I've been playing this game since its release. Meaning I started with the disc version a long time ago, but went to the digital version once that got available and CD-ROM players became obsolete. There's something about this game that keeps pulling me back into it. Not just the trading and city building aspect, not just the naval battles, not the ability to loot or annex cities and even not the ability to own your own cities after a plot of land being gifted by a Vice-Roy. It isn't the ability to start with a small boat and ample funds, only to grow your "empire" to its maximum, getting the maximum rank and being loved by all nations. It's all of that and much more. There are challenges in every aspect of the game. The trading is a challenge when you aren't able to set up the automatic routes, as the captain's discounts certainly help a lot. The naval combat is a challenge as you're often facing 5 ships with more crew with your single ship. Even if you got a 5 warship fleet. The diplomatic part of the game is a challenge as you will loose reputation if you fight a nation on behalf of another nation. And unlike them, you can't fight back when there's peace between nations and your Letter of Marque isn't valid anymore. And that while the nations will attempt to cripple your income by attacking your trade convoys. There's a challenge in building up the cities, as the AI loves to drop a building at that exact spot you don't want it to be. But the reward of dealing with those challenges is the best part of this game. Four cities gifted by each Vice-Roy in quarter areas, making it possible to become the "fifth nation" with a total of 16 cities. There are however two flaws in this game. One is that each nation gets its navy upped to 3 fleets above the number of owned cities. Which isn't fun when you reduced a 20 city nation to 10 fleets and all the sudden see them having 23 fleets because of a war with another nation. The other one: the sword fights. Period!
