Another kind of large issue is a lack of feedback. It’s one part of the entire experience that feels incomplete, which is frustrating because playing a crazy world dominator is the best part of this type of game. The characters have no animation, and all you really do is just watch to see whose number of troops depletes first. Combat is kind of lacking and not engaging. That aspect of the game is definitely the most interesting, but after that, there’s less polish. Each research point actually makes a difference in your town, and it makes your decisions mean something. There are multiple research trees that affect your town’s output, military units, or build options. Each area of the map is rich in different materials that can be harnessed and sold (one could have an abundance of honey and fish, whereas another is close to an area where you can mine), so keeping track of things like that and ensuring that you trade with places that actually need these goods is important as well. Supply and demand is in effect and if there is too much market saturation, your traders will charge less for goods. Economics is the name of the game here, so setting up trade routes, new towns, and ensuring your towns have a variety of different goods to offer is important. Regardless, the objective is to build a financial powerhouse.
The issue is probably a lot more solvable with a more precise mouse instead of a thumbstick, but I can’t speak to the validity of that argument without playing the PC version of the game. In the more fulfilling free play mode, I could build multiple units and separate them as I saw fit. I managed to do it by accident a few times, but I never really figured it out. There was no way I could separate the two. When I would call upon my settlers, I would have issues actually getting them out instead of the building crew. Part of this is because my units menu lumped builders (who are mainly used to make roads) and settlers (who are only used to create towns) together under the same hub.
For whatever reason, in the story mode, I could not properly settle a town without it taking far too long, even if that was my only objective. Even little annoyances I had during the campaign seemed to go away by switching modes.
Maybe having my chains broken allowed me to experiment more without my town’s entire economy dropping into a recession like Stephen Harper was in power, but there was something liberating about the open world aspect of the game. I actually had more issues playing through the campaign than when I was left to my own devices. To be honest, it’s not very memorable, but it acts as more of a tutorial for the free play mode. There is a single player mode with a story involving the son of an imperial guard who is pushed to an overseer role for a new empress after his father is promoted. The whole premise of the game, much like Civilization, is to build a sustainable empire.
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