1503 A.D. The New World

For those of you who remember 1602 A.D., The New World is its prequel. 1503 doesnâ€™t reach out and grab you with mesmerizing gameplay when you load up your very first mission. Instead, this real-time thinker draws you in slowly and makes you consider every detail, from building placement and resource proximity to lines of commerce and civilian happiness.


Once youâ€™re settled, itâ€™s time to build basic industry. Foresters harvest wood for buildings, fisheries net food, hunters hunt, tanneries process furs, churches and pubs provide piece of mind, and so on. Whatâ€™s unique about this sort of game is that you spend most of your time mapping your civil infrastructure â€” charting roads, worrying about civilian house placement (it affects industry access and vice versa), and making sure your commodities flow. What you donâ€™t do is push peasants around, slap down goofy abstract buildings, or build hordes of tank-rushing red shirts. Itâ€™s surprisingly good fun if you enjoy balancing an economy one tweak at a time.

Eventually youâ€™ll be forced to seek out other cultures â€” Aztecs, Mongolians, Venetians…you know the drill. Trade can be run manually or automated right down to single-unit quantities of a commodity. The AI is much better than 1602â€™s, with far more aggression and appropriate reactions to dynamic situational changes. Alas, few games escape some righteous bad-mouthing, and 1503â€™s no different.



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