Alien Nations at war

The Nations: Gold Edition
Game Category: Strategy - Real Time
Developer / Distributor: Jowood Vienna Productions
Release Date: 31 Dec 2001 
Rating: ESRB - Teen

I initially scoffed at the idea behind Alien Nations when it was first released. There were three nations fighting each other: Pimmons - blue skinned buffoons, Sajiki - yellow walking insects, and Amazonen - voluptuous human females. It also featured in my opinion one of the worst attempt at humor for an introduction movie that I had ever seen. In it, you see two storks craving alcohol while on the job (and yeah, you don't want to know the rest of it), I was both kind of glad and sad that I had lost that disc.

A short span later, Jowood released a follow up to Alien Nations. Known as Die Völker II: Aufstieg zum Königreich in German, or more simply as The Nations, this release presents a couple of interesting features like the obviously improved graphics and updated interface, new game play features like merchants who will trade with you, much more varied and interesting missions, and to top it all the humor doesn't attempt to embarrass itself as much as it did in the prequel.

A few months into the release of The Nations, a bonus pack containing 22 new missions and other improvements were added. Jowood decided to collect everything and re-release it as The Nations: Gold Edition. This is the version that will be reviewed tonight.

Cool... this blue guy reacts to whatever I select

At least the big blue Pimmon you see on the main menu is a vast improvement from Alien Nations. His gaze follows whatever you do, and he even plays a mini-game against an irritating mosquito when you are "away from your keyboard".

If you are viewing the movies from the main menu, I must say that at least I didn't cringe (as much) whenever I see the two introduction movies for The Nations.

The Gold Edition movie features a moonwalking stork

From the main menu, you can select either the single player or multiplayer game by moving your mouse over the houses on the map before the Pimmon. Multiplayer can be played over LAN or Internet and the menu allows you to set up games against up to a maximum of 8 players with a pool of 20 maps to choose from.

Single player takes you to a menu fielding four choices:

• Tutorial - a four mission tutorial teaches you the basics of the game - construction and training, research and production, trade and diplomacy, and battle.
• Original and gold edition campaigns - lots of city building and great battles to fight here.
• Custom game - play against up to 7 computer opponents

Custom game setup

A typical game in The Nations: Gold Edition involves constructing buildings, training people to assume jobs at a school, performing research on new building and technologies, producing goods that can then be traded to other nations or merchants, performing diplomatic acts as well as acts of god, and finally sending waves of troops at your enemies.

I am building myself a Lab

Each side has 32 different types of structures to build, so you will enjoy going through the game trying to research new structures to build. Whenever a new structure is built that requires a special profession to run it, you must train a new citizen at a school. Schools are perhaps one of the most important buildings in the game, if you are without it you won't be able to survive in the game for long. Once a citizen is trained, he walks over to occupy the new structure.

As you can see, you never directly control your citizens or workers in this game. You could click on each individual person and see his mood, find out about his family members, and even record a moment of his life. But, you can never directly control him (unless he is a knight unit who can be directed to fight your enemies for you).

The Sajiki aren't exactly cute

A day in the life of a citizen in The Nations: Gold Edition follows a strict routine. Units start work at 8 in the morning until just before lunch break at about 11:30 AM. During this lunch period, all the units would have congregated over at the local taverns (probably gossiping about your benevolent rule).

The female citizens will next buy luxury goods after their lunch breaks and wind up the day by making a trip to the temple to appease the gods. By 5:30 PM, everyone stops whatever they were doing and makes their way for home before night comes and everything goes dark.

This is seen pretty often but it makes for a good short break

The game's interface has four types of buttons with four sub-menus each:

• Development is where you can construct buildings, train new professions, and research new ideas. If you are an expert at the game, you can also move your nation into the next evolutionary stage; there are a total of three stages which allows you to build even more advanced buildings further on.
• Economy allows you to trade, make or break friendships with diplomacy actions, and do an audit check on your warehouses. There is a chat option sub-menu option here as well.
• Government allows you to perform a census of your citizens, your buildings, and your knights and scientists. You can also check the motivation of your people to find out who are the unhappy souls in your nation.
• Finally, there is Statistics which provides you all your statistics/charting needs, the possibility of communing with your gods, checking your mission goals, and reading mission scripts.

In the Trade sub-menu under the Economy option

There is quite a lot going on in this game - you get many missions to play with and there is the opportunity to construct lots of different types of buildings like laboratories, temples, witch doctor huts, farms, bakeries, and more.

You also get to control the lives of your citizens and workers by instructing them the tasks that need to be performed and you do have sub-themes to worry about (like how do you take care of the citizens who have turned to a life of crime, or how would you care for people who have been hit by a plague). All this and more are explored in The Nations: Gold Edition.

Only 60 citizens are required to win this mission

If there are things I disliked about the game, then they would be that the game is quite complex. Even the tutorial itself needs some serious time and dedication, so having the manual by your side would be handy. I must add that the interface may get in the way of some players who prefer a much easier game. The other thing I disliked about it is that the three nations are very similar with only a handful of special buildings (and citizens) having different roles.

Quite a number of unhappy faces in this Pimmon city of mine

For me, the new experience in The Nations: Gold Edition has been worth it. This new version has seen a lot of improvement compared with what I felt was a disaster in Alien Nations. Moreover, if you are a fan of  The Settlers, Cultures, and The Majesty series, then shame on you for not getting this gem.

Daily PC Game Review Score: 7 / 10
Review Date: 30 May 2011