Aggressors Ancient Rome - still being supported by Matrix / Slitherine?

[Wolfe1759]

Understandably a lot of current chat about FOG Empires but just spotted this from a posting last month on the Steam Aggressors discussions posted by one of the developers:

"Unfortunately, we had some issues with our former business partner that we are still trying to resolve, but we are working on a new project that we will announce once it gets closer to release."

Anybody know anything more?

[Grim.Reaper]

Kind of interesting, I was researching the new Her Majesty game by the developers of Afghanistan and Vietnam games which was sold at Slitherine/Matrix.   Stumbled on a post where they said they are no longer using them as publishers either and kind of implied they couldn't update any of those titles for another year or so (assuming a non compete or something).

Trouble in paradise?  Or maybe nothing at all and typical stuff that happens in the business world...

[JasonPratt]

That might explain a little why ESS hasn't gone on to work up Vietnam 66... But he did do Carrier Deck for them, right?  ???

[Anguille]

Too bad...hopefully they will be able to improve their game further.

[airboy]

This is from the Steam discussion from the developer:

1] Unfortunately, we had some issues with our former business partner that we are still trying to resolve, but we are working on a new project that we will announce once it gets closer to release.

It will have many new features and upgrades that we believe will make it even better than Aggressors, so stay updated with our Facebook[www.facebook.com] or Twitter page.

Thank you for your continued interest!

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It does not look like they are planning any updates.

The game is listed on Slitherine and there are active discussions there.

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The developer regularly engages people who post about the game on the Slitherine forums.  This is an example from about 2 weeks ago:
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=519&t=92375


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The developer PMed me after my review came out.  My review got picked up on multiple Facebook and Reddit pages devoted to Strategy Games and 4x games.  There was a lot of pass through to my blog from Slitherine, Grogheads, Steam, and Armchair Dragoons about the review.  At least 300 people clicked through to see the review past the summary I posted on Steam/Grogheads/Slitherine. 

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I tracked down everything I could find about the game when putting together the review/strategy guide. My personal observations:
1] The developers made a mistake putting the tutorial in the campaign game.  The campaign game tutorial puts the player in a complex situation with 20+ opponents on the board.  Tutorial should have been put in the scramble start game both for ease in explaining the game concepts and to introduce people to the game.  Also, if people don't read manuals and you have a really good game you need to spend more time developing a tutorial that introduces people to the features.

2] The manual was excellent.  The macros the developers put into the game were awesome for empire management.  But unless you dig deep yourself you will not find out about them from the tutorial.

3] Modders did not do much with the game.

4] Given the lack of detailed reviews, strategy guides, wikis, AARs, etc..... the game did not sell well and/or people did not play it much.

5] This game is one of the best combat oriented 4x games I've ever played.  The empire management macros are outstanding.  But you had to dig into it to gain the benefit.

6] Last, Rome is overpowered.  They have the best ground combat units in the game.  Everyone can use the highest level of ship technology - so Carthage has no long-term naval advantage.  Playing a scramble start game as Rome is a big advantage.  In the campaign game, if Rome breaks out of Northern Italy by land they will win.

7] IMHO - The developers have decided that sales were not that great and they are moving on to new projects.

[ArizonaTank]

7] IMHO - The developers have decided that sales were not that great and they are moving on to new projects.

I also wonder if there are some fratricide issues with FOG Empires....

[HoodedHorseJoe]

Yeah there was definitely a falling out between ESS and Matrix/Slitherine, I know that much. It was an on-going problem even through the development of Carrier Deck, after which I assume the two finally parted ways for good.

Surprised to hear something similar may have happened with the Aggressors dev, but to be honest that game needed a lot of work - I saw a super-early version of it once and I honestly didn't think it was worth taking to market at the time, but he turned it around and focused on a single scenario with the sandbox mode, so more power too him.

I do wonder what the details of this are, but I hope he does manage finds success on his own - from what I've learned over the past couple of years I feel that one-man bands on this space, apart from a few exceptions, kind of need a publisher type-entity to keep them on track and to offer advice on what the market's doing.

[solops]

Matrix was a super friendly publisher for niche war games. I have sensed a difference in the company since the Slitherine takeover. I hope things are not going bad with the company and developers.

[Zodiass]

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