Has anyone here played Merchant Prince, aka Machivavelli The Prince?

It is one of the few historical strategy/sim games that I feel totally satisfied playing. It combined trade with a Venetian politics system and a simple combat system for bandits and mercenaries. Even today when I get into playing it 5 hours can pass so quickly....

The other day I went onto Gamefaqs.com to see if there were any FAQs for it, and was shocked to find none. What a travesty. I don't feel like my own understanding of the game is strong enough to the point I could write a FAQ, but I felt sad that one of the best games of all time didn't have a good write-up.

I enjoyed this game immensely, but the crew that played this one and Diplomacy scattered, and the owner of the game took it with him. End of story.

Peter

I always preferred the Patrician series for my trading sim fix.

Never heard of it, but I love retro gaming. Do you have any links to reviews, articles, etc?

What does that game even run on?

For my retro sim needs I turn to good 'ol Civ II.

Mobygames is perfect for all such needs.

The best Civ game to date was Alpha Centauri, closely followed by Civ 1 (Civ 2 was just Civ 1 with 'better' graphics and no castle).

I don't know, CivIV was pretty fun. I liked the struggle for resources. I just wish that someone would make something which more closely modeled actual reality, where if you don't happen to get access to an area with animals capable of domestication, iron, and appropriate food stocks, you're basically boned, and where your people might die slowly for generations from malaria, when someone else invades, their armies get decimated by disease. Plus a better 'rebellion' function would rock.

CivIII was pretty bad, though.

I might have to try out the Merchant Prince. I'm currently moving out of my gaming binge phase (played half way through Stronghold Crusader, three quarters of the way through GTA, and four fifths of the way through Fallout 1. I'm starting to wonder if I have ADD.)

Merchant Prince rocks my socks, but try to get the Microprose touched-up version, Machiavelli The Prince if you can. Holistic Design still has a patch for the game on their website which fixes some obscure bug.

I used to have the original CD of Machiavelli The Prince which I ran using DOS. Then when they got rid of real DOS with Windows there was a long period of time in which I couldn't play it. However, ironically I find that the files now run just as good as in the DOS days under win XP, and actually for some reason it doesn't work well under DOSBox. There are a few old games like that which for some reason run better under Win XP...

I doubt it. It's pretty rare to find a game that I can play all the way through without taking a break to try something else. Fallout 3 and Deus Ex are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I can feverishly play through Soldier of Fortune II in one sitting. SWAT 3 is a little hard on the nerves on the last mission if you're seriously fatigued from umpteen hours of previous playing, but SWAT 4 is very doable.

The only game I can play straight through in one sitting right now is Armageddon Empires.

Actually, come to think of it, if you're a fan of turn based strategy you should check it out at:
www.crypticcomet.com

It's a cool little strategy game that combines the best of Collectable Card games (without the collecting), and old school hex map wargaming. Best of all, in an age of 70+ dollar computer games it's only 30 bucks.

Heck, gamespot says it better than me.
http://www.gameshark.com/features/359/p_0/...ires-Review.htm

Turn based strategy games like Fallout or Jagged Alliance haven't been coming out a lot recently, so it's nice to check out recent developments. I blame the double-digit IQ of today's video game consumer where thinking about your move = boring, apparently. Thanks for the link.

I brought up the subject of neat strategy games in another forum, especially how there don't seem to be any games in the spirit of civilization but more realistic, with high mortality rates from disease, etc., effective rebellions and so on. Someone suggested Paradox games, who made Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, etc. Has anyone played these? Are they any good?

Just to let you know though...

AE has a steep learning curve. The UI is a... challenge somtimes and the manual is out of date and doesn't take into account either Cults of the Wastelands or Tip of the Spear which Vic developed as mini expansions/big patches.

Cults (link) adds a bunch of (unplayable) factions to the game, that have their own unique set of objectives ranging from a bunch of air assault marine type guys who will attack anyone who gets into range of their HQ to a giant squid that wants to eat everything.

Spear (link) adds some new rules for infantry (they were pretty well useless in the original game).

There have also been a lot of smaller patches that haven't made it into the manual.

You'd probably want to check out the tutorials (link) that are available when you play through the demo. Like the manual, they're a little dated but still useful.