Pride of Nations Reviews

If were done technically better, that would be THE BEST STRATEGY GAME EVER. And yes, I played them all since 1985 :) Great concept, great freedom, great army building, Bad engineering, questionable user interface design. Still, I recommend it. And I beg Paradox to do a sequel, it will be a bomb if done with same care as HOI 4 is getting.

Not unlike other AGEOD games I've played in the past, the game mechanics for Pride of Nations look like they've got a lot of potential to be really good. However, also not unlike other AGEOD games, the user interface of the game is not up to the task of the mechanics. Lists of nations that you have to click to scroll down one at a time, clunky and variable scrolling speeds for a map (and you'll spend a lot of time scrolling across the map), a painfully limited messaging system (you have a new turn, here's 157 new messages....! There's no filter, no way of focussing things). It's playable, but it's the kind of game that you would literally need to have a notepad and paper next to you to play properly, because the game doesn't convey enough of the required information itself (or have a built-in system of reminders/overlays that is effective). The diplomatic UI is particularly obtuse, for a game where (unlike many other AGEOD games) diplomacy is very important. The in-game tutorials are also very limited, and nowhere near up to scratch for a game of this type. They repeatedly refer players back to the manual, but for a game that as far as I know was only released digitally, relying on a manual is a bit silly. At the very least, make the manual text available in-game, and far more preferably available contextually in-game. If you can look past the UI to the game mechanics, it really does like like there's a potential gem here. I haven't played enough of it to be able to rate the AI, but AGEOD games tend to be fairly strong on this front. The mechanics look great, the attention to detail in set-up situations and a decent number (4-5) of extra scenarios as well as the grand campaign mean there's a substantial amount of game here, but the tools given to play the game are not up to scratch, and you'll have to persevere through them to get to the gameplay underneath.

Pride of nations is conceptually very good and for the right people I can give it a solid recommendation. However I will start this review with the bad and some of the cons are quite big. -Graphics look like they are from 1995. Not a huge problem, but honestly I expect even basic graphics to at least maintain the resolution of my screen and have writing not pixel out on counters. -Learning to play is terribly difficult. Interface is confusion and not self explanitory. Introduction tutotrial gives an overview of the buttons but none of the specifics, such as loading troops onto ships. It consists of a few text pages and some arrows which point to the wrong parts of the screen. Game features a rule BOOK and you are better off reading that. -Turn times are long. Too long. The game is complex so there is a lot to be done. To further the problem there are parts of the game which the player will turn through quickly because there is nothing going on. I can get a lot done in the time it takes for a turn to go by -Poor player feedback. This goes back to the interface. But often it is not easy to get the information you need. For example if someone is offering you an alliance that requires attention. The notification is hidden in an event list filled with transactions. Or inorder to figure out the unemployment (important if creating new jobs) in an area you need to find the population then find and subtract workers from each local jobsite. Often it is difficult to understand the implications of your actions without consulting the full details of the rules. And good luck if its diplomact which the manual gives no explaination on how the AI thinks. -Private capital is spent by the government or private projects. This kind breaks the emmusion a little because this is not how nations nfluence their economy. Now to the good. This is the single most detailed all inclusive game about the age of imperialism. Every aspect of the 19th century is put into this game. It is not clear or well explained but it all it there. I am a big board gamer and this sorta reminds me of one of my favorits Pax Brittanica. Therefore there is not way I cannot recommmend this to anyone who is interested in a deep strategy game. The game is not too micromanagy once the poor interface is figured out.

[b]I strongly do not recommend this game[/b] - you'll lose both your time and nerves, no matter how much you would like the concept of potential of the game. This game had huge potential. But it is botched in so many ways, that it is just not worth it. Maybe only if you plan to develop similar game, go check it out. I have several pages of things that I dislike about Pride of Nations, here are few most important of them: - wait time between turns - on my i5-6600K running at 4.7 GHz, this game capable running on just 1 core is taking 3-6 minutes to calculate 1 single turn in the early game (was about a minute in the very beginning, year 1850). In 50+ hours in this game I've been able to progress from year 1850 to 1856. Campaign ends in 1920. Okay, I was doing other stuff about half the time, as you are not able to do anything in the game during the wait time. But even if you can accept that you play a turn, then do other stuff in your real or virtual life, the game is still not worth it because the list only begins: - crashes - game crashed to desktop many times without apparent reason - clunky UI - mouse movement is delayed, map scrolling with mouse is a nightmare, drag & drop system is very inconsistent especially with moving and merging units and there are UI elements which were not implemented in the game - like message importance or loans + many other issues with the UI - dis-balanced overcomplexity with incomplete manual or tooltips - I've read the whole manual of the game, all the guides and I still did not understood why some options are missing to me, or why I cannot do. Or issues like militancy being described as a huge issue, when I have it at max level in all my national regions, without a real way to lower it and without any negative effects from that.. etc. etc. - missing any ledgers or easy ways to view known/important information about the world, other countries etc. - historical/geographical non-senses despite the game aiming to be very historically accurate - like region Slowakei without any Slovak population, or region with Troppau (Opava) without any Czech population.. and many other.. - messy messages - there are way too many messages each turn to read all, with no priority levels, and no filter on which are relevant to your nation. So sorry to say that, but this game was my biggest dissapointment, also because of high hopes and some really enthusiastic reviews I've seen on the web. And because I love games on world maps, especially grand strategies. And because it has so many great mechanics and so much potential... [strike]And it might not take too much to fix it in my eyes.. [/strike] no sorry, it is unfixable without great effort.. I was just typing out list of easy fixes, but many of them are not easy, and yes there are many of them and just the code optimization is not feasible to make it at least 10x faster to be playable. And even 10x shorter waiting times are still too long, so... I would love to see someone take concept of this game and maybe mix it with Victoria 2, let multiple historical start dates be available and ideally make it possible to play until modern era of 21st century. That would be a fantastic game to play.

This game has tremendous potential. Unfortunately the wait times between turns are long enough to make it totally unplayable. Even using a good computer five years after release, it takes about two minutes for the AI nations to process their turns. Each turn is two weeks. A grand campaign 70 years. That's ~1800 times I have to sit and wait for two minutes. Most turns the player does very little. The game very quickly turns into 30 seconds of playing, hit end turn, and then sit and stare for a few minutes. Not a good experience!

There is simply no consistency in PoN. Could've been a Victoria II beater, but trips over its two left feet far too often: from the poor examples of translation presumably from french, "instaured" etc. to the diabolically slow map scrolling (loading in and out 3 trillion png files), from the many typos and inconsistencies (Devonport Naval Yard should be Devonport Dockyard, as in RL) to the bewilderment of the diploderp screen, "We, African nation X, hate you Piedmontese because of your (pre-placed) military at Europe's borders! (-what do you do, unilaterally disarm to get a trade favour?) to the uncertainty whether the Grand Campaign is on rails despite the sandbox feel, to the almost singularly useless technology screen (1 option exists: add 50 quid to research, per arbitrary project, per percentage point) to the manual which has a strategy guide for: Spain and China --both of which are officially unplayable in 1.0 to 1.4 without console cheats or serious editing of files. (No Netherlands -honestly?) ******* Update: Poking through the files list, there are many flavour images (some of the Ottomans' are quite disturbing but let's not use Steam for such discussions) for SPA and POR --and Nederlands. This adds to the confusion: Was the Nederlands originally intented to be playable? Will it be, in future rare updates? ******* Music: Do you like "Land of Hope and Glory"? You had better, because it repeats itself almost every five minites, and it's live, so hundreds of drunk patriots singing this over and again "sears itself inside my skull"-- A. Youtuber. Add all of the above to the sheer unfriendliness and/or downright rudeness of the official forum and this thing, despite the fantastic concept is simply too incoherent to recommend. The price? Outrageous since there's a retail version collection to be found for a single quid/dollar. But the economy is fantastic, there is no doubt of it. If there were more cohesion it'd probably get a thumbs-up.

This game was designed for SINGLE-CORE processors only. So, unless you have an old Pentium4 still up and running it's almost impossible to play this game for it will utilize only 1 core of your dual/quad/octacore processor. Theirfore it will take up to 5 minutes to process a turn. And remember...there are 1500 turns in this game. That's a lot of waiting!!! Great design and idea, but terrible programming.

Probably the most complex and rewarding grand strategy game I've come across. Brilliant detail in every level. Fully customizable. Not for the faint-hearted or the impatient!

The game has interesting mechanics. They are not quick to learn as the interface isn't exactly friendly. The UI has its own logic. Once you realize what it is, it becomes easier to use. Yet, still not friendly at first. My main issue with the game is the considerable time between turns, becoming longer and longer quickly as the game progress, despite being above the recommanded specs. So, quickly, turns by the AI take ages. This problem is made worse by the limited number of actions you are going to make on each turn. Granted, it depends on nation played and what scenario, what are your objectives etc. Still, there will be turns where you have little to do. Or maybe even nothing because you have to build reserve before building, assembling armies before war, whatever before doing actions. So you can have two, three turns with limited or maybe no action but the time to process each turn still take longer and longer as the game progress. I'm used to Paradox games becoming over the campaign slower and slower with saving. Pride of Nations is, unfortunately, even worse and quickly worse when processing turns. I wanted to love the game, I believe there are goods ideas but the game engine is in the way. But spending much more time waiting for turns to be processed than actually playing... no... I regret but I can't recommend the game because of that.

[b]Stability[/b] That's quite possibly the most important issue here. This game used to be completely unplayable (a few years back), with turns lasting up to 10 minutes. Fortunately, the devs have fixed this entirely and the game runs really smooth, much better than many of the old AGEOD games do. Turns don't last more than 30-40 seconds for me which is very good, considering how many nations there are in the Grand Campagin. [b]Features[/b] I haven't played this for quite a while, despite purchasing it a few years back, and I'm astonished. Overall, just now it feels even better than Victoria II, for several reasons: 1. The military matters are done in a much better way. There are a lot of different kinds of units, historical commanders, detailed system of simulating the outcome based on a good and tested engine, which includes a lot of different factors that affect the result. 2. The colonization system is superb. There are a lot of possibilities including the different kinds of expeditions - anthropological, geographical, natural society, military expeditions etc. Even things such as gunboat diplomacy and naval demonstrations of force are included which is amazing. You can even bribe the local chieftains or force them to cede their territories. Apart from that you can also send your merchants, missionaries, establish trading posts, build road/telegraph networks, and in the end send immigrants and build a proper colony there. Something like this has never been done that well in a video game and I simply love it. 3. Economy is done quite well, with a lot of different structures for you to build. Sure, I would prefer it if the civilians were building them themselves according to the supply/demand but it's good enough. 4. There are a lot of decrees that help you influence your nation, as well as a lot of different national factors that add flavor to the states - some are more developed than others, some offer more libery to their citizens, there are on different stages of development etc. It really varies them a lot. 5. You can play with your friends easily due to the turn system which I honestly prefer to the real-time one. 6. There are quite a lot of countries to choose from - virtually all the main world powers. I would certainly prefer to be able to play as any country in the world as in Victoria 2 where I really enjoyed my Dutch and Swedish gameplays, but it's good enough. 7. Countries that are multi-national such as Austria-Hungary have different national forces which is fun and historically accurate. 8. Diplomacy is done really well, with options such as a State Visit to boost relations in addition to more typical ones. It's done pretty well. There is a very realistic threat system where your military buildup will make other nations threatened and respond to it. It also raises the general tension and can potentially lead to war. 9. There are a lot of technologies to research and the whole research system is done quite well. 10. Music is really great and certainly fits the time period. [b]The Setting[/b] I really love the nineteenth century setting of the game. It allows for much more than simple military rivalry between the nations - you can compete for prestige, colonies, wealth, choose your allies and cooperate with them, and exploit third-world nations. The are some mistakes, such as Bonaparte as the President of France in 1880, but overall I really love that there are real monarchs/presidents and prime ministers. [b]The Verdict[/b] I played quite a few long campaigns in Victoria and Victoria 2 and I must say that this game is a superior one. The military system and the colonizations are not even close while economy-wise they're pretty similar. Give it a try, since it's pretty stable now, and I think you'll like it.' Overall, the setting is amazing. You can do much more than just fight with other countries - you can engage in an arms race, compete for prestige, wealth, colonies, or cooperate peacefully to benefit both your nation and your allies. Nineteenth century is possibly one of the best settings to allow for such a myriad of activities.