!). Additionally, diplomats aren't useless - you actually have a reasonable chance of bribing enemies, getting alliances, and trading map info with a neighbor, a welcome change of pace from, say, EB. I haven't gotten deep into a campaign yet (just been skimming the surface of a bunch of factions so far) but I've yet to experience any CTDs and I thoroughly enjoy this mod. DOWNLOAD IT.

This is a fantastic mod. The space battles are - in a word - delightful; more hadpoints have been added to many ships (ie, the ISD) to make them more realistic, without having an unseemly number. There is nothing like watching two Super Star Destroyers go broadside-to-broadside, and I love playing as the Empire of the Hand in space. The land maps are also often beautifully done, with a big section of Coruscant, for example, being an infantry-only pedestrian area in the city (it looked like part of a battlefront map, it was awesome). Its very pretty, and I haven't encountered a real problem so far.

Also, if you like Republic At War's large, realistic maps but want to be using stormtroopers and AT-ATs or snowspeeders and vanguards, you should really check this mod out. It has the added perk that many worlds can give you free troops or structures, even in the blandest GC's, and in some, you get very cool special missions. The minor factions are a lot of fun as well, and wiping them out can give you some unique stuff. A huge improvement to GC play - as is hero permadeath, honestly.

If I could have given this game like a 9.3 or something (y'know, more than nine, not ten) I would have, however. In space, ships explode and disappear - no more hulks drifting down, it's kinda boring. Despite the often impressive mapmaking, ground battles feel overlooked. Many special abilities have been removed throughout the game; in space, this is nice, but on the ground, it adds to the 2-dimensionality of the original. New factions and units ease this, but still, many of my ground battles, against a full stack on a well fortified world, have lasted less than ten minutes. Additionally, many new units have unfinished/broken death clones and sketchy pathfinding, and some - like the Chiss infantry and some vehicles - have very ugly skins. If you want to just do space, ignore this, but I generally prefer land combat to space (though this mod's space battle may make me change my mind...), so this was a real disappointment to me. With how much loving care was clearly put into this otherwise VERY polished and enjoyable mod, I feel bad rating it a 9, but I am very land-combat focused. I guess they're still working on it though, so hopefully I'll download a future version and come back and change this review.

A very nice mod - ground battles take a little longer and involve a LOT more infantry, giving it a very cinematic feel (well, that and all the reskins and such... arguably the prettiest FoC mod out there). I love the Mandalorian heroes and Basilisk wardroids sooo much... and, if you're a die-hard Empire fan, I'd say this one is for you, especially the 'Rise of the Mandalorians' GC - nothing like starting in a corner ;). I've only played about 6 hours so far, but apart from a glitch that causes the game to crash when I use bombing runs as the Mandalorians, my only other complaint is that the New Republic seems to have become overpowered, especially in the snowspeeder department... but I need to play more.

I joined moddb just b/c this mod. I just want to say this is 1 of the best mods I've ever played, even one of the best strat games. In terms of brilliant complexity, it's more like a good Total War game than the basic EaW or FoC. Honestly, I opened up the (HUGE) "Clone Wars" galactic conquest, paused it to look around, and spent the next 20 minutes shouting from sheer joy that there was actually, finally, a decent clone wars RTS/RTT. I'm not exaggerating. That actually happened. It has its share of problems (NOT more than its fair share), and the 'major' ones Ive experienced have more to do with the original games glitches than any fault on the part of the mods developers.
What's so great:
The ground combat is basically perfect. Id ditch AT-PTs in favor of more expensive AT-XTs, and thats my only complaint - its a preference one, who cares. The Unique clone unit idea is executed well. download the manual, its an afternoons fun on its own.
Scale of space battles is much, much larger (battle pop cap of 50 as opposed to the 25 max in FoC) but small unit management is just as important - meaning players who manage their fighters and bombers well get a fair shake against those who max out frigates and corvettes
Both sides can raid, and have unique strengths when doing so; like the rebellion in vanilla, superior early-to-mid game raiding advantages for the republic balance out their inferior numbers and equipment in that period
Clone infantry kick ***, and infantry is as important as it always should have been in these games; Ive loved putting the 327 to work.
People say the AI is too hard, even on easy, and that the CIS is OP in space. This is not the case in my experience - I did a lot of commando raiding w/ Yoda & Delta squad & fought defensively until I got Venators - basically, the early game ship-for-ship inferiority on the part of the GAR forces the campaign to take the course of the actual clone wars, at least in part.

In short, sheer brilliance. Best