American Conquest Comments by DNM

sounds good, never played the original but it sounds like something I could get into.

TEeeeeeeeeeen shun!! Company MARCH!!! Ayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! RETREAT! Is that a pistol in your pocket or?! OMG THEY DON'T DANCE WITH WOLVES!

/me hands keef a white jacket with wrap around arms

Excellent! Really liked the demo, so I might pick it up. Some very cool units, like a marching drummer (as can be seen in screenshot 1).

Only problem I had was that the random map of the demo was a bit boring - are the maps a bit more varied than endless patches of grass with a few trees in between?

wow a serious comment! sorry slow day at work :/

Sorry, read the review, and didn't refresh before posting. Stupid me. ;-)

Most of them are set on grassy expanses, but the terrain is nicely varied. TBH I was having such fun with the game itself that it never really was an issue anyway. Also forgot to mention in the review, but there's an excellent Editor included in the game, so you can design yer own. I had a go, but I've got all the design skills of a gnat!

>> /me hands keef a white jacket with wrap around arms

Just not the needle!!! NOT THE NEEDLE!

Questions:

1) Exactly how are the Indians supposed to win this game?
2) Are their there tactics required depending on whether you are playing Indians or colonists? I can't imagine forming organised lines with with your native armies.

One way for the Indians(Azteks) to win is to actually ATTACK the Spanish which they more or less didn't do in reality because of an unfortunate celestial event that prophesised their doom. And with an army of 40.000 they shouldn't have too much of a problem.

So pure numbers is how you do it? Obviously it can't be completely historical because that wouldn't be fun, but is their special combat for indians? For example are you limited in the formations you can make?

which they more or less didn't do in reality because of an unfortunate celestial event that prophesised their doom.

Well it also helps that cultural issues won't be in the game. Since most natives in S.America were living under the thumb of other Empires anyway, the Spanish coming along really didn't seem like a huge deal. It was just replacing one set of rulers with another. Inka religion also tended to believe in a circle of time, whereby events kept repeating themselves. Enforced into other indians this gave them the perception that the Spanish were just the beginning the circle again.

Spain never really had to engage in battles with Indians in S.America. They pretty much accepted their rule (with some exceptions, namely in the south and the odd rebellion, i.e. the Sun King). Where this didn't happen was with HFGs who obviously didn't like settling down, something the Spanish wanted all indians to do so they could extract tribute.

That isn't to say that the natives had a nice time and everything was fine. Disease was a huge killer, the biggest in the area, although today's historians have a hard time giving extra figures because no one knows precisely how many natives were there. I tend to go with the 30-50 million estimation myself.

The Spanish rule of S.America actually reads like a fairytale compared to what went on in the north. Let's not forget that it was the Church and private enterprises pushing most of the colonisation in S.America and when the government did get involved they did actually end up protecting the Indians to a certain extent.

I read that the Aztecs had a dramatically flawed battle plan. Since their culture and religion was heavily based on blood sacrifice, they adopted the ridiculous tactics of trying to capture enemies alive in the midst of battles so that their priests could have sacrificial blood.

It sounds ridiculous, but imagine a Spaniard with sword and primitive gun faced with 12 natives trying to grab him and pull him back a couple of miles to the temple.

(If someone knows this is bollocks, I'm putting a contract out on my old history teacher)

Yes, the Aztecs did practise sacriface and those used tended to be prisoners of war, but I've never heard of it playing a huge role in the downfall of their Empire.

Yeh Im pretty sure when push came to shove in a battle, live sacrifices would be the last thing on their minds.

The mestizos were never on equal footing with the whites, and even today the "pure" euro-S. americans get preference in many cases over the natives and mestizos. And the Spanish were very brutal with the native americans, only difference is that after a certain point they just got used to each other and the inter-marriages helped. While in the US it was pretty much a genocide, I mean they gace blankets infected with small pox or something to the native americans and this continued into the 20th century.

great review - thanks for your view keith - will buy this now

never underestimate the role of loot, bribery and 'political' diplomacy in the way the war was won in sud america - i read about a chief (or whatever) who sold his tribe for an 8ft oil painting of himself!

Excellent game with actual strategy unlike a bunch of other strats today. Most of the gamers won't buy it because it don't have no pimpin graphics (sad). A challenging game, good review.

Hey dont forget Canada! The english slaughtered the native nations here to!

So did the French, so don't start picking on the English. :)

and the English slaughtered the French and themselves too... don't forget that... oh, and tons of wildlife!

"we love slaughtering!"*

quote from 2000AD, The Fink Brothers (i think)

Time will tell though, I doubt relations with some of the "allies" will last much longer.

Fingers crossed. Then we can finally get to work with co-operating with civilised naions, such as our European brothers, thus leaving the US in the dark. The times they are achanging.

At the mo I'm running a 1.4Athlon, 512Mb RAM with an Asus Ti4200 GF4. I did comment that the only pauses in play experienced were when switching to zoomed out mode, but as far as general play is concerned it runs at a perfectly acceptable framerate.