Luckily the game DOES let you save and resume, though we encounter a handful of bugs that took a few connection retries to iron out.
Be ready to sit in for the long haul with a friend. In four hours of play we managed to get to 11 turns in one of our co-op games. Update: As of the latest patch, the speed of the co-op turns have been improved greatly. The problem with this mode is it’s painfully slow, as there’s no way to choose a lesser number of “players.” This means you and your partner will sit there with nothing to do for an average of 4-5 minutes while the computer figures out what to do with the AI players. You each start with a group and city or two and then go from there. A “co-op campaign” is just a normal game where you team up with another person and play to conquer the map. A new addition are the naval battles, which are equally as impressive visually and offer a nice change of pace from time to time.įrom a purely cooperative perspective there are a few ways to play the game. Both graphically and audibly it’s an impressive sight, especially when there are a few thousand soldiers involved at a time. You’ll hear commanders call out orders, men rally the troops for their fighting cause, and the screams as fire arrows break down a line of calvary. If you hit the insert key the game adjusts the camera for a more cinematic experience, following your army into battle to hear the clash of steel. The troops aren’t just mirror images of each other, there’s a good variety to a group of soldiers and you’ll see individual soldiers break off of a larger force. Visually the real-time sections are amazing to watch.