Very choppy game from the makers of Pirates!

by CoreCorian

In Group: Boring

Worth to: Avoid

The game gets way too hard in the later parts because there’s just too much to do. Things need to be streamlined better

I love Pirates! and I’ve seen some other Civilization games. I don’t remember any of them being this choppy and segmented. The game’s actions and functions need to be streamlined better. Everything needs your input to the point that it becomes a huge mess once you have 4-5 cities. Wayyy too much micromanagement.

The game starts out great. You leave a bunch of settlers in America and go back to pick up more immigrants in Europe. The ones that are left behind pick a spot and make a new town. Where you settle will affect what kind of resources they will have available. So far so good.

Once inside the city you can assign jobs to you citizens. They can farm, they can fish, they can chop wood, pick cotton (if it’s available), etc. Most tasks have “masters” can get the most of their profession. For instance putting a master farmer on a plot that yeilds grain will give you more food than putting a regular Joe there. After a few trips to get/buy immigrants from Europe you colony can start generating cash products, like cloth, clothes, cigars, rum, etc. Some members of your town will produce food to sustain the population, others will produce stuff to sell in Europe. Again, so far so good.

Now comes the part where you start mining and producing tools. If you’re lucky you can have a town that can produce ore needed for the production of tools. If not, you need to kick a settler out of town so he can create a new town. Now come the problems. There’s people absolutely everywhere in the new world. Anywhere you want to settle you either have pay indians to have the right to settle or fight them. Fighting them is out of the question in the beginning cause you need guns, and guns need a gunsmith, and a gunsmith needs tools, and tools need ore. So you end up waiting until you can afford the land. Once you got your new city you can fill in the voids from the first town. You need to create a wagon that will transport goods from one town to another. At this point two towns aren’t enough to make any kind of expansion so you create a new town, and a new one. Then the mess begins. One town has too much one thing, so it gets spoiled (don’t worry, you can expand the warehouse), another has too much of another and it also gets waisted. Indians give you gifts, the king increases your taxes, town A is starving, can’t find an empty wagon in all the mess, town B can’t finish build its expansion cause it needs tools, can’t bring them tools cause all your ships are busy hauling over-produced goods to Europe, you wildly click “skip turn” to get your ships to Europe fast, you accidentally press “don’t accept tax hike” pissing off the king cause that reply happens to appear over the “skip turn” button, John Adams wants money or open borders, say yes, he expands into your territory kicking a bunch of your settlers off their plot making your city starve, your ships are finally back, don’t know where to unload your new imigrants cause John Adams cut your town in half, you accidentally start a war with someone cause you moved into their tile, your towns are getting ransaked...

It’s hell on Earth...

To make matters worse, making war is extremely bothersome. You need to make guns, but to make guns you need a gunsmith, that needs tools, that need ore. To get a soldier you have to convert an immigrant, so it’s off hauling imigrants from Europe to make a decent army (you don’t want to ruin your towns). Actual fighting sucks. There’s no seperate fight mode, you simply fight on the world map. The fighting in Pirates is more intricate. The fighting here sucks. To attack a unit you must advance into their tile. What if I just want to attack them from a distance and not advance into their tile cause there are cannon waiting to blow me away there? Sorry, can’t do that. You can upgrade and promote your units, but I never got to really fighting enemies, or the King for that matter, cause that’s the goal of the game, to rebel against the king. Why do I never get to fight the king? Cause he somehow wins the game all the time by founding his own colony or something... Huh?

This game makes no sense. It’s fun at first when things are simply, but once you get more towns it becomes a micromanagement mess!!! Everything needs your imput! Menu suck, graphics suck, colonial music can REALLY suck at times. Game just sucks.

Avoid.