For the first time...

[Steve Clark]

I did something I had never done in 7 years of being on the web - click on a banner ad! I had heard about 1602 A.D. and with its constant presence here, I looked into it and then bought the game yesterday at CompUSA. I could tell that it is a European-designed game (not a slam, but just different). I was a bit leary since I don't like RTS games, but this combines empire building (like SimCity and Conquest of the New World) with real-time land and sea battles. I think I'll like it.

[War4ever]

let me know how it is Steve.... maybe i will buy it too

[Carolus Rex]

I read about it at Gamecenter.

Great game until the empire gets going, then (when things start to get interesting) everything bogs down to micromanaging. All in their humble opinion, of course...

I'm also curious about this game, let us know about the end game...

Carolus

[Steve Clark]

War and Carolus: I got to the 1602 forum this morning but they haven't sent me the password yet. So instead of waiting, here's what I will post as far as my initial comments and questions.

(BTW, I hope the Moderators here don't mind talking about another game. CivII will always be the greatest game of all. So there.)

"First off, I have been playing computer games since 1978 and strategy games since the late 1980s. I am an avid Civilization II gamer, as well as Conquest of the New World and various wargames from Talonsoft. I have played some RTS games and I do not like that style of game (too chaotic and too much busy work). When I saw that 1602 was to be a hybrid of empire building and RT for battles, I thought I'd give it a shot since the time period is very appealing to me. Anyway, after spending 2 hours going through the tutorial and briefly starting a continuous play game, I have these comments thus far.

1. Once you build the first warehouse, the gold starts ticking down. I paused the game just to figure things out but it goes out of the game screens. Is this game forcing me to make building decisions in real time? How can I pause to analysis my resource numbers and determine my next moves when I'm losing gold for maintenance?

2. Having handcart workers automatically bring the resources to the warehouse or marketplace is a very good idea. What I hated about AoK was having to tell where these workers to go and what to do. 1602 does it much, much better. Also, even though setting up a trade takes way too many button clicks, having it set to auto-trade is also a good thing.

3. What is the goal of continuous play? Am I striving to clobber everyone else? Most gold? Most population? Most what? There can be no such thing as an open-ended strategy game, you are always trying achieve a winning goal.

4. OK, about the real-time battles. The land battles are very unrealistic. Just because your units are in close proximity to enemy units, does NOT mean they have to engage. In the tutorial, I only selected the cavalry to engage and not the Musks and swordsman, but since they were very close to the action they started fighting anyway. I only want to engage those units when they are ordered to. Is there a way to control this? The sea battle on the other hand worked well, those two small ships waited until I told it to engage.

That's it for my initial thoughts and questions."

War: See, I managed to find a way to use our favorite word

[Steve Clark]

It's only an OK game, with a fatal design flaw. With the exception of some of the campaigns and scenarions, 1602 plays just like SimCity. All you do is build various buildings, respond the citizen's needs and trade. The fatal flaw as I mentioned above, is that you can't pause to assess the situation. Pausing goes into a screensaver so you can't see the map at all. If they fix this in a patch, I'll play it again. In the meantime, perhaps back to CivII.

[War4ever]

Steve thanks for the update and saving me some money in the process ..... what other games tbs do you play or have besides civ.....

i am curious if you can recommend me anything you think is great as we have similar tastes.... i already own all the civ and smac titles... so something new please preferably something where i can clobber someone.... oops theres that word again its like a wheres waldo in our posts LOL
[This message has been edited by War4ever (edited February 29, 2000).]