Now this is one great RTS!

Set in the 15th century, you are an Occidental, aka Westerner, who is trying to get closer to the Orient, aka the Middle East/Ottomans. You start out with an Occidental settlement in the West and must gradually make your way to the East, via impressing the Grand Vizier/Sultan of the Orient. Eventually, you are given building plans to build Oriental settlements and soon will be able to make your cities as grand as those of true Oriental settlements.

This game is heavily based on industries. Primary, secondary, tertiary — they’re all here. For example, to produce tools, you must start out building a charcoal burner’s hut and an ore mine, turn that into iron via an iron smelter, and turn the iron into tools via a toolmaker’s workshop. Or maybe you should create a lumberjack’s hut to supply wood to the paper mill, which supplies paper to the printing house, which with indigo produces books. Or maybe you need to trade quartz from the Orient to help you create glass for your great churches, and in return you supply tools to your grand city of Asgchabad. If one primary industry goes wrong, say you have no more spice farms, you will lose your people. Industries help to make this game very complex and challenging.

Look at the upper-right. Lots of trade going on here.

But what is the point of industry if there is no way to carry goods? Ships are also very important once reached the citizen level. You will easily run out of space in your settlement if the industries are placed on the same land, right? Ships can carry these goods between islands. Complex trading routes can be created to provide an extremely complex network.

When peasants or beggars have their needs, they can become citizens. Citizens become patricians. Patricians become noblemen. Nomads become envoys. All of these things work together to make your settlement grow.

Not complex enough?

There’s also quests to keep you busy and a number of ways to wage war or form alliances with other AI.

But… once you’ve done all of that, unless you’re a hardcore gamer, you have the problem of being done with the rather difficult game that you won’t have the initiative of doing again. Unless you want to try to find the most optimal configuration for requirement X, you’ll be bored after the short, 8-chapter-long campaign.

There’s no MULTIPLAYER!

Other than that, this game is an incredibly demanding strategy which is one of the best RTSs out there. Fans of Age of Empires will love this game — if they can handle its complexity. With up-to-date graphics, a great soundtrack, and great gameplay, there’s a lot to love about this game.

8.6