It is yet another very nice strategy game made by Paradox, which has a great historical feel and caters to all of those who wanted to have a go at managing a 19th century empire. However be warned that it is a hard game to learn and you'll spend many minutes with the manual before embarking on your quest.

First of all, I see Pride of Nations like an experiment. Could you make a grand-strategy XIX century game with the flavour of a boardgame? Though the results are not streamlined, AGEOD has mada a quite good game.

AGEOD is known for wargames (American Civil War, Rise of Prussia...) but a whole-world map, in a game where you are in charge not just on military but on economics, colonization, politics, diplomacy... That's another thing. But they did it quite right, and it has it unique point of view.

Economy is a complex system, not so difficult to understand anyway. Military is a simpler version of traditional AGEOD, but quite realistic, and diplomacy (representing crisis between powers like a very enjoyable mini-game inside) as well as colonization are the best features in the game.

Why it's not perfect? Well, maybe too long (more than 1,600 turns to complete), so sometimes it loses a bit of focus. And a slow performance between turns. But anyway, it gives you an unique game experience.

Pride of Nations uses the AGEOD engine for a more precise and historically grounded take on what Paradox covers in Victoria II. Given their history of supporting and developing their products long after release, Pride of Nations will undoubtedly evolve into a stellar product. The base game is already unique in that it delivers full-blown military reenactments of the Sepoy Mutiny, the Second Boer War, and the Russo-Japanese War. These alone are worth the price of admission.

I have to admit that the complexity of this game overwhelmed me at first. However, if you have the patience to stick it out, read the manual, and visit the forums, it is one of the best and most in-depth historical strategy games ever developed.

Now, only if they made a better tutorial!

Another lovely strategy game from Paradox, it's historical angle works very well, and it's solidly executed all the way through.

This game has some nice complexity but it is very slow, unstable and the GUI is terrible. Even once patched the game tends to crash, the first crash you will encounter is on startup, based on posts in the forum this is very common, this is one of the easiest to solve just don't touch your computer for a few minutes until the game fully loads. You will get a splash screen and it will have appeared to be loaded but you must wait until the main menu appears, this will take a few minutes, if you click or press any keys the game will crash. This happens sometimes when you are waiting for your next turn so make sure you have a book to read while you are playing. Also the 3D engine some times gets buggy leaving your map covered in somewhat province shaped piles of spikes.

The GUI is also terrible, most panels are available only through key presses or small unlabeled buttons. There are four modes and each mode has a submode and you have to be in the right one to do anything. Nothing is intuitive, even the game options menus are full of unlabeled buttons that you have to click on and then mouse over to find out what they do. Once you learn everything its still a very clunky interface.

This game is more historically accurate then Victoria 2 but it is also more historically railroaded. It is also more complex in some areas but less in others and some of the complexity is good while other things are not.

If the possibility of historical deviation in Victoria 2 really bothers you and you have a lot of patience then give this a try, else just play Victoria 2 with some mods.

This is definitely GOTY for me this year.Admittedly takes a while to get hung of it, but the sheer scale its so huge you can easily learn on the fly.Beware, the turns do take long to load and the game rather rewards long term planning.But when you ok with that ,there is a gem there.Also the music and the graphic are simply outstanding. Highly recommended.

This could be great game if :

1) its turn based engine would be running smoothly on my Phenom II X4 3Ghz CPU and 4 GB RAM - instead i must wait 2-5 minutes each turn,

2) controlls wasn't broken - why i have to launch some management screens ONLY using F[numer] keys

3) on some "management" tabs there was anything important to swicth like in "budget" screen or the like, just like in Europa Universalis

4) developers/designers didn't took away micromanagement in many areas of this game...

To supposed audience of this game :

- If You dont like micromanagement in strategic games,

- If You like to push many different keys just to launch some mostly static screens :F

- If You like games that are different than EU, but not better ;F

Then BUY THIS GAME ;)

If NOT - trust me - leave this piece of software alone

Typical of AGEOD this is a very complicated game with steep learning curve and slow turn resolution. However, it rewards careful patience. Graphically nice, historically informative and incredibly detailed. The lack of option to start campaigns at a later historical date is dispappointing. 1680 turn long campaigns with long turn resolution is not a good mix.

Pride of nations is a return to the old days of Paradox games - and it is past due. Gone are the days of German-Brazilian wars of hegemony over the Fascist Alaskan state. Instead, history makes a triumphant comeback in a game that is both daunting and ultimately satisfying to play. While the game does have its problems with long turn times and unfinished elements (e.g. loans), these problems are constantly being fixed with beta patches; the turn times, for example, are less than half of what they were at 1.00 for me. Check out the demo, but realize that the game is vastly improved from what is there. I would only use it to see if you liked Ageod's system, rather than fretting over various bugs because those bugs are mostly gone.

In my book, this game is a 3.5 to 4-star game, with the potential to be a 6 (yes, it has the potential to be that awesome!) Support the return to historical games today!

Pride of Nations is a game that requires patience. Lots of it. If you're willing to cope with turn waits (2 minutes average), and the fact that the full campaign is a whopping *1860* turns (slightly more than 4 times the length of your average Civ V game), you're going to be playing a game with real depth and versimilitude. What do I mean?

Well, firstly, there are many little touches that give this game a true victorian flavour, and most of this is in the diplomacy. Diplomacy in this game, whether with great nations, nearby minor powers, or potential colonies, is slow and risky. Sure, you can try to cozy up to a nation, but there's no such thing as a safe option, and diplomats are a limited (if regenerating) resource. Use them all to butter up prospective allies, and you won't be able to respond to the overtures of other nations.

Going to war? Can't do that without declaring war, or you're considered a downright rotter (losing the game's score, Reputation)... even declaring war without presenting a "cassus belli" (cause for war) is considered highly rude, so always keep an eye on your Rep. Similarly, in disputes over territory of a diplomatic nature, you have several paths, one of which, "Just Cause", seems pretty unique to PoN. Essentially, by going for Just Cause, you're making yourself out to be the wronged party, and, if the nation involved does declare war against you, they're going to lose reputation for "picking on the little guy", even if you're actually a superpower.

As to production, you have a limited number of buildings you can place in any one area, and you can't really get a huge tech lead in the game (tech, once found by one nation, "leaks" into other nations, so they get it only a short time after you do... just like real life), but where you put things mostly makes sense, and the trade isn't that hard to get the hang of.

Thing is, everything moves slowly in this game, and, what with the between turn wait being around 2 minutes, it requires boodles of patience and long term planning to play. Add to this the rather busy UI, and you have a game for devoted 4X and Grand Strategy fans, but little else. If you're patient, and READ THE MANUAL (no really, read all the documentation), you'll get the hang of it soon enough, and enjoy it. If strategy and calculations, long term planning and turns where not much happens for a while isn't for you, don't.

great game awesome game mechanics but plagued with problems. would be even a better game if it wasn't for the extremely long time between turns. this title while its good its not nearly as good as many of paradox's other titles. if your a hard core fan of paradox like i am this is a must have even if your just curious about the game. even if your not its a great strat game and a nice one to have on anyone's shelf.

What a magnificent game idea! You may manage a counrty's economy, technology, diplomacy, military, colonial affairs from the mid 19th century and lead it to glory by the early 20th century! It indeed made me an addict in the summer after I bought it sometime in June, as I tried to lead either Prussia or Italy to a new era of prosperity, power and peace. Each time, I had to quit the game in disappointment and start a new one, after I progressed mostly less than 10 years into the game and a new patch appaired aspiring to fix issues that made Pride of Nations unstable, illogical, run slow and full of bugs. At some point in late July, I stopped bothering about the game after I realised that it came ahead of its time both in terms of available technology to run it and of development. I give the game a three out of five just even as the thought that such a great idea was so poorly implemented makes me wish I hadn't bought it.

Sorry to say but this game just fails in every aspect. Too slow, crashes alot, alot of things just makes no sense. Its not love it or hate it type :) it just simply fails all expectations. Definitly download demo and try it before buying it.

Seems to be a diamond in the rough after a few patches. I am still waiting for some crucial ones at the moment. Typical problems are present as stated from the other reviews. The time it takes during each ending turn can either be ok, or a game buster depending on your computer I think. It takes me anywhere from two to three minutes. Some ctds are around still. On the positive note, the resource and building is very detailed and the most I've ever seen from this company.

It is a good strategy. The variety of the military units give this game great flavour and customisation.

However, each turn take so much time to process and I believe is the only downside of this game.

Great concept and easy to learn/play. The turn time is horrible, however. Even on a I7 quad core with 8 gigs of ram, you have to wait 5 minutes after hitting end turn. I am not sure i like the dragging units to move them either.

I like the concepts of the game, and have seriously spent some time playing it, but it crashes so much I doubt I will play it anymore until (hopefully) the crashing issues are patched.

The game is well designed, however the amount of time it takes between turns is excruciating. Waiting several minutes between turns is just too long. On the upside, if you clean something between turns, your house will be clean before you get done with a single game.

I bought this game after being disappointed with Victoria 2, and this game fulfills much of what I found flawed in that game.

Pride of Nations is a very complex game, with a well fleshed out colonial and combat mechanics. The depth of the diplomacy options is a bit limited, although there is are some interesting innovations such as the crisis mechanism. Even after a couple of beta patches, the AI is kind of stupid with diplomacy, but developer is very supportive of the game is continually working to improve it.

The technology system is innovative in that it avoids the typical approach of the player picking one at a time to research, replacing this a system where technologies are researched based upon inherent factors.

This game is very event driven, which can be good in that it adds a lot of flavour. The downside to this is that the number of playable countries is limited, excluding many interesting possibilities.

Overall, this game is perfect for anyone looking for a complex, time consuming grand strategy game set in this period.

Very enjoyable game. It is a bit confusing at first. I was able to get a decent grasp without using the tutorials. It is a good blend of AGEOD and Victoria. However, it is still new and contains a few bugs. All in all has some great potential.

This game will take a while to get used to. There is so much information at hand you can feel overwhelmed. But it has the makings of a very great game. If you like Victoria 2 then you'll like this one. When they add more playable nations it will get that much better.

This game isn't for the faint-hearted; the learning curve is huge and turn processing often takes between 1.5 and 3.5 minutes.

Yet there is also a huge amount of detail to this game. The economic, diplomatic, and colonial games all hold their own challenges and with a game that spans 1,680 turns, much of them will involve strategy regarding those facets. The military game is detailed, but not necessarily the main focus at any one moment. The Diplomatic Crisis mini-game is a fun new addition which supplements the usual diplomatic options and provides a good catalyst for international tensions.

Unlike many 'sandbox' grand strategy games ( such as the EU series), the default settings in Pride of Nations leads your chosen nation along it's historically accurate path while still leaving you in control. You'll not be conquering the whole Pacific with the Kingdom of Hawaii or other such un-historical craziness.

The details in the game are many, as most of the historical personalities, from rulers to generals, have their pictures represented along with period-appropriate pics of soldiers and weapons. Not only is it a strategy game, but a history lesson, placing you in historical quandaries of the age along with the characters who were there.

The interface can be frustrating, at first, for those who've never experienced a game from AGEOD. It is not a "right-click to move" game, but handles more like a boardgame in that you click and drag your "pieces" to where you want them to move. Once this click & drag realization dawns, it is quite simple and enjoyable.

If you like your strategy games massive, long and chock-full of detail, this will be for you. The biggest complaint is the turn-processing time which usually averages a bit over two minutes for me. I'm patient enough to give that little heed, however, for the deep and multi-faceted historical gameplay available within.

I give it 4 stars in it's current 1.02 beta update condition, with a possible 5 if the turn times and interface are further tweaked.

In a nutshell:

The Good:

-Historical accuracy: Historical leaders, wars, generals, units, uniforms, unit names, events. This game is a historians dream, as it covers a rarely covered period in history, namely the Victorian era.

-Depth of play: This game is complex, extremely so. Just looking after your economy is a game in itself, and everything about the military aspects of the game are detailed, right down to uniforms, weather, ammunition, supplies, ect.

Supply aspects dominate warfare, managing logistics with depots, supply dumps, supply stockpiles, and supply wagons for your armies is a must. This game makes Vicky look like a kid's game.

-Campaign: Chose between 8 Imperial powers (more to be added later), and rule them through 1700 turns (two turns per month for 70 years).

-Price: Although the game has a few bugs (it was only just launched several days ago), patches are in the works. The game is a good value at its current $20 price tag.

The Bad:

-Steep learning curve: This game is so complex that it will take a while and a lot of practise to really learn.

-The User Interface: Like other AGEOD games, the user interface came up a completely different evolutionary ladder than every other species of game out there. If you don't do the

tutorials you will have absolutely no clue how to do the simplest thing in PoN. It's not intuitive in the least, and you'll have a hard time discovering how you're supposed to find the information you need in-game.

-Bugs: Some complain of constant crashes, but it probably depends on your rig. My Vista PC has only crashed the game once. There are other bugs as well, though nothing game-breaking as far as I know. Patches are coming very soon.

The Ugly:

-Although advertized as "multiplayer," the game currently uses the 20 year old Play By Email PBEM system. Which is totally unacceptable. Apparently they will be adding REAL multiplayer at a later time.

My Thoughts:

It's hard to decide if this is a good game or not, and most of this feeling comes from the crazy user interface, which is like nothing you've ever seen or used before (unless you play AGEOD games). It's difficult to learn how to use the interface and just requires practice.

The complexity is also a plus and a minus. It's nice to have a lot of factors contributing to success and failure, but I feel like the game needs to do a better job of giving you the information you need and making it easier to find said information. So really it's another interface gripe.

That said, there are so many options available to the player. Bribe tribal chiefs, gunboat diplomacy, raids by savages, enacting laws, discovering techs, building and organizing armies, plundering resources; All together this is the most detailed strategy game possibly out there, and real thought needs to be put into your actions to acheive the best results.

Once they improve the interface in the next patch to make it more intuitive, and fix a few bugs, this game will easily be worth double its current $20 price. Even until then, it's worth the money to strategy fans to get this game and learn it. The more I put into this game it seems to more I get out of it. If you're looking for a quick and easy strategy game, go for something else, as AGEOD isn't for everybody, but if you dream of being an imperialist and have time to learn the game you'll be happy with your choice.

I am a big fan of Paradox Games but this one is...

maybe i dont get the "aah" thing on this game so far but :

- Long loading screens & turns

- bad translations in other languages

- automatic things u dont want to have automatic and things u wanna have automatic (like supply trucks) are manual

- u can´t simply move your army with a right click, u have to pull them somewhere and hope they will arrive someday

- 1000 filter but nothing really cool

- no income tab or whatsoever (or a good overview : what does that building? and why the hell can building a school causing a revolution?)

- worst interface (u wanna build a building? ookay, lets click through miliary, politics, colonial.. okay here we go, now click "do something", then get through like 1000 buildings, pull the building on special areas without an explanation why there, build them if you can and hope it will do something or will be built someday)

- after each round he tells you everything like "XY promoted, sold 2 furnitures for 100000$ and so on.

- haven´t found diplomacy, research, good indicators for the army strengths, and so on

Okay there are 5 tutorials (actually 3, the third one is 3x listed) which dont explain something ("for more information play the economy tutorial" - there is none!)

so... download the demo and try to get the game but .. yea....