Öjevind Lång
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2005
- Messages
- 2,371
Of course, one can enjoy Col II in its present shape, but it is impoverished compared to the original game, and there is a lot of sloppy execution, bad designing and cheeseparing - such as recycling leaderheads and diplomacy comments from Civ IV and not bothering to do any proper graphics for the Europe screen. A harbour with water of the same kind as in the New World, with a dock and a line of houses as in the original game, would have been quite satisfactory, if coupled with the tweaking of information which obviously is still couched in terms from the designing stage, such as "Sold @ 15 gold a unit". They should take the trouble to be a bit less obvious about leaving such relicts from the designing stage around.
As it stands, Col II has a limited lease of life before one gets tired of it. One of the strangest things is how they have removed a lot of exciting things that they apparently think impede the scenario goal of beating the REF. The Indians are almost inhumanly docile uness one deliberately annoys them. In the original game, some young braves might attack you just for the hell of it, or because the tribe was getting restive and needed appeasement with a trade consignment or even a gift; and sending an unescorted treasure across the map was tantamount to inviting an ambush. Then there is the absence of the king forcing you to go to war with a rival, giving you a sum of money and some soldiers (less as the game progressed) and thus diverting resources from your work on building up your settlements. That was fun too. I keep calling Col II a scenario becuse of this narrow focus, which has made them remove a lot of dynamic features from the game. I'm still hoping they'll reintroduce some of them in a patch, and do some proper programming in the process.
I also think they should bring back the Fountain of Youth, with something similar to the image (no animation is necessary; an image will do) of those two conquistadors seeing it, and the original music. So as not to make it overpowered, one could get three settlers instead of eight as in the original game but still have the option to choose among them.
Above all, MAKE THE GAME LONGER AND THE TAX INCREASES LESS STEEP. In the old game, you had until 1850 to gain your liberty. The old game had several stages, and several things going on: founding your colonies and exploring the map (and finding treasures was much more unusal then); trying to establish good relations with the Indians or else go to war with them (quite demanding in the old game); dealing with the other colonizing powers; building up your colonies and improving the infrastructure (and back then, training experts became a swifter process tied to liberty bell prouction, not a slower process as now - that is a moronic change!) and then preparing for the rebellion and fighting the war for independence. Now it has all been reduced to one single senario: preparing for the rebellion and fighting it. Very poor.
I can understand that those who never played the original game can be a little puzzled by our disgruntlement, but given what the game could have been, our frustration is quite understandable.
