Cheap Imperialism 2: Age of Exploration (Software) (Windows Me, Windows 95, Windows 98, Macintosh) Price

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Customer Reviews of Imperialism 2: Age of Exploration

What a Great Game this Was
Up until OS 9.1 this game was a favorite. But it is no longer supported and will no longer play.

Okay but could have been much better
The game puts you on the throne of a European empire around 1600 A.D. You get to discover, explore, and conquer the new world, while fending off imperialist rivals and vengeful tribesmen. Usually, a certain number of provinces need to be conquered to win. These are taken from neutral states in Europe, from other empires, and from natives in the New World. The oversees provinces bring some new resources like tobacco, sugar, and precious metals, which are important in the technological and industrial trees. Meanwhile the metropolis pulls standard resources like coal, wool, wheat, and wood from the homeland provinces and converts them into skilled workers, weapons, and ships.

Pros:
- excellent baroque music and atmosphere
- balanced overall model where compromise, combined arms, technology, and strong economy are intimately related
- okay technology tree
- nice drawings of ships and ground units
- nice details in shipping and naval blockades
- entertaining turn-based battles with okay combat system

Cons:
- Civ-like boring and old land-development system.
- The diplomacy model is substandard. Alliances mean nothing. Declaring war and shifting allegiances in a trice is ubiquitous. In such chaos, diplomacy is virtually meaningless, as is anybody's word, which turns the game into a perpetual clawfest among crabs in a barrel. It is exceedingly hard to reach critical mass. Bribes are very ineffectual too.
- There are no psychological factors like grudges, animosity, and obstinacy. Very bland and uncharacterful.
- The economic system is tedious and repetitive. There is pretty much one good way to win, so once you learn it, there is no replay value in terms of economy. It gets tedious and boring after a few games to spend all this time worrying about number of fabric rolls and cigars in one's stores, while one would want to deal with general strategy and geopolitics.
- Spying does not reveal any strategically significant information.
- Armies are not difficult to maintain, but are horribly expensive to use. The opposite should have been done for far more playability and historical accuracy.
- Little European neutral states are armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art weapons. Later, the same is true for natives too. Ridiculous, since the player has seen how hard it is to research and build these weapons even for a mighty empire. Proper maintenance fees would have fixed that in passing.
- Graphics is mostly outdated, even if most units are beautifully drawn.

Overall impressions are positive, but there was clearly potential for much more with proper design choices. I sold back my copy for store credit after playing it for a month or two, so it comes to show.