Admirals: Caribbean Empires vs Europa Universalis
Admirals: Caribbean Empires
Admirals: Caribbean Empires is a brand-new, browser-based strategy/tycoon game developed by Travian. Set in the 17th century, during the Age of Exploration, you’ll need to live up to your new role as a captain and earn Glory for your King and country by building a trading empire, expanding your fleet, and taking on the enemies of the King.So, basically, what you’ll be doing is to buy certain profitable goods from one port and then shipping the goods to another port to sell them off for a much more lucrative price. You can set up multiple trade routes and the ships will automatically run the routes until you put a stop to it. You can also explore the Caribbean with your scoutships to discover new cities and floating loot. However, you'll need to be careful of the pirates and rival players that roam the seas. Unless you're well-equipped, your ship may not survive the encounter!
Interestingly, the game has a political aspect to it as well. You can be appointed as a governor of a city and launch attacks on other cities in an attempt to bring those cities into the fold.
In short, Admirals: Caribbean Empires is a pretty fun and entertaining game that lets you build your trading empire in the Caribbean in the 17th century, battle pirates and navigate the political intrigue of the era if you so wish to. It’s definitely not the sort of game that you can play for hours at a stretch but instead, you can check in now and then to modify your trade routes and explore new areas on the map using your scoutships.
Europa Universalis
Europa Universalis is a historical real-time grand strategy game that includes all aspects of world history in the Early Modern Europe era, a period of time between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Due to the game's meticulous need to be accurate in its historical accounts (period monarchs, known military leaders, and technological advancements), the game can, in some way, be doubled as an educational game since you can learn quite a lot simply by playing it.That said, the gameplay in Europa Universalis is just incredible for its time. The game is played on a huge world map that is divided into around 1,500 provinces where you can literally govern your nation the way you like. You can get involved in your nation's colonization efforts, explore new lands, trade with neighboring countries, wage war when they renegade on that very trade deal, spread the religion you've adopted far and wide, and of course, navigate the tricky political waters of diplomacy.
Not to mention, instead of using a turn-based format, the game has opted for a pauseable real-time format, so you can pause the game, issues orders and plan out strategies, before unpausing the game and let the world events play out. There are even tons of historically-based missions and events which may affect the world based on your actions and decisions.
When it comes to grand strategy games, there are only a handful that truly embodies the genre, and obviously, Europa Universalis is one of them. However, being the original game in the franchise, the graphics might be a bit worn for wear, but if you don't really mind, you can definitely pick this game up from GoG.com.