Grand Ages Medieval

[Gusington]

It's definitely worth it for that price but be ready for a learning curve.

[glen55]

Finally got down to playing the (semi-tutorialish) campaign this weekend; up to the goal of hiring my first merc unit, which I am definitely not going to do until I'm sure I've got a good infrastructure for it. Specifically, first I'm going to get a new town set up (outside the tutorial's scope) in the mountains at the river crossing heading toward Constanta on the Black Sea coast: an area I can get both coal and metal, and so can make metal tools. (And fish.)

I suspect success in this game will involve checking what's not being produced in nearby towns, and then setting up a new town on the road between them and my central hub (Sofia in this case) in a region that allows me to build what's missing; and then using the new trader thus provided on an auto loop between those three towns. Every "leg" thus created gets its own auto-trader, and I keep one trader in reserve (from my hub town in effect) to manually meander around going for the 50% profits on "foreign" towns and 20% profits on "my" towns.

The tutorial campaign may not let me test that very effectively, but I'll try to test it for a sandbox start later.

You've got the right idea about conducting trade, and also about prioritizing, it appears. Worry about the economy first and foremost and meet the goals of the tutorial as afterthoughts. If you concentrate on the goals, you'll get slaughtered.

[JasonPratt]

I think it's more than worth the price, BUT! -- it's important to understand what you're getting.

Basically what you're getting is a version of Pirates, except set on continental Europe / Med / Near Middle East (the standard sort of mother-of-wars map), during a loose medieval period, and with less actual pirating and more town trading management. Also, the story campaign is pretty good.

[Gusington]

I think it's closer to the Patrician games but on a larger scale.

[JasonPratt]

Patrician games == Pirates on a larger scale (as far as the land side of the game).

See also: Port Royale games. Which are literally remakes of Sid Miere's Pirates, taking the improvements from the Patrician games and putting them back into the Caribbean setting.

Thus I trace back to the Pirates root. (Though Patrician, Port Royale, and even Rise of Venice are really closer to Sid's Pirates than GAM. But the root gameplay elements are still there. Minus much of the extra detail introduced in those variations, ironically, but with 95% less naval gameplay elements.  ::) )

[bbmike]

Not sure I'd call the Port Royale games remakes of Sid's Pirates. I mean, there not even any dancing in the Port Royale games.  ::)

[JasonPratt]

There wasn't in the original Pirates either, iirc. 

[bbmike]

^Methinks you recall correctly. But I've had a wee bit of McCallan 12 so I can't be 100% sure.  ;D

[Gusington]

I wasn't half bad at the dancing in the Pirates remake.