Colonization or Pirates

[Turquoiside]

Pirates in no Spore, it is much better.

Maxor12,

Well you really shouldn't know what you need to do. Most people would try to figure it out over a series of games.

 

[brianshapiro]

speaking of pirates, the new colonization has a tune thats also in monkey island 2

 

[obsolete]

Don't any of you realize, there was an option in there to turn off that dreaded dancing system? Maybe that only came in after a later release after so many complained.

 

[dalgo]

Hey I liked the dancing. You got the hang of it after a while.

 

[Ar4i]

Pirates was more or less "just for fun" game, quite addictive for a short period. After the initial charm wears off it would no longer be of any interest, while a game like C4Col is something you would like to play from time to time for years to come. Of course, there are several design flaws, but many things can be modded and probably the rest will be fixed in a patch.

 

[TheDS]

Other than the dancing and the repetitiveness, the thing I hate most about the new Pirates is that the difficulty goes from auto-win to auto-lose in one step. God help you if you lose a battle, you may as well start over! I forget which difficulty it was, but at one level, I pretty much couldn't lose, then I bumped it up one, and couldn't win a battle more than half the time, and losing a battle is a disaster in this game. Heck, even always winning is hard enough to get your checklist taken care of.

As before, the most interesting part of the game is the land battles, but even they get stale after a while. At least you can withdraw from those if they're going badly.

Tons of bugs, tons of poorly considered interface design, tons of poor game design, it all eventually overwhelmed me, and the difficulty problem was the straw that broke the camel's back. I got maybe a week's play out of it before I couldn't take it any more.

Don't any of you realize, there was an option in there to turn off that dreaded dancing system? Maybe that only came in after a later release after so many complained.

That's not funny, teasing us like that. Take it back!

:shrug: too little too late anyway.

 

[obsolete]

I am not making this up. It was stated somewhere in the manual, or it was in the options during install. This was AFTER I had also gone through that redundant and painful dancing stunt. Anyhow, I only played the game for a weekend while staying at my sister, so I didn't have to go through TOO many of those pains, just enough to know I absolutely hated that in the game.

I think one day someone at Firsaxis must have showed Sid a little dancing rig he did at home during a lunch break one day. Sid probably said.. "Ohh haha, that looks cute. Maybe we should add that in the game as an easter-egg."

And the rest was history?....

 

[Gliese 581]

The dancing was fun imo, at least the difficult ones, the easy was kindof boring..Isn't sequential button pressing what arcade games are all about?

 

[Lord Chambers]

The dancing is just as much gameplay as sword fighting. I'm not sure why it's being singled out. Then again I found the game too easy to complete on my last Swashbuckler run through this Summer, so I might not be typical.

The name of the game is, as you said, not losing a battle. Losing a battle means losing your ship. Losing your ship means losing your Large Frigate. Losing your Large Frigate means you can't invade various colonies whenever you please, and losing the ability to do that makes it more difficult to earn promotions, which are generally the last progress I complete.

By focusing your efforts on killing Marquis Montalban earlier than later in your career, you dodge the only possible difficulty, which is beating him in the duel. It can be extremely difficult in later life when you're slow, as his thrust and parry are godlike.

Until you reach that point though, you just sail to and fro chasing Baron Raymondo, capturing every ship you encounter, then selling them, getting promoted, dance, get a map piece, sack the city, install a new government, get promoted, dance, get a map piece, and move on to the next city. The only time I'm not doing this is when I have too few troops, in which case I skip a city or two along the way, or when I'm trying to keep my crew small so they will sail longer without mutiny.

All the other objectives, treasure, pirates, and fugitives, are distractions. You'll sail by them eventually, just focus on the Baron and sink/capture everything along the way.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I really liked Pirates. Some of the things I didn't like though:

1) Dancing. It is easy enough to get all the steps right, except on maybe the last two levels. Even on the easiest level however, it is nearly impossible to get all the flourishes.

2) That.. Baron guy. You have to fight him, what, 24 times in the course of a game? Every fight he gets shot twice, stabbed multiple times, then dumped in the ocean.

3) You can't play as a bad guy. It's called Pirates!, but you can't actually be a Pirate. You have to be a privateer and ally with someone, otherwise well, you're screwed.

 

[Reiko]

I heard that Pirates remake was full of bugs too.

 

[~Bamboo~]

@Bkeela,

If you enjoy the Civ games you probably won't enjoy Spore that much.
The creature creator is great but the "game" is just not there. However, my kids love it.

Easy to learn. Easy to master

 

[Rusty Edge]

I love Pirates! as a change of pace. Sometimes I take it along on vacation.
sometimes I play it when I need a break fom Civ.

I've purchased and played a couple of copies. In one the padre had no skin- he looked like an animated ice sculpture. Yes, there are glitches.

It's a lot of little games tied together in a grand game.

City Attack- the only turn-based game within the game. In some ways it's more tactical, because the direction of the attack matters .

Dancing- it's all about correct timing. It gets easier after you learn the dances.

Sneaking - Sneaking in and out of hostile cities is about patience, not speed.

Fencing - sort of a paper/scissors/rock of swordstrokes - quickness counts.

Quests- finding your family, finding the lost cities, getting revenge on the count, defeating the famous pirates.

Treasure hunting- acquiring map pieces and finding the treasures. A lot of quests involve treasure hunting.

Sea battles- Involves using the wind and leading your target.

Then there's the matter of trading captured goods for the best price- going from port to port - kinda like Colonization in that regard.


You can always play as a Dutchman and try to capture all of the other cities when you are at war, not at peace.

Or you can try to see how many Ships of the Line you can acquire


Or you can try to see how young you can complete the objectives.

Like Civ, you can impose your own criteria on the game. Pirates is easily worth the $19 it now costs.


So far, I have no complaints about Colonization.

 

[Volstag]

Colonization w/o a doubt. Don't get me wrong, Col has its issues -- but it's way more re-playable than Pirates. Pirates is great fun that first game, but there is virtually no reason to play it again. As noted by others, Pirates is considerably more arcade than strategy.