Originally posted by bizpro
@ Cyrus
I guess the discussion belongs here.
I like 1502 but am sad that Sunflowers continues to ignore that production islands should have houses and that there should be a need for basic staples. Especially in 1603, too buggy for my liking, there are large areas on many island where you can't farm any crops, so why not use those to place a settlement for the workers. That's one thing that gives P III the edge.
Re AOR III: from what I have read the full game has maps which are only marginally larger than those of the demo. Apparently, if you play with 4 opponents one sits right next to the next. In AOE II I could play against 7 opponents without feeling cramped, the maps were large enough for everyone to have their own part. I particularly liked the huge islands where each player had his own island. The AI would start attacking each other and you could either join him or take over his island while he was fighting somewhere else. The population limit of 200 restrices your ability to fight wars on more than one front since you need lots of workers to feed your machine.
Hi, mind if I comment and add to your discussion here...
Well I'm a Anno fan but haven't played the older ones like 1502 and 1603, I started with 1701. For me I believe its a great game but I do agree that its maps can often be too small and even with the included editor, your options are rather limited since the islands are still pre made with set limitations. I wish there was an editor available that let you create islands because that would give much more freedom.
Also one problem with all the pre made islands and your building options is that everything is very flat, there are mountains etc but you cant build on any of them. I wish there was a little more variation in height with some smaller hills that still allow for buildings, the maps look really nice but everything you can build on is too much flat land.
On AOE, well I used to be a fan of that game when it first came out, but I feel these days its got way to many flaws, but I haven't played since AOE2 so maybe I am a bit out of date. The maps are certainly larger, but it has too many limitations on number of units, making combat too small. By the time you've built all the different buildings and gathered enough workers to keep the economy going, you dont have much population limit left for fighting, and thats annoying. The pop limit needed to be a lot higher, or the number or workers needed to support it all should be less, either way you should be able to build up decent size armies with a good mix of troops/weapons, but sadly thats not really possible.