Trade Empires Demo

John-SJ · August 16, 2001, 10:16

Trade Empires (by Frog City, makers of Imperialism I & II) will be in stores in mid-September but Eidos (the publisher) has released the Trade Empires Demo already.

The demo comes with quite a few scenarios (when I looked at the list my first thought was, "this is a demo?") and a fairly extensive tutorial.

Your job in trade empires is, well, trading.

You are in the role of a merchant family in a real geographic region of the world in any era anywhere from 2000 bc. to 2000 ad.. Your job is to establish trade routes, hire merchants to work the routes and buy and sell goods in various markets. If you can supply a sufficient variety of goods at reasonable prices people will move into your market and increase demand for those goods. If demand increases too much over supply the price will go too high and people will leave in search of better markets.

You need to balance supply and demand so prices are low enough to attract consumers yet high enough that you can show a profit.

The interface is really simple and easily understood. There is lots of detailed info available and it's presented in both graphic and numeric formats so you can get an idea at a glance how you are doing or spend more time and crunch the numbers.

And finally, the most important feature for any real time game, you can pause the game and issue any order and view any screen that you can while the game is running.

I just finished the tutorial last night and this game looks like a winner! Check out the demo and let the rest of us know your impressions.

John-SJ

Shadowstrike · August 16, 2001, 16:30

Well, its kind of fun, but I find the lack of zooming disenheartening. Other then that, does winning the Shang China scenario let you access the others? Or are the others just previews?

John-SJ · August 17, 2001, 10:55

Oops, I missed that. When I wrote my first post I didn't realize that those included scenarios were actually only previews. Oh well, that makes more sense anyway. From my first look it appeared they were giving away half the game in a demo.

Well, I've had a chance to play some now. It doesn't have the depth of Civ, I guess if I had to compare it to something I'd say Railroad Tycoon II as the goals are similar. If you like that kind of game as I do then you should love Trade Empires as the design allows you to do what you need to MUCH easier that RRT did.

I give it a thumbs up!

John-SJ

The Rusty Gamer · September 1, 2001, 00:31

Yes, I like the demo too. The problem I have with it (as with RRT) is that there are so many potential trading connections, where do you go next? Do I send the rice (for instance) to this region or that region? Which would be more profitable etc. It gets confusing, as it did for RRT.

An interesting thought about RRT which is a bit off the track (no pun intended), however...you'd pick up any passengers waiting but you could deliver them anywhere which is a bit unrealistic. However, with a new game which has just gone gold called Rails Across America, as I understand things, it has passengers that want to go to specific cities which makes far more sense and is a lot easier to manage. Anyway, that game has a demo as well which I recommend you try. It is located at http://www.gamesdomain.com/demos/demo/1450.html.

John-SJ · September 17, 2001, 20:00

Has anyone bought Trade Empires yet?

I still can't decide whether to buy it or not. The demo is fairly interesting but OTOH it's nothing earth shaking. Is the full game a bunch of individual scenarios or are they related somehow like in a campaign? A campaign would make things much better I think.

Russell, I tried Rails, not bad, but it seems somewhat unbalanced. If you start on the east coast (for example) you get lot's of competition right away, but you also rake in tons of cash. If you start in the midwest or on the west coast I think you will be permanently stunted because there just aren't the opportunities. And again, a lot would depend on how scenarios link together.

I am not sure if either of these games is worth buying, maybe I'll just wait and see what the reviewers say and look at Monopoly Tycoon when it comes out.

John-SJ

The Rusty Gamer · September 18, 2001, 22:39

Quote:

Originally posted by John-SJ
Russell, I tried Rails, not bad, but it seems somewhat unbalanced. If you start on the east coast (for example) you get lot's of competition right away, but you also rake in tons of cash. If you start in the midwest or on the west coast I think you will be permanently stunted because there just aren't the opportunities. And again, a lot would depend on how scenarios link together.
John-SJ

Don't be too put off by the Rails Across America demo. The game wasn't finished when it came out so there were going to be plenty of tweaks to it I think. Let's see what the review is for it and Trade Empires.