Reviews - RixMilo

It does dozens of things, and adds dozens of units too, but I'll only comment on how it improves the game by adding defensive units and structures, making it playable/enjoyable for users that don't rely on a completely offensive strategy. Ironically, though adding defensive features, the mod's named Blitzkrieg.

As with other mods of similar kind or features, I enjoy spending a word on how realistic the changes are in a matter of being "history-wise": I've been an amateur of the WWII for a few years, and to a lesser extent since I was a child.

The 2nd World War not exactly like a guerrilla conflict, where most battles would begin with a faction ambushing another or involving small squads of infantry and vehicles with nothing but dunes, trees and fences. In some cases, forces were struck for months at the same spot, because of both the landscape and the enemy defences (e.g. entrenched Bunkers positioned on a promontory such as a hilltop). The vanilla of CoH is rather focused on taking resource points, with no options left for base builders, turtlers and other players leaning to a defensive stance. Considering that both the western and eastern fronts featured timeless sieges and not just capturing random points, I consider these features included in the mod amazing both game-wise and history-wise.

I love the setting, the new historical armour and weapons are great. The map is wonderful, with dozens of cities and minor towns - massive yet definite.

I could talk for ages, but others already have through the time the mod has been in development. The only thing that disappoints me is that some siege battles seem to be bugged and require you to leave your troops fight it on their own.

Also troop variety is poor. I expected to fight huge battles against the powerful French cavalry with my own Imperial (german) knights, but they are all the same. Correct me if I'm wrong in this, but I've checked the troop trees and most western factions have the same units more or less.

I would give it even a lower score. Alas, my account is not old enough to do so.

The reason is I accidentally stumbled across the rating value (which is about 8.7 or something) and couldn't help but wondering why it wasn't as high as some other popular and renowned mods like the Floris Pack of AD1257.

So, I checked the reviews, only to find an endless river of comments on "Cozur"'s ego and his false accounts to downrate other mods. See for yourself. I don't think my rating reflects the product per se, but its creator and developer.

Regardless how good it may be (I've played only a couple of hours), I give up in the first place in order to save myself some time. The reviews concerning how Cozur refuses all suggestions and improvements to his creation are enough for me. I just felt like giving a really low rating because of his childish and abusive behaviour.

I'll comment on the two features that I like the most:

1. The category-based population slots for all units (i.e. 1 slot for infantry, 2 for cavalry, and so on)

It's great because back in Age of Empires II my Teutonic Knights or Paladins didn't take an extra slot because they were more powerful than regular units. Being elite units, they were expensive, and as such they were limited/regulated by your own economy. If my army is composed of highly trained soldiers that cost me a King's ransom, why do I have to train them in even fewer numbers because of an unreasonable rule? If you ask me, even the cavalry should get 1 population slot because they are countered by so many cheaper units that you can't compare them to the almost god-like AoE II paladin.

2. The removal of building restrictions, the increased durability of all structures and the possibility to build up factories and forts on your own

There's no need to explain the reason why I like this feature. Every turtle-nut coming from other RTS's was disappointed to see there was no buildable fort/castle-like structure, that towers/outposts were restricted to a limited number, that cheap artillery and infantry could throw an endless stream of cannon balls and molotov's at your bases and raze everything within seconds. Whilst to some extent I believe the importance of defensive buildings progressively decreased through the centuries - beginning from the early modern era - I also realise that what makes playing on the defensive so pointless is the rate of fire of artillery units. (e.g. Indeed a western cannon could take down simple outposts in a handful of firings, but rearming the weapon took ages and not less than 10 seconds). In Age of Empires II siege weapons were generally slower, and not as effective as the ones in AoE III - the only exception being the trebuchet, highly renowned for its slow speed and packing/unpacking time. You could say the bombard was also really effective, but not all civilisations had that, it was available late in the game, was expensive and could be dispatched with a couple of crossbowmen.

As for the possibility to build factories, it means to have an economy that is actually on an industrial scale/level, which is damn good as well as realistic. I love buildings that produce resources on their own - too much microing in the late game when massive battles occur is really annoying. AoE II was sort of lacking in this sense, because no resource renewed itself without microing at least a bit (farms still needed to be queued at the Mill).