Recent reviews by papaathome

The vanilla game is OK, some players complain that it is not completely in balance.
If you are a starter (or want it the easy way) play this and see for yourself.
With seven levels of difficulties there will be one that fits you.

With the Vox Populi mod the behavioure of the game is much sharper, in general it gets a raise of three levels!

And there are endless may more mods to change the game. There will be some combination that you liken.
If not, you can always have a try with Civ VI

Civ V is my favorite game.

This makes the highest levels really difficult!

A 4X game which looks good. I have bought the bare minimum version of this game which came at a very nice price. There are lots of extensions/expansions available for this game.

First what I don't like.
- The tutorial is an absolute bare minimum, nothing is explained. But the mechanics of the game are not too difficult to grasp. My advise if you start with this game: Play at beginners level and try out several things in short games to see what works for you and what not. Let things happen and in the next game try to do something to prevent it from happening again or just plain let it happen sooner ;-).
- Cannot edit the settings file.
This looks like a bug to me. In the first popup window there are two buttons, [play] and [edit configuration]. That second button does not work, it starts notepad but that cannot find the file.
- If you change resolution settings on your screen it can break the game. It will not start if it is configured for a higher resolution that the current one you have *and* there is no way to change the game configuration.
Again, this looks like a bug to me.
- Whatever you try, at some point you will have a war at your hands. It dos not matter how kind you are or what treaties you have. If you do not prepare for it, your out of the game.
- It is an addictive game, be warned about that before you know it is way pass bed time.

What I like about the game.
- Did I told you it is addictive? So much fun in playing it.
- Excellent graphics.
- More than enough choices in the research trees, no game will be similar to another.
- Also plenty of choice in races to play, ranging from friendly to aggressive. Again, no game will be similar to another.

Conclusions:
I like this game, as I said, for me it is an addictive game.
Even in the bare minimum version of the game there is a lot to explore (game wise) and a wide range of playing styles/strategies possible.
Improvements possible on tutorials but that is not a real problem.
Problems with configuration control.

If you are into 4X games I can recommend this one to try.

Great graphics, like the settings... but can anyboyde *please* explain how to play this?
No manual available(!?)
No introduction available.
No wiki available and I did not find a forum for this game.

As much as I would like to play this game I do need some guidance to start it.
I can set up a new game, start a new character and buy me some tools.

But how do you interact with other characters in the game??
There is only so much you can find out by trying.
Maybe that experience with Guild II is a pre (I don't have it) but to me,
this game is unplayable without a decent manual!

And I still would like to give it a chance if somebody just could explain how to do simple things.
And I mean *SIMPLE* things.

Tried Naval Action. Magnificent look but (for me) a strange user interface.
No decent tutorial available and no explanation/help from the designers.
But some very strange messages from players about the current state of the game.
I will follow the recomendation of one of the players (with more than 2000 hrs on the clock).
Wait for some time (six months) before I will have a look again.

Adictive! Play it, but oply when you have time to spare.