I spare my words for the good things on this game - they are marketed well by Paradox and a dedicated fan community. A decent interface, a trainload of features, a dedication to historical accurate events, a trainload of statistics for your empire management -all true.
But the game is plain simple neither fun nor a challenge:
The fun is taken away struggling to understand and micromanage the economics model. This is poorly explained in the manual, admittedly crewed up and very hard to master given the lack of information and help.
The challenge is taken away by the computer opponent AI primarily in warfare, which is incompetent, in adequate and follows strange decision rules. It is worst in sea warfare - you are e.g. entitled to march into Great Britain any time you like especially if England is already at war with another power - the AI simply does not leave watchguard fleets :-). Ever wanted to beat England as Sardinia? Go ahead - it is way too easy.
So in a nutshell - a game with great ambitions and targets that fails miserably when it actually comes down to gameplay. That is reflected in the Paradox gameboards by the way - the amount of discussions on history and game mechanics by far exceed the number of posts dealing with gameplay.
An earned 3 of 10, thatīs it. And I really love long hours of strategy gaming since more tna 10 years.
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