Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Paradox Interactive and Nitro Games brings us the real-time strategy game, Commander: Conquest of the Americas. Based on the conquest of the Americas in the early 16th century. Your main objective of the game is to build and start colonies along the rich coasts. Trading and migrating is a big part of the game. You can choose between 7 different nations as your super power. You will battle over different environments from an open sea to navigating between islands. The game is a bit hard to get a hold of if your looking for a RTS like Warhammer: 40K or Company of Heroes where you can fight head on as soon as you start. The games pace through the first few missions runs fairly fast but once your left alone and trying to get ahead its a little complicated and slow.

Moving ahead and trying to establish more colonies takes some practice. Where you set land will determine the available resources for export to your home port. The money that you make is very hard to maintain unless you have a constant movement of goods across dangerous waters to your home port either being from London to Spain. Once you have established your colony you have several missions where building structures within your city walls is very essential. Lest us say you have gold and whaling as your natural resources, you have the choice of building a gold smiths or a whaling ship yard or both if the funds are available. Once the resources have been processed you load your ships up with the cargo and sail out to home port. Once your ship is in home port a trade menu will appear and you can sell all your cargo to your home port. You can also pick up supplies that your colony does not have or even colonist and soldiers. Protection is needed whether on land or the open sea.

You have a fleet of 30 ships that you can order and build. From large and impressive battle ships to small carrier vessels, you can customize your fleet which ever way you want. Other than opposing nations that thrive among the islands of the Caribbeans to the continents of the Americas, the natives give more challenge to the advancement of your colony. Battle among the other nations can be one on one up to 30 ships fighting to the death. I wont lie the battles are extremely slow to begin and very frustrating if you are used to your units running head first into battle. You have a wind gauge letting you know if your down wind or upwind which can make a huge difference in your battle. The battles can rage on until one surrenders or is totally crushed.   Battle tactics are a huge key to this game. This game is pretty detailed when it comes on the reality of the battles. Your ships can board the enemy ships or vice-versa, making battle more challenging that just trying to shoot the bigger cannon first. Different ships, ammo, environments, and nations make this game’s wars over the ocean ones to rival others.

The graphics are really good for this type of simulator. Maps and animations can be compared to a more enhanced version of Sid Myers: Civilization 4. Battles on the open sea look great and the damage inflected on either you or the enemy is really impressive, from collapsed sails to ships burning. Upon a closer look of your ship you can see your crew hard at work trying to survive. Colonies, land masses, ships, battles, even the ocean look really clean and well done for this RTS. Your HUD is pretty bare, the tabs and menus are hard to get used to and see sometimes, but I am using 1920 x 1200.

All together this Commander: Conquest of the Americas, is highly addicting, it is not fast paced which most of us are used to but then again this is not just a RTS this is a simulator. From in depth economic structure to battles that you have to turn on your brain, this game takes a good commander.