Yet another new person with a question...

[Squirrelloid]

The squirrels take exception to your intended insult.

You're still confusing learning the interface with learning the game. Learning the interface is easier if you can focus on learning the interface and not have to learn the game at the same time.

For the sake of argument, i loaded up a vanilla EA TC game. And looked at 7 slightly different infantry options. I can't even tell you which one a new player would recruit. Sure, I know what the differences are, but they're subtle if you don't know what you're looking for.

Now, despite this, i thought i'd give it a try under the same conditions I played Nieflheim. Of course, i had to do research, because there's nothing else to do with commander buys early, so i chose evocation because it sounds good for killing stuff. Not only did i lose with starting army + 1st turn recruits on their second battle (Nieflheim's went 12 straight victories, including conquering Marveni's home province), and after resupply only went 3 more battles before needing to be resupplied again. It also took much longer to assemble suitable forces for expansion or fighting, and armies took significantly more casualties than nieflheim (as a %) and suffered a greater loss of fighting power because of them. Expansion was much slower. Didn't get to fighting the AI yet, not sure its worth doing so, can't imagine things will go much better.

Now, TC can improve quite a bit with cleverness (any cleverness), but the whole point of the test was to see how foolproof it was. Nieflheim is much more foolproof than TC.