Certainly better than East India Company, Commander: Conquest of the Americas can still be made so much better.
Pros:
1) Trading/Colony Management. Unlike ETC, the colonies/ports in CotA are much more than places to buy or sell goods. They require colonists and buildings of all sorts to continue to grow. Without the influx of colonists and happiness orientated buildings, the goods you can purchase in the colony will be severely limited. Taking care and expanding of your colonies' needs will have them produce more goods, and a wider variety of goods. Also, the goods you produce in your colony can be refined to produce even more valuable goods, like having silver ore being smelted to produce silver bars, which fetch a higher price back in your home port. This sort of production tree was severely lacking in ETC, and it certainly enhances CotA's fun beyond watching ships go back and forth across the ocean.
2) Graphics. This game is quite pretty, both on the strategic and on the tactical maps. Although this can certainly be better, it does provide a sense of calmness on the strategic map (where you usually make money) while exposing you to darker colors on the tactical map (where the battles occur). This was well done, though sadly a large chunk of the strategic map's beauty is wasted.
3) The Advisers. Although I have read complaints about them, I, so far, believe they do provide a purpose for what would be a totally sandbox game. Without them, the experience of this game would be rather dull, since there would be no purpose of creating money, trading, or building without some sense of goal.
However, there are some things that could have made this good game great, as well as a few things that certainly irritated me. Although I consider CotA a much better game than ETC, this game does still lack some depth and still have a few glitches.
1) Installation issues. Sadly, this game up ONCE AGAIN in CotA. Although I didn't have any game breaking bugs as of yet, a major glitch in installing made both my sound and graphics within the game at their complete minimum. This might be due to installing the game on a secondary hard drive, but no matter. Until this matter was resolved, I was quite frustrated. Thankfully, the forum for CotA addressed this issue rather quickly. Even so, having the same glitch in CotA that occurred in ETC happen again made me rather irritated.
2) Absolutely no land based trading/combat. Sadly this was left out in CotA as well, which is disappointing. Considering the game does have a large chunk of the interior of North and Central America, it's too bad that you cannot expand colonies to tap into the valuable resources of the interior. Although all resources can be acquired by coastal settlements, it would have been nice being able to form colonies or trading outposts to tap the various valuable resources of the Americas. Yes, in its time period, it does make sense to not have many inland colonies, however, this game can have Spain founding Quebec City, and has all the major colonial powers rushing to claim land in the Americas at 1500 AD. Some added land based trading or combat would have been enjoyable.
3) Repetitive. Even with the advisers, and with the automatic trade routes, without being able to expand further inward, or convert the Natives, or something similar, this trading simulator falls short of capturing the glory and the risk of the Colonial era. Even a few major events, be it more intense Native raids, diseases, colonial infighting, or other potential events, good and bad, could have made this game much more enjoyable and exciting.
Don't get me wrong. If you enjoy trading simulators, this game will keep you occupied for hours. It's quite enjoyable, but it lacks the depth or the sucking in power of other games that might be similar. However, considering most of those similar games (outside of the Civ IV Colonization) came out many, many years ago, this game is quite fresh and unique to the myriad of sports, Real time Tactics (Yeah, screw you EA for ruining Command and Conquer: Tiberian Twilight) and First Person Shooters. If you enjoy economic simulators or strategy games, this game will keep you entertained.
- Commanderkai