Quite a great renewal of the game who this time takes places in an archipelago roaming with pirates, variety of races, new companions, villains, monsters, trafficking and dark mysteries. And the gods still trying to use you to reach their goals.
This expansion is focused on Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The Raj (India), and South Africa. It brings interesting gameplay for those interested in exploring paths of action for these countries.
The Common Sense content pack add 64 new units models for great nations, free cities, theocracies and buddhists countries. They are nice and add some flavour to the game by replacing generic units.
This expansion gives a new dimension to central and south Americas beyond what the previous Conquest of paradise added. Many new rich contents.
Natives peoples, countries and empires now have many new features that makes them interesting to play and, for seasoned players, able to somewhat resist to european invaders.
For these european adventurers, exploration and conquest also has new interesting and enjoyable features. Automated fleet exploration makes discovery less of a chore, and without loosing your ships to attrition. You also got to search for the 7 cities of gold. Once gold discovered, you have to protect your convoys if they are to reach destination unscathed.
This expansion centred on Eurasia makes nomadic tribes way less generic by providing them with many new features as their own form of government.
Instead of just pillaging (still fun and available), you can build your empire, manage the clans inside your tribe and have your own kind of vassals, tributary states. You will even have your own trade system related to the control of the silk road.
Though I must admit I was not that interested at the beginning, I found the gameplay quite interesting, allowing the horse lords to face some of the same challenges as any medieval ruler to secure the continuing of his dynasty and manage his lands.
Many new features, nothing fantastic but quite good
I did hear some bad comments about this expansion, but I find people too harsh. There is nothing strikingly interesting, but many new features that each add something to the gameplay.
The enhancement of the provincial improvement system is what I like the most, as it gives you more power to develop your country as you want on the long term, at the cost of precious monarch power points.
Different people will probably appreciate some of the other new features according the countries they like to play. The new protestant national churches will please some. The theocracies will please the zealous ones. People liking to dominate vassals get many new relationship actions. Democrats will like the new parliaments for some constitutional republics or monarchies, England getting it's very own special one. And free cities under the HRE. So there's a bit of everything for everyone in that expansion.
If you are a bit bored with the base game, it could be interesting to give it a try.
Managing to keep your family in power (you live in republic) is a real challenge, prestige is important, as are plots and bribes. But your game could also end too quickly.
You have to be a mastermind in diplomacy as republics are usually (at least at the beginning) not powerful militarily. Also, you can loose your trade posts during wars or when rulers change for less friendly ones. Not to mention the rivalry of others trade republics.
So I would say that may not please everybody (I have mixed feelings) but if you want to try to build a trade empire instead of a military one, this is quite entertaining for some time. But on the long term you may want to return to the base game or try new expansions.
This second expansion that closes the Unity of command trilogy is as good as the two others iterations. You will find some battles more challenging, sometimes with few or no reinforcements from the high command that you can buy.
New specialized battalions add both flavour and toughness to units, like ISU-122 for the soviets or Tigers for the germans. This adding hours of pleasure to a game that was already surprisingly good despite looking simple at first sight.
As a grand strategy games player I thought this game would be too simple to be interesting. I was wrong. The scope is certainly limited and it's mainly a good entry level game for beginners. But, surprisingly, the game offer challenges and hours of play/replay. I would say it's better that it looks.
I would have rated the game 4 or 5 if it had a difficulty level setting. It's hardly understandable this feature is lacking as it would have been really easy to implement using the existing game mechanics of prestige points. Prestige points can be used to "buy" (request from high command) more divisions or specialized brigades, so why not give more or less starting prestige as a difficulty level ?
The base game Unity of command was a surprise for me, offering interesting challenges despite the limited scope of the game (for a grand strategy player). The Black turn expansion offers more gameplay with new scenarios and the same the run against the clock (to take objectives on time) and the uttermost importance of protecting your supply lines.
Sadly, a difficulty level setting is still lacking in this expansion.
At first you have to become familiar with geography, cultures, religions and politics from this less known part of the world (for westerners). Then, the fun begins ! This expansion add new challenges to discover when you get tired of always playing the same european noblemen. Also expands the map towards Russia and central Asia.
The look of the game is top notch. Almost all new features are nice and in some way better than EUIII. The controls, warnings and tooltips are useful.
But...We have to forget all we learned about EUIII and the new trade system is way more complex and not easy to master (and long to understand). That being said, I am more than willing to take the time to discover all the potential of the game enjoying and suffering in the process.
This expansion enhance the religious side of the game. Papacy and cardinals, holy orders, feuds inside Islam, possible jewish revival, many new events. Each religion got a share.
Not that spectacular, but add many interesting things that enhance the role playing and possible religious clashes with neighbours and enemies.
This is an excellent game, easy to begin playing but with lots of potential for replayability and more advanced notions. And with all the expansions, sky is the limit !
Not only each an every aspect of the game is way better than CKI, but with a lot of info available via the tooltips and warning buttons you can understand how the things works and why it's going well or badly, so you know how react and make some choices with their consequences. So somewhat complex, but not too frustrating as you can learn more easily and become better more quickly.
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