Cultures - 8th Wonder of the World

you can get this game on sale for like 70 cents and even then its still overpriced, suprised by how many positive reviews there are.

Разработана компанией Funatics Development в 2004 году для ПК. Четвёртая и заключительная часть серии компьютерных игр "Cultures". В 2015 году вышло идеологическое продолжение серии, игра "Valhalla Hills". В новой игре в облегчённом виде развились идеи серии игр Cultures.

**Tl;dr**: 8th wonder of the world fixes some issues with Cultures Northland, but is still not worth playing for more than nostalgia. [h2]The good[/h2] [h3]More depth to overlooked mechanics[/h3] The new campaign missions are far more focused on trade, which was almost irrelevant in Cultures Northland. Once you get the hang of the trade system, it's actually pretty rewarding. Some levels spawn you in areas with limited resources forcing you to build relations and trade with your neighbours. Having to build supply lines to deliver resources to build sites for wonders throughout the game makes the end game quite a bit more interesting. [h3]Quality of life (QoL) improvements[/h3] You no longer have to select each married woman one by one and click on them to have a child. You can now set the number of required children in a menu and women will automatically have them. This is a major quality of life improvement. Another one is being able to tell citizens and soldiers to always equip shoes, mead or tools and update their inventory when they run out. Mead was almost useless in Cultures Northland, since it doesn't last long and assigning it to citizens was so painful it was almost never worth doing. In 8th Wonder of the World this is no longer the case and brewers are now actually useful. I'm happy to say they finally fixed miner pathfinding making automated extraction of gold and iron actually possible. [h3]Better campaign levels[/h3] The scenarios you're put in are more interesting and feel less like you're doing the same thing over and over again. In one scenario you have to explore a giant city that's actively under attack trying to break the siege. In another your coast will periodically be raided by pirates forcing you to scramble to fortify your base. Fortifications were pretty useless in Northland, since combat was predictable and enemies almost never attacked you unless you aggro them first. [h3]Better quests[/h3] Quests require you to deliver goods to places or to pay tribute that's actually hard to pay making you consider attacking the other nations instead. Because the game relies on trade much more heavily you have to actually do diplomatics to unlock better trade routes. [h2]The bad[/h2] [h3]Too easy[/h3] Another review here said the game was too easy. I agree. The game has 3 difficulties: "easiest", "easy", and "normal". In practice even "normal" is very easy. Losing a colony is something that never happens. Settler's needs are easy to keep filled and they only die of starvation if you forget and leave them somewhere permanently. Even though some quests require you to produce large quantities of an expensive resource the game gives you multiple pretty generous trade routes for that resource and then as if that's not enough dumps almost all of the required thing right where you need to take it as a reward for a very simple quest. Oh, and they also give you more for another easy quest. This completely ruins any fun in trading for raw resources, building your supply lines and finally producing and delivering the goods on your own. Powerful amulets are often accessible through trade, which is an excellent goal to work towards as wind amulets can practically double the productivity of some vikings. However, by the time you get the trade route up and some of your vikings equipped with amulets they're already useless since you already have all the resources you need to finish the campaign map. I'm certain you can finish some maps by not building a settlement at all and just exploring with your heroes since there's so much loot everywhere. Population growth is now much easier. Chests are still bountiful and they typically give you all you need for a strong army, even recruits themselves so you rarely actually need to train a strong military. Some dungeon maps put you in a situation where you have to make due with a few troops making you consider your moves and actually upgrading them with amulets turning them into absolute gods that shred through enemy fodder, but then they also give you a very obvious shortcut you can use to avoid almost all enemies on the map. Overall the game lacks any real challenge. You're given somewhat serious resource requirements for each campaign map, but they're immediately lowered by up to 90% by doing a very simple quest. [h3]Still tedious[/h3] Even though the QoL updates are nice the game still needs a much bigger overhaul to be properly enjoyable. There's so many little things that make the game feel like a massive pain to get anything done. Unless you already know all the mechanics they're still a hassle to figure out and the learning curve is still pretty big. Combat is still unsatisfying. The mentioned pirate raid level as well as the penultimate one are the only ones in the game where you benefit from defensive structures. I only built stockades once and never touched them after that. Every squad of soldiers I trained always ended up being too over powered since the game throws elite armor as well as rare powerful amulets and potions at you at every turn. At the start of the game you're given a small kid who can't defend himself and dies very easily leading to an instant game over in a game without autosave. They do this for every level. Most of the time you just tell the kid to go wait somewhere and forget about him entirely. Nothing of value would be lost by cutting him and another weird dragon baby out of the game entirely. [h3]Story and quests suck[/h3] The story is stupid. I remember thinking as a child that the story was pretty bad. It's not worth reading the walls of text they give you for anything other than quest instructions. Even though they're somewhat more complex this time, quests are still "go there" or "produce N of X resource". They're barely even quests, more like requirements to fill to end the level. Why the hell are there Vikings going around building the ancient wonders? The premise is totally ass and there's no depth to anything. [h3]Reskinned enemies[/h3] The new enemies suck. They're all reskins of the same old enemies. The humans are functionally all exactly the same and the "dragons" they added look goofy and out of place and act like reskinned werewolves/serpents. [h3]Too repetitive[/h3] Although efforts have been made the game is still massively repetitive. The first two missions are nearly exactly the same. There are very few standout moments and most of what you do will be exactly the same. This time at least you have to shape your colony around what resources are available. In Cultures Northland you're given everything always everywhere. Although you don't build 100% the same colony every time now it's still largely the same thing. Dungeons, which are kind of mini levels inside of levels, are still mind numbingly boring. There's almost never a need to actually train elite soldiers since the dungeons are too short and give you way too many soldiers and gear. [h3]Bugs[/h3] The game is mostly stable, but there are plenty of bugs that can soft lock you or ruin the game for you. If you accidentally hit the Windows key or Alt+Tab, the visuals of the game will essentially crash. Since there's no autosave and you close the game because of the glitch you might lose hours of progress. [h2]Conclusion[/h2] Mechanically it's a better game than Cultures Northland. Great strides have been made to make it a more enjoyable experience, but overall it's still the same cheap shovelware garbage from 20+ years ago. There's a nice hit of nostalgia in there for people who played it as a kid, but if you didn't then go ahead and skip it. This game feels more like a content DLC for Cultures Northland.

Спокойная, расслабляющая игра, вообще не напрягает

Cultures: Discovery of Vinland (German: Cultures: Die Entdeckung Vinlands) is a 2000 real-time strategy and city-building game developed by Funatics Software and published by Phenomedia. It is the first entry in the Cultures series. крч меня еще тогда в планах не было

Gut

ᅠ ᅠ ᅠ ᅠ ★★★★★