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Portuguese Civ Mod III - v 4.2b
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Author |
File Description |
danielpereira |
Posted on 11/28/17 @ 09:16 AM (updated 08/06/21)
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
The Portuguese Civ Mod III is the third installment of the Portuguese Civ Mod, and it adds nine new civs, on the top of the original five new civilizations of PCM II, and new gameplay features!
Features:
Includes all of the features of Portuguese Civ Mod I and II: wonder powers, support units, mecenary system, redesigned scout and sea buildings!
-Eighteen new civs (Portuguese, Aragonese, Moors, Berbers, Navarrese, Tupis, Dutch, Swahilis, Italians, Indians, Galicians, Indonesians, Leonese, Abyssinians, Burgundians, Kongolese and Polish) have been added with unique bonuses and features
-A completly new age, the Renaissance Age, with new units and technologies, has been added!
-A new resource, Experience, with an unique way to obtain it, has been added!
-The Mercenary system of the first version of the Portuguese Civ Mod has been expanded!
-A new gameplay feature for Real World Maps has been added: the Rare Resources system!
-And, as usual, all of this is packed in an intuitive and straightforward installer!
More information about the Portuguese Civ Mod III can be found at readme, which is included in the download, and also in the official ModDB page: https://www.moddb.com/mods/portuguese-civ-mod-ii/
For general discussions about the mod and scheduling of multiplayer games, you can join the official PCM Discord Server:
https://discord.gg/yRfMMbm
How to install it:
Just run the installer and follow the instructions given! |
Pages: « First « 1 2 [3] | Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Khan Ivayl |
Posted on 01/18/22 @ 09:42 AM
Usefulness/Novelty: 5
The Portuguese Civ Mod has been reviewed before and is one of the rightfully more famous classics of the HeavenGames Blacksmith treasury.
Writing a review now, years after the first wave of applause, runs the risk of being the kill-joy who discovers things to criticize after years of un-interrupted flawless reputation. Well, yes and no. As you can guess by the opening line and the overall score I found nothing that would unleash destruction upon this achievement, although I will have more to say about that half point missing in the second category.
First things first, however. PCM III is one of those great projects that thrive on a beautiful paradox. In this case, the paradox being, that you cannot properly narrow your focus on portraying a civilization like the Portuguese, without simultaneously embracing a big portion of the world as a whole (that's what you get when you deal with sailors). In the category of utility/novelty the PCM (III) is an all-round winner, because it does not matter if you came here to widen the scope of Age of Empires in general, or to delve deeper into the Iberian peninsula. You will get enough of both and even when playing an old civ from the original game you will have more buildings, more units, more technologies, and even an additional resource and age to toy around with.
Quality/Instructions: 4.5
In revisiting the topic of the mod's quality I would like to break down this category in 3 parts: comfort, gameplay, and art/immersion.
Comfort refers to the ease with which you can safely and quickly have the mod run, without interfering with your old game or the ability to play other mods. In this part there is nothing to complain, because PCM III follows the latest standards of using parallel installation with the aid of the newest patch. This is just 5/5.
Gameplay is also very strong, maybe too strong, in the sense that the multitude of options can slow you down during initial attempts at playing. I did find myself trying to have my cake and eat it, too, only to be swallowed by the even hungrier enemy, equipped with a monstrous AI and being itself not shy to try out all of its options, but somehow being far more efficient in assembling seriously versatile armies. I give here a 5/5 out of respect for many players' need for challenge, but I would have been equally satisfied myself with slightly less intelligent enemies.
We come to the art and the immersion. Here I see a lot I like and a lot I don't like and it is hard to say what prevails. I shall again start with the good. Right in the opening screen we see the game advertising great immersion, that is I am being signalled, as the player, that the reality the game is trying to portray will become my virtual reality and abduct me into the glorious times of discovery and conquest... we get that idea because the opening screen with the menu are elaborately designed, atmospheric, with background music that screams "you are chilling on the beaches of Portugal"... The civs have each their own history file, intro music and interface frames... however, much of the art is not consistent. The units adhere to different graphic styles. Some of these styles fit with the game's old graphics better than others, but they also differ in their general quality. While many renaissance age buildings are immensely beautiful and also fit the old game's style (double win), the jerking of some horsemen (luckily this concerns but one or two units), with their composing parts shifting toward and away from each other, was almost unbearable. Here we get only 3.5/5, because call me a splitter of hairs, but it was difficult to fully immerse in the game's reality under these circumstances... similarly throwing me out of the immersion, were some tech tree choices violating my most generous interpretation of historic reality. For example Vikings being able to call upon Hajduks and Cuman Mercenaries. However, this should not weigh too heavy, as artistic freedom in portraying history should still be protected.
Additional Comments:
PCM III is a great project. From the viewpoint of strategy and gameplay it is a fine gem and sufficiently polished. The graphics could use a unification of style and quality, which does not mean that they have to necessarily revert to the old game's style. In theory a total change of style is also conceivable (though less practical). The game in its current form is already ideal in terms of gameplay and in that sense I would also strongly recommend it for multi-player endeavours.
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Pages: « First « 1 2 [3] |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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4.9 | Breakdown |
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Usefulness/Novelty | 5.0 | Quality/Instructions | 4.9 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 2,224 |
Favorites: [] | 5 |
Size: | 102.32 MB |
Added: | 11/28/17 |
Updated: | 08/06/21 |
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