Very enjoyable, I tend to play High native on very hard unlimited turns largest map to make it extra challenging. Trying to get a pack of lvl 100 cavalry brings back memories. Its one of those games where you can do more then just winning. I've made a reservation out of the brittisch, completely surrounding them with my towns and killing everything that moves out.
Oh right gameplay wise for those who ont know this one:
You are an explorer/settler from the old world with a mission to explore the new world. You start turn 1 arriving on the coast of a new map every time you play the game. You have ship with an explorer and a small force of infantry. After 5 turns a ship from the old world arrives with some settlers who want to settle on this new world. Here your struggle begins...
You can set our game as you please, for instace you can enable victory points and limited turns, then aim for exploration and colonies, or aim for combat. Personally I dont like limited turns, there are some things I like to go for that takes longer.
What you probably mainly will be doing, is surviving attacks on your towns, managing and building those towns, build new towns. Conscript an army, defend yourself and also plunder/capture other players towns, and whatever else you want to do.
The town building is divided into resources and buildings that get you those resources. Upgrading the buildings require resources. Depending on where you build you have suitable areas for wood, farming, metals, gold, and even some commercial goods. You balance your resource requirements per town, or you specialise each town and trade goods with eachoter to optimise their needs (one makes a lot of wood, the other is a great farmland). You can choose to micro or macro as much as you want, there is an auto build up settlement button in the town. I personally create gold farms to level up my military and only have my frontier cities diversify and build armies.
The strategies consist of exploring the land early game to find all the resources, so you know where you want to settle and the resources boost your city. First one to find the resources gets the claim. You can capture the claim by placing a unit near it and keeping it there, though...but I like to keep the map clean (the game has a "next" button to go to next unit that hasnt moved yet. I dont like to fill that in with trash). Placing a building right next to the resource also movves the claim to you. So you can get away with not exploring to much if you build right next to the resource.
Next part of your strategy should be finding the gold. Gold is the defining element of your military strenght, since its required to upgrade your troops in the academy. No gold and all your troops just miss their shots while 1 enemy cavalry destroys your whole front line in combat. Yes, get to the gold is the main focus troughout the game. What? there is an enemy town right on the gold vein? Destroy that town and build your own settlement! Or...capture it...but then the town has this silly foreign name.
Final part of strategie is mapcontrol by blockading enemy ships with your own. They cn land troops far away from the front and catch you by surprise. And also catching all the generals trying to move out to colonize. You can use diplomacy to not be at war with every player, usefull if you dont like to fight 30 generals per 10 turns, but instead maybe only about 3-5 per 10 turns. Then after you have a good gold production, and your military is superior, you can continue your mapcontrol beyond their borders. I tend to pick an enemy and raid their cities early game because on difficulty very hard the computer has a ton of resources. An investment of 200 metals can give you a steady income of 200 metals plus the other resources per 10 or so turns, as long as you dont 100% raid a town.
Tactical Combat wise its a 4x3 square, each square holds 6 places. cavalry and artillery hold 2 places and infantry only 1. Cavalry can move 2 squares, infantry 1, and the artillery can only move on the back line but can fire on one of all 3 squares in front of it. Artillery is very vulnerable when troops are close, it gets hit easier. Cavalry is very usefull to occupy a square untill the infantry gets there, infantry is usefull to full up a square with meat, but also it gives you more shots available from that square since you can put 6 infantry on 1 square vs 3 cavalry.
So usually you move in cavalry first, have a skirmish, then move 1 or 2 cavalry back to let your infantry take the space. You want cavalry where you want to take a square fast if the enemy is nof fully stacked there. You dont want you cavalry to fight a aquare with 6 infantry on it. Cavalry is also usfull for flanking, since it can fire after moving. Infantry ends its turn after moving. ince you have limited attacks per turn, I tend to go full cavalry and artillery if playing europe (high native is different) untill i get more then 18 units. Since 18 unitsallows you to put in 9 artillery and 9 cavalry, fully occupying the first 2 squares. By upgrading your general (trough combat or the military academy) you can get more attacks per turn. Every unit you want to shoot, takes an attack. So by focussing fire with your number of attacks, you can take down a flank while tanking another, hoping thaat once you win the flank, you can move your cavalry forwards and shoot the enemy in the side. This does a tremendous amount more dmg then just shooting face to face. Hence the tactical situation is that you want to get a flank on the enemy in that 4x3 aquare battlefield.
So really its a prelude to Rome total war imo. You have the strategy map and an ingame combat. Its great. BTW if you love this one you probably also like imperialism 2.
