Overview
Gold of the Americas is a 4X game released in 1989 by classic strategy game publisher SSG. In it, you take on the role of viceroy for one of four major colonial powers, Spain, Portugal, England, or France, with the objective to enrich your home country to the highest degree possible. The game runs from 1500 to 1800, split up into 30 turns of 10 years each. Over the course of the game, the focus of your efforts change with the times, from exploration and exploitation of the local resources while avoiding uprisings to development of the colonies while suppressing independence. The entire time you are forced to balance the needs of the colonies under your command and the often unreasonable demands of your king.
The game is both single player with different AI levels for the opponents, or up to 4 player hotseat.
Gameplay
The core gameplay loop is that you receive funding from your home country, which you allocate as best you can between exploration of the unknown parts of The New World, development or exploitation and suppression of your colonies, military might for protection or raiding and conquest, trade, or funding pirates. The turn is then resolved and you get a return based on the natural resources available to exploit, the development level of your colonies, and your investments into trade and piracy. After that, your home country demands its cut (based on your income last turn plus a percentage), and you can keep what remains for next turn's investments. At the end of the game, the winner is decided by the number and development level of your colonies.
There are two different modes of play, "historical" or random, which decides the level of support from your home country (in historical mode, Spain and Portugal will get a lot in the early game and then progressively less, England and France will get more as the game goes on), and the level of resources and power of the people already living in each region.
Like many strategy games, the idea is to set up an economic engine through the exploitation of easily available resources and leverage that into development of the colonies. As the game goes on, the great risk changes from economic upheaval through uprisings and invasions of your colonies from other players to independence movements in highly developed colonies. Unlike Colonization, the player is 100% an agent of their colonial power, and will get no points for a colony that has turned independent.
The role of Native Americans is solely that of a disruptive part of your colonies, there to either be suppressed and exploited or remain a risk factor for uprisings, you have little choice in dealing with already present populations, and the existing Native American kingdoms are not modeled at all. Similarly, the game's treatment of slavery does not allow for any nuance but is merely a toggle that helps development but increases the risk of uprisings.
Log in to comment