There's gold in them there hills. And silver. And gemstones. And tobacco, coffee, rare spices, furs... you name it, really, the new world was a vast playground to plunder for the European naval powers when they discovered it. But it wasn't all take, take, take: the Europeans did give something back to the native peoples of the Americas. Weapons, for example, although they were mostly stuck in them, or fired at them. And don't forget our wonderful diseases, of course, like smallpox and syphilis. All in all, it was a more than fair trade for the natives.

Commander: Conquest of the Americas lets you play one of seven European naval powers attempting to dominate the theatre of the new world. It's an empire building and sea trading game, with naval battles thrown in for good tactical measure. The player begins with one small boat of settlers, which is used to found their initial two colonies. It's wise to take a little time and scout out a rich spot with plentiful resources for these starter cities, as poor choices here will cripple your early development.

The resources these founding colonies harvest can be shipped back to your nation's European capital and flogged on for a major profit. Settlers can then be brought back from the capital by your fleets to live and work in the colonies, increasing the sphere of influence of these cities, and bringing in greater resource harvests. Meantime, the busy player needs to build new ships to increase capacity for trade and defence, and construct buildings in the new world settlements.

There are a number of constructions available, many of which are resource related. For example, raw sugar cane doesn't sell for all that much money. Build a mill to turn it into sugar, however, and then a distillery to produce rum from that sugar, then you have an alcoholic product which sells for a much bigger profit back home (providing your sailors don't get bored on the Atlantic voyage and drink the cargo).

Other buildings include the likes of shipyards for constructing vessels, or the Indian affairs office for promoting good relations with the natives. And many buildings affect the crucial colony morale level, which determines how hard the settlers work (or how hard they go on strike if you tick them off). Theatres and churches boost happiness, for example, and when a city's population reaches 1500, a hospital is needed to guard against disease-driven morale drops.

You're unlikely to miss these sort of issues, as you have a cabinet of four advisors from the government at home who demand missions be completed throughout the game. For example, when morale first drops in a colony the Archbishop will order a church to be built. If you're running five times as many trading ships as warships protecting them, the military advisor will crack the whip and set a task to build four new frigates. Fail these missions, and your popularity sinks with the relevant advisor. Should it fall too low across the board, you'll be fired from your post as official new world plunderer.

There's good and bad here, the positive aspects being that the advisors keep you on track with what needs doing, and act as a sort of running tutorial for the more novice player. However, as you get further into the game, trying to keep them all pleased can be quite demanding and even annoying. For instance, you're about to start building up a much-needed new fleet when the military advisor sticks his oar in and demands upgraded garrisons throughout the colonies at great cost, which you don't really require. This is when the campaign starts to feel a bit too straitjacketed.

Despite these sometimes exasperating demands, however, Conquest of the Americas is quite absorbing once you've got your head round it. The fiscal management and trading side of the game is a careful balancing act, as you need to maintain plenty of liquid cash in the bank to buy up large quantities of resources to execute big trades, whilst juggling ship and building construction, and keeping an eye on monthly expenses. Micromanaging trades later in the campaign never bogs the player down, as there's a neat auto-trading system, whereby trade routes to multiple ports can be scripted.

The game also offers a basic smattering of diplomacy, with pacts and alliances that can be forged with the other six computer-controlled nations, along with trade agreements. The CPU AI seemed reasonable and didn't make us any daft offers, and it was nice to see that it didn't pick on us either. In our first main campaign, we kept our noses very clean and stuck solely to trading earlier on. We witnessed war break out between several AI nations, without them interfering in our colonies just because we're the human player (and therefore need to be hassled to keep the game difficult).

Naval combat can be avoided quite successfully if you try this peaceful approach, and you won't often have to fight if you don't want to. Although sooner or later some combat will break out, even if it's a roving band of pirates assaulting your gold laden vessels. Combat is resolved in full 3D battles played out in an RTS style, although there is a direct command mode where the player can take full manual control over one ship should the need arise.

Unfortunately, it seems that your crew may have been at that rum after all, as in the main RTS mode the ship's movement can be fairly clunky when it comes to getting close to enemy vessels. The path-finding is rather imprecise in these tight manoeuvring situations, although this is where the direct control comes in handy to angle in close for a killing volley, or to board and finish a near-dead vessel off.

The drawback here, however, is that it's not possible to give orders to any other ships when in direct control mode. In a large battle, this can be the cause of some headaches. Aside from these path-finding pickles, the combat engine is fairly simplistic but it works well enough, and features some quite tasty visuals for extra flavour when you're pelting a Spanish galleon with cannon-fire. Should you wish to steer clear of the battles, there's an auto-resolve button.

Conquest of the Americas also includes a dash of role-playing elements to round the experience off. Different ship captains can be hired and fired, all of whom level up with battle experience and can select new special abilities. They age throughout the game, although some seem to suffer from premature ageing. We hired a 32-year-old officer whose character portrait looked like Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses. He must have had a very hard life.

Verdict
Commander: Conquest of the Americas is an absorbing empire building trading game with a lengthy and challenging campaign. There's certainly a learning curve here, but tinkering with your trade routes and planning an expansion strategy is quite satisfying when you get into the swing of it, even if the governmental advisor's missions - which do provide a level of guidance - also take away some of your freedom to act at times. The naval combat engine is simple, if a little finicky on occasion, but it does the job in adding a bit of cannon-fire and spice to the complex balancing mechanics of the main game.

Company: Paradox Interactive

Tags: uncle albert real-time strategy new world central processing unit experience point artificial intelligence game rts