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| | Publisher: Virtual Programming  Genre: Strategy & War | | | Min OS X: 10.2 RAM: 128 MB Hard Disk: 600 MB Graphics: 16 MB VRAM |
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Gates of Troy is a turn-based strategy game set in the Hellenic world before Alexander the Great. Combat is tactical, with the user able to arrange and form units to their desire. Gates of Troy is nearly identical to its predecessor, Spartan. The player develops their cities (up to a point), recruits military units, and sends out ambassadors all in the name of conquering your neighbors.For those unfamiliar with Spartan The player chooses a city-state or tribe to play through the scenario. The player is given a goal (usually to conquer a set number of cities or to build a specific improvement). Each city can produce certain units, based on the resources available or the nation they belong to. Each city is stuck with the resources available at the start of the scenario, and while your method of extracting the resources may improve with research, there is no way to increase any of the resources. If you have no iron, you have no way to get iron except through trade. If you only have a small number of horses, you will never be able to increase the herd. This is somewhat historically accurate, especially given the varied terrain of Greece and Asia Minor, but some players may find it frustrating. It ideally should provide for a more interesting game, but the computer does not seem to target cities with the essential and rarer resources, such as horses, iron, silver, and gold.In part this system is frustrating because of the fairly passive trade system. To trade, the player is given a list of resources and can change whether they buy or sell them. Unless your starting position is very weak or you are trying something unusual, you can play an entire game without using trade. There seem to be no functional embargoes, either. While your diplomats can force the enemy to waste silver, there is no reason they can't recoup the losses in the next turn. Diplomacy is a matter of sending ambassadors to other tribes and ordering them to perform certain tasks, most of which are useless and poorly documented. You can annex new territories, if you have enough money and you pick the right combination of chores to improve relations, which is something offered in Spartan but functional for the first time in Gates of Troy. You will send your troops out, but they need micromanagement to get from point A to point B: the routes you input are not followed unless you specifically order the army to proceed in each turn. On many turns, you will be overwhelmed with telling each of your cities what to do (a process that slows down considerably once you get near and over a dozen cities; and by slow down, I mean clicks don't register promptly and a lag starts showing up when loading new cities or graphics). Once you reach that stage, it is easy to forget an army in the field, and they stay exposed in the same spot until you remember them.
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