Online Software Warehouse. Huge range of Brands: Microsoft, Adobe, Apple plus Financial, Design & Accounting Software, Video Games plus more!

1701 A.D. Gold Edition pairs the award winning and critically acclaimed empire building/strategy title 1701 A.D. with the globally successful expansion pack 1701 A.D. The Sunken Dragon. Already featuring nearly limitless replay ability, 1701 A.D. Gold Edition expands the 1701 universe even further. The Sunken Dragon add on pack introduces a 30hour, story driven campaign mode and a world editor that lets gamers create and share brand new maps for single player or online play. In addition, 1701 A.D. fans will find new, fully developed computer A.I. profiles, new buildings, additional sub quests and a devastating new natural disaster.

If you have played 1503 & 1602 than you know what to expect in 1701.
There isn't much difference in this game really. It's still pain to have your ships keep trade routes ( "A trade route is no longer..") flowing.
The people still complain & riot (One of your establishments is out off . . "), wanting everything.
You never know which side of the shop or building to place the road (but I will say that some don't need that, or sometimes [cows, wool] you don't).

Visually it's amazing. Tornadoes, storm & things like that. You can zoom in on the peeps, but it doesn't offer much help, expect to see them walk, or to look for animals.

You can customize the game to be super easy or hard (with the exception of the peeps needing everything & the constant warnings that something has halted). Having as few AI players as you like. You can select from 24 (I believe) maps, large or small islands etc.. Much like before, but you can make it harder for the computer to play.

Sandbox mode is nothing like map editor was. You can set up islands, nor make them. That's kinda lame. You can just plunk down houses, shops & buildings. I haven't played long in that, as it was annoying.

You can set up a profile, there are abounding preference settings & you can do it (during play) on the fly.

I haven't played the Sunken Dragon expansion as yet, so will update this when I do.

Overall, the game is cute as ever, but if you played the previous versions, not much else has changed, with the exception of updating a few things. If you haven't played 1503 or 1602, & you like being in control of your own colony, than I suggest buying it. If you're not a fan of needing to constantly babysit (And be told that you need to), stay far away from this. The "advice" is quite annoying.

Tages copy protection used in this game is not compatible with windows 7 64 bit. PC gaming will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs because of extreme copy protections. As usual Amazon is great!

First off, it plays like Age of Empires, as far as the town building goes. Only it is much more intricate. As you Progress, and your cities advance, you are required to gather more and more DIFFERENT types of resources, and refine the resources in various ways. It becomes a real effort to balance your people's needs, lest they revolt, but to simply build a massive harvesting infrastructure will strap your cash due to upkeep costs. Further, no matter where you begin, you will not have the resources all nearby for you to simply wall around and build. You will have to search and build on various islands to properly supply your evolving economy. Setting up distribution routes, setting their pace properly (to not overflow your warehouses) is time consuming and one of the focal points of the game, and it actually is alot more fun than it sounds. Again the key is balance.

However, Age of Empires type warfare is definitely not in this game. The focus stays on economics, not war. While you can build a fleet of warships and an army, the variety is very limited, and useful only as a cap off in your conquest of a map, and not the main tool to do so.

This game is alot of fun, but as I said, if you are looking for a war-type RTS, this game isn't really it. The learning curve is quite steep, and requires a bit of patience to realize why your empire is not working when you first play the game. This game isn't a brain scorcher, but is a much more delicate process than alot of other RTS games out there, not too challenging, but engrossing and now prefer this game over my old RTS games like Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, and is on par with Rise of Nations, which RoN too, is a great game.

Also, some people have had problems with Vista x64, So, I'd like to say that I have Vista x64, and have had no problems.

Great city builder with some simple battle functionality thrown in. Not to hard to pick up but challenging enough to keep your interest. Also works find on Vista (at least for me).

If you like to build cities and try to take care of your inhabitants while watching your budget, this game is for you. Unless you start a fight with one of your opponents they will not attack you. An exception are pirates, but they do not harm you much. The point of the game is to became independent from Queen. Different scenerios are also a lot of fun.