Chains of Acquisition

It's more like a mixed/informative review, since I've seen very little of the game so far. Fair warning considering the current version of the game: it is multiplayer only. Adding AI opponents to games isn't available yet. So, what I can tell so far: - Multiplayer-only - Turn-based (like Civilization: every player needs to end its turn to process data and reach the next one) - Probably niche and requiring a taste for business sims or corporate finance, but maybe the ingame help can provide enough information to beginners (?) - You basically win the game by being significantly wealthier than anyone else - Tech-tree, resource availability, and specialization probably means you need to take the right decisions to prosper, depending on the map, and hopefully prosper faster than your rivals - Goods are purchased by cities, which generate their own demand; as a player, you invest in buildings/nodes to create production chains creating and delivering goods to said cities. - It does seem possible to kinda cooperate with other players: you don't need to own every step of the production chain yourself. Of course, you'd be at the mercy of an opponent billing huge profit margins on your back. That being said, it's hard to appreciate how deep the game is, because the tech tree isn't that large. And there's no point in playing alone. Tutorials are... to be worked upon, I guess. They all refer to concepts that are supposed to be dealt in other tutorials that aren't available yet. They aren't clear. I don't pretend to be a genius but I honestly couldn't complete 2 & 3. And yet I feel they barely touched most of the game. Weirdly enough, you cannot set a price for the goods you sell, only a percentage margin. Thing is, cities have (if i understood it correctly) a maximum price they're willing to pay. If you control retail, you'd like to be as close as this price as possible. But any change in your production chain means your costs change means you need to manually adjust % margins to remain near the target price. Unless I got something wrong, this looks unnecessarily complicated and full of micro-management. When I'm reading the game description in the store, it certainly looks like something I could enjoy. Business sims, especially not arcadey ones, are fairly rare, after all. But it definitely looks rough so far, shipped early, maybe, I guess. No Early Access tag, but tbf EA means very little anyway. I'm fine with giving 15€ to indie devs for niche games. I just don't know if I'll keep this one. I'm not sure it's working as intended, and if there is no multiplayer lobby anyway, there's nothing to do.

Hello! Full disclosure, I know the dev's personally (they are great people). I really do enjoy this game, in a way that I enjoy management games like shapez. Which is probably a weird comparison, but it's because I'm usually not the kind of person to play RTS games. Now, is it perfectly polished? No. However it is still being actively worked on constantly. Check the discord if you have any problems with the game. It also requires a healthy bit of time investment to learn all the systems (and to solidify the concept of you being a shell company). I will recommend this in full honesty, my feeling for the Dev's aside, as I really do love the game, but it is still both a work in progress and a commitment to learn.

To establish bias, I was included in a beta test for this game. Chains of Acquisition is a turn based economy simulator, as the description implies. It can be a bit hard to learn, which is alleviated with the tutorials, even if nothing beats the experience of playing the game yourself. The game targets the same crowd that would enjoy other simulators/tycoon games that focus on supply lines, like OpenTTD and Anno (to an extent) The things I like about that game: - It's entire focus is on supply lines, which makes my factorio/modded minecraft brain happy. - Map editor built in - The patent system allows players to gain reliable income for the rest of the game as long as they support the industry. Things I don't like about the game: - The Demand based economy is hard to get used to, and will probably throw players off at first. - The early game feels very hard to get out of at times, which requires learning. - Lack of AI means that you need a playgroup to buy in to get a multiplayer game going. So do I recommend this game? At the moment, I think it would be fair to say my review is mixed with a positive skew. I think the game has the potential to be very fun. I certainly intend to play more of it when I have the time and the game has had longer to cook. I think the game would have benefited from coming out in Early Access to allow for some leeway while the game gets the many coats of polish that the devs have been releasing, even if I can understand the stigma behind EA games sometimes.