Introduction

I am not a fan of real-time strategy (RTS) games.  I can certainly see the appeal.  Maybe they’re intimidating, having to order little little troops hither and yon.  Maybe they give me the impression that in order to be any good at them, you have to invest a considerable amount of time learning all the nuances, and I just don’t want to limit myself to one thing.  So it’s odd, to say the least, to see me giving my game impressions of a RTS game.  I read about Certain Affinity’s downloadable game Age of Booty in a gaming magazine and the concept intrigued me.  I checked out the demo on Xbox Live Arcade, and decided to take the plunge.  So do I now have a Certain Affinity for piratey RTS games?

Story

There’s not much of a story in Age of Booty.  In the solo mode, there are 21 challenges: 7 easy, 7 medium, and 7 hard.  A pirate captain sets up the goals of each challenge, and you set sail, alone or with AI teammates.  There’s no more story to it, and there doesn’t really need to be.  In multiplayer, you can have four player and eight player public games between two teams, which you play randomly or private with friends.  Voice chat is available in multiplayer, and you can make your own maps with a map editor.  It’s available on the Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network, and the PC.

The goal  of each challenge is to capture a preset number of cities, sometimes with a time limit and sometimes without.  You control one pirate ship, and depending on the challenge, you may be teamed up with AI controlled ships that assist you.  You can capture a town, from it’s neutral start or away from enemy control, and when you control the required number of towns, you complete the challenge.

The map is divided into hexagonal areas, and you move your ship by selecting an area and pressing a button.  The ship sails there automatically.  Likewise, battles with other ships and with towns happens automatically when you sail to an adjacent hexagon.

There are 3 resources in the game, which you can use to upgrade your ship and your towns: rum, gold and wood.  A combination of rum and wood will let you upgrade your ship at your home pirate base.  Your ship has 3 components: speed, armor, and cannon, and each can be upgraded 3 times.  Likewise, towns you control can be upgraded twice with a combination of gold and wood, which will increase their defenses to help them fend off attack.

Battles take place between ships in adjacent hexagons.  There are enemy pirate ships and merchant ships.  When you destroy the opposing ship with cannon fire, it leaves behind either a crate with a resource in it, or a curse like a whirlpool you can drop on a hex to sink or damage an opponent.  You can also pick up floating supply crates.

Battles between ships and towns is also comprised of cannon fire back and forth.  When you wipe out a town’s defenses, you can raise your flag on it, and once it’s up you take the town.  During the flag raising process, the opposing teams can sail into another hex adjacent to the town and challenge the control.  Whoever survives will take the town.  Once you control a town, you can start automatically gathering its resources, and your ship is auto repaired over time as your stay next to the town.  There are also random settlements you can destroy to take their resources.

Gameplay

The strategy element in this RTS is how you go about capturing the required number of towns.  Resource management and control is key in Age of Booty.  Each town has a different combination of resources available.  Should you capture the one closest to your base, because it may be easier to defend, or the one that’s off out of the way, because enemy ships might not other to sail to it to attack it?  Should you use your wood to upgrade your ships, or use reinforce a town?  What seems to be more important to this map: ship speed or cannon firepower? 

In solo mode, ships on your team are AI controlled, making this more of a single-unit RTS.  This makes it a much more accessible RTS, but the AI isn’t always the smartest.  I watched an damaged AI controlled ship sail away from a town it had partially raised a flag on to go back to the home base to repair, before it finished raising the flag.  There are definitely moments where you wish you could issue simple commands to friendly ships.

As a consequence, I largely ended up ignoring my AI team counterparts.  I tried following them around the map, so that our combined presence made it easier to attack enemies and towns, but when they would do something opposite of what I thought, I’d end up abandoning the strategy and just doing my own thing.  I mostly just payed attention to what they had captured, and occasionally jumped in to help them attack or defend something if I was nearby.

Opposing team AI seemed pretty decent most of the time.  The designers made up for any lack of smartness by the opposing computer AI in the solo challenges by giving the enemy team more ships than your team has.  More ships means more attacks on towns, and controlling more towns means more resources for better ships and well defended towns.  Hence you were usually outnumbered and outgunned in the harder challenges, making your choice of strategies more important.  For instance, on larger maps I upgraded my ship speed first, so I could get out to further areas faster.  On smaller maps, I increased my armor or cannons (or a combo) first.  Some maps took a few playthroughs to figure out a decent strategy.  For instance, sometimes a town that would be needed to win would be more centrally located and more likely to be attacked, and it was better to go a bit out of your way to capture some other places first.

Extras

There are no extras to be had, in terms of unlockables.  The map editor is nice, if you have the patience and time, for creating your own maps to play on versus your friends.  I played the game on the Xbox 360, and there were achievements to be had for completing all easy, medium, and hard solo challenges, as well as using certain gameplay elements.  There are also achievements for multiplayer. 

Conclusion

I played through all 21 solo challenges of Age of Booty, and overall was surprised to find it enjoyable.  Normally I see a game with map full of hexagons and run the other way.  The fact that you only control your own ship was a good design decision overall for an RTS developed for consoles, although it was occasionally frustrating.  That also added an element of randomness to the game.  I’m sure I completed 1-2 of the levels I was having trouble with not because I had some big strategy revelation, but because the enemy AI was not as competent that round, or my friendly ships were on a roll.

Still, the game is challenging enough to make you want to keep playing, and simple enough to pick up and play, even if you only have 10-15 minutes.  It’s well polished with nice visuals.  It’s a good example of of a well-executed downloadable game.  I found it fun and worth my $10.  If it sounds interesting to you, give the demo a try.  You might find yourself fightin’ fer me pirate treasure.  Arrrr.

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