Sword of Aragon is a great strategy game, with lots to do. (The box itself costs over 40 hours of gameplay). Having never been a big fan of strategy myself, I still spend MONTHS playing this game over and over again. You start off with a single city, and the objective is to reclaim the throne by collecting all of the king's relics, which you obtain by conquering the other cities. Gameplay from city to city varies - some cities hand themselves over (literally), while others have thousands of soldiers waiting for you with dragons in tow.
Sword of Aragon is a great strategy game, with lots to do. (The box itself costs over 40 hours of gameplay). Having never been a big fan of strategy myself, I still spend MONTHS playing this game over and over again. You start off with a single city, and the objective is to reclaim the throne by collecting all of the king's relics, which you obtain by conquering the other cities. Gameplay from city to city varies - some cities hand themselves over (literally), while others have thousands of soldiers waiting for you with dragons in tow.
You control many different aspects of your cities. You can tell them to build facilities, harvest resources, set the tax rate, and recruit willing soldiers - or draft them. Building,
equipping, and training units costs gold which you get from taxes and conquest. Additionally, like in most strategy games you can train heroes - for even more gold. However, if the city tax is too high, they get unhappy and incite a revolt, so you need to strike a balance between your army and your city.
There are many interesting concepts integrated into this game, such as attrition. Each of your units contains a number of soldiers which you set at creation (or increased by recruiting). If you march your soldiers around when the attrition rate is high, they start dropping like flies. (There's nothing like leaving your city with an army and arriving at the next with a small band of scouts.) Also, as mentioned earlier the people have a morale rate, both in the cities and in your army. Soldiers with low morale flee battle on their own, or ignore your commands. A city with low morale will be less productive, there will be less voluntary recruits, and if they get really mad they revolt.
The game is divided by months. Your units can only move so far each month, set by the slowest unit in the army. At the end of each month you get a summary of what the city made and lost financially. Additionally, this is when the baddies can attack YOUR cities - depending on the city's location the attackers vary, and if nobody's home (or you lose the battle) you have to re-capture the city from them. Another really neat feature at the end of the month is there may be special events requiring your royal judgment, and your decision affects the people of the city as well as events to come.
All in all, this game has some very nice features. Definitely good for already-die-hard strategy lovers, and a great way for newcomers to their feet way.
