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YMMV / American Conquest

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  • Awesome Music: The American theme gives off an atmosphere of steely determination and sacrifice.
  • Even Better Sequel: For all intents and purposes, the game is a sequel to Cossacks: European Wars, while offering a massive improvement of gameplay elements all over the board - and more than needed to balance out all the quirks and unpolished bits. This went so far, Cossacks 3 got dressed down for never implementing a single element of American Conquest and being just a graphics update of the original.
  • Fridge Logic: Pikemen are some of the most fearful units when fighting against cavalry, because they are the people that usually have to stand their ground against cavalry charge and should the formation break...
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadors. They can be recruited earlier than any other cavalry type, they are armoured, they still carry two guns in their saddle holsters and most importantly, they are among troops gaining +10 damage for each kill. Two of which they can perform at safe distance before they even have to reload (and can just ride away to do that). Not counting general techs for armoured troops, their upgrades are also quite cheap. Not that they need them to be powerful, but with all their techs researched, Conquistadors can stream-roll everything on their path. They do have a gold upkeep, but since you don't need many of them, it goes unnoticed. Their only real downside is being slower than regular dragoons (so they can be thankfully countered), but that's about it.
    • In similar fashion, Sioux chieftains. Lighting fast cavalry that hits like a train, can easily evade ranged attacks by the sheer virtue of their speed and maneuverability and in melee, there is nothing hitting harder than chieftains, while having all-around high defenses. Their only downside is how unreliable Sioux economy is, but getting just a handful of those allows to raid enemy base so hard the target might potentially never recover. In pitched battle, it is often better to allow friendly fire and kill frontline indiscriminately, rather than allowing chieftains to freely decimate your troops and, far worse, gain tonnes of experience while doing so.
    • Unlike counterparts from other nations, American fusiliers do not have gold upkeep. This allows to easily amass thousands of them without draining gold reserve or risking revolt. On top of that, they also deal 40 damage with their bayonets even without any upgrades - while every other fusilier starts with values between 9 to 12. This all but guarantees ability to stop cold any sort of assault, as there is more of them and they are just as lethal in melee as they are at range.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Europeans aren't allowed to construct fishing boats nor trade posts. This means European early and mid-game is a constant struggle against insufficient food (and thanks to required upgrades - also wood) supplies, while you can't fish nor trade for resources.
    • Surface-level stones from Cossacks have been replaced with quarries, that operate as mines. This means requiring constant upgrades to increase workforce capacity, along with being far, far rarer to find. While this was done deliberately for game balance (slowing down European factions and giving natives early game edge), it gets really tedious in European vs. European multiplayer games, as there is a point of the game where everyone is just sitting and waiting for stone to be mined.
    • Just like in Cossacks, Fog of War covers the map outside visibility of your troops and structures. Unlike Cossacks, unless disabling FoW in map settings, you can't research any tech that keeps map permanently scouted or even increases the line of sight for units and buildings (the only solution that remains is the Cheat Code). This makes even things like planning your base needlessly complicated, for you just can't see the map itself without units spread around (the AI, meanwhile, has no such problem).

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