Posted on: November 4, 2014
Spellcast
Verified ownerGames: 695 Reviews: 8
Huge Learning Curve for a Mediocre Game
For all intents and purposes the game has no useful tutorial. I'd recommend looking over the first 3 or 4 tutorials (you don't actually do anything in them, just read text) and then starting a single player scenario and just trying things. Once you have some idea of what is going on, the game is interesting in some ways, but its not a fast game. Even at the highest speed, a day takes about 30 seconds to pass, and most things take upwards of 20-30 days to do. Given the scale of the game that leads to a long time to do anything. There is a lot of strategic scope to the game, setting long term goals and trying to achieve them is sort of interesting. Unfortunately, the game bogs down with a very clunky UI, and much of the information you need isn't really obvious or intuitive. I haven't had much luck with diplomacy in the scenario's I've messed with, the AI seems to have a single reply to proposals which boils down to "ok, i'll make that deal if you throw in XXX amount of money." It doesn't seem overly smart either, as one of the nearby nations i was trying to improve my relations with was completely out of coal, so i GAVE them some, and they counter-offered saying they would accept the deal if i threw in a few hundred million along with the free coal. Combat is, well, not very good. You have the option to take full control of all the units, but then you have to have them retreat manually which is difficult to see when they need to pull back, or you can have an adviser help with orders, and he/she will throw units off in random directions ignoring any plan you might have made. I'll admit i didn't mess with combat much yet as the times i have its just frustrating. As usual for games, the AI seems to have a massive advantage in the ability to multitask that makes up for its limited imagination. I can't really suggest that you purchase the game unless its on a nice cheap sale, maybe 99 cents would be about right.
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