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A challenging Age of Empires

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

American Conquest is an incredible game that seems to collapse on itself, programming-wise. If you like the Age of Empires series, but felt that it was lacking something, this game might do it for ya.

With the exception of Divided Nation's Union, Confederacy, Texans and Mexicans you can play as 13 different nations. Technology and units are generally grouped as Europeans, Northern Native Americans and South Native Americans. AOE was more successful in making nations more unique. There's a significant difference when fighting as the Americas against European colonists because of cavalry and gunpowder technologies. It's not impossible to defeat Europeans, just challenging.

You can field an army by the thousands, but resources are not only spent on constructing the unit. Every unit will consume a constant rate of corn. Gunpowder units, including cannons, ships, and the fortress uses up coal and iron every time they fire. Timing on allowing your troops to fire can be important for effective use of limited resources gathered and range. Resources are unlimited in this series, but it does emphasis in capturing other player's mine and peasants (villagers). Military units can capture enemy peasants and buildings. A garrisoned building would require storming. Depending on the numbers inside it would be a costly gain. An alternative is to light a building on fire. Fire actually burns away HP at a constant rate. Depending on the building type it might take many villages for the repair rate to over cede the flames.

Unlike most games units do not fight as obedient drones. Many factors, such as officers, standard bearers, the strength in number of the group, will affect morale. A cavalry group can send an infantry line running to the nearest friendly structure, but the enemy will regroup. You'll find yourself moving or troops left and right before the entire platoon is eliminated.

Another interesting item is hiring mercenaries from neutral Indian tribes. In Divided Nation you capture telegraph buildings and all mercenaries produced from them are yours to control. Neutrals rather not get subjugated and can fight ferociously without an overpowering regiment to convince them otherwise. I believe there's always a mutiny with the group that negotiates.

As mentioned, the main problem of the game is its glitches. Sometimes when I have a group attack a unit, every soldier converges to one point, and dies from friendly fire. 120 infantry instantly lost! Sometimes a cavalry group wouldn't stop spinning on its own axis, allowing themselves to be shot without retaliation. In Divided Nation some of the mercenaries wouldn't turn control over to me. However, I still have fun playing the game, but I consider myself having a good tolerance for these things.

The pdf manual doesn't go in detail about structures or units. That information can only be read during game play. Unfortunately the interface isn't as clear as AOE.

Overall the American Conquest series is quite good. It's one of the few games that focus on early America (if that's a selling point for you). It doesn't exceed the AOE games, but I found it more challenging than AOE 2.

DID NOT PLAY

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: November 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I installed this game with no problems, but it does not play on my BRAND NEW LAPTOP (Intel Core2Duo 2.2GZ processor, Nvidia Geforce 8600GT video card, 2GB RAM, 120GB hard drive). I am playing Doom 3 with no problems, so the problem must be with this game rather than my computer. It keeps closing on me with an .exe error. Not worth the $$ I paid for it, that is for sure. I will steer cleer of games I have never heard of from now on.

Overall = Disappointing

Donnas review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I like the game and the graphics. If there was anything I could change it would be having more control over the finale of each game. I would like the option of continuing....usually for practice on maneuver or attack skills.

American Conquest Anthology review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This one is super! But it could still be improved on by including troop trenching capability, more agressive a.i. opponents, etc., walling capabilities, towers,etc.

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