Imagine adding more features to Pirates! but doing them all wrong. That's Age of Pirates. Good game, lots of bugs.
Trying to play the game really makes you appreciate the auto-save feature. There are many times when the game crashes or acts funny and the auto-save comes in very handy. I have the latest patch and still there are many times when my ships have two or three times as many goods in them as they can hold or have hundreds of crew members over what the ship should be allowed to have. I have had my man-o-war bump into a sinking lugger and suddenly be propelled from 6 knots to 200 knots sideways in a circle until I sink. I have pressed the "take all" button only to have all the goods in my ship removed and the other ship recieve hundreds of thousands of everything. I have recieved messages from my collonies that said "aaiaiie iiaiaia iiai".
Bugs aside, the AI is horrible. Enemies tend to behave pretty normally, but your allies tend not to listen to your orders, crash into everything in site, get in your way and otherwise get themselves sunk by ships a fifth their strength. My work around so far is to take the fastest ship in the fleet for myself and finish the battle as quickly as possible. As quickly as possible is not as quick as it sounds.
The sea battles in Age of Pirates are fun for the first little while. As the game wears on however, you have ships that make everyone cower in fear. You can quickly get yourself to the point where there are no enemies willing to put up a fight, taking all the fun out of fighting them.
No matter what you do in Age of Pirates, eventually it comes to a point where the game gets repetitive and a little boring. There are times when you're waiting around for you colony's population to grow, but there is no way to make time pass quicker in the world screen. Trying to build up your money requires repeating the same limited number of tasks over and over again.
In spite of all of it's downfalls, if you wish there were more to Pirates! and you don't mind the occasional bug or two, Age of Pirates is a pretty fun game. I definitely don't regret picking it up and have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of it. However, when I'm done with it, it is unlikely the game will ever get reinstalled on my computer.