If you're looking for even more micromanagement, you're in luck since your Vikings tend to get lost and will neglect to eat or protect themselves when moving over long distances.  When this happens, a message flag will pop-up at the top of the screen letting you know which Viking is in trouble.  When your population gets to be larger, you'll see a lot of these messages coming in.  While you can build signposts to help keep your Vikings on track, you're still going to get helpless Vikings getting into trouble and will need to do a lot of babysitting.

Cultures 2 is not strictly an exercise in economics, there is combat in the game.  You can construct a barracks and assign Vikings to be trained to be soldiers.  Once trained, you'll need to equip them.  The type of equipment you provide a soldier will determine what type of soldier he'll become: spearman, archer, or sword fighter.  Combat is a simple enough point and click affair, but you'll need to keep an eye on your soldiers.  When moving large distances, they do so single-mindedly, and run the risk of starving to death before they reach their destination.  During prolonged battles, they also have the annoying habit of taking a break in the middle of combat to go munch on a nearby berry bush. 

In addition to your regular Vikings, you have special units known as heroes.  These units don't have the same needs as regular Vikings and are useful for sending out into the wild to explore.  The maps in the game reward such exploration, as they are often packed with special bonus chests and opportunities for subquests.  While the subquests add variety to the game, it can be hard to pay attention to the subquest and all of the needs of your village at the same time.  In one mission, Bjarni needs to escort someone to a new location.  However, there is no way to instruct him to simply follow the special character, so if you jump back to your village to take care of all of the current problems, you can easily lose track of your escortee.  There is just too much going on to pay attention to all of it at once.

To its credit, the game has an intuitive and well-designed interface to help you manage all of your Vikings.  You can access a pop-up menu by selecting any Viking and have access to all possible commands for that Viking.  There are also a number of informational charts and tables to help you keep track of things.  Control of the game is quite easy, which is a good thing because you have a lot of controlling to do.

Cultures 2 also does a good job of providing the Vikings with a lot of personality - each is uniquely named and has a slightly different appearance.  Too bad the game doesn't allow you to carry your Vikings over from mission to mission, so you'll have to reacquaint yourself with a new batch of Vikings (and train them from scratch) with each new mission.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 68%.  Cultures 2 is not a bad game, it has lively, animated graphics, a good interface, a good storyline, and plenty to do.  The only question is how much game there is in the game.  There is so much to manage and so much waiting to do, that many people might not enjoy it too much.  If you love slowly building up a complex economy, though, you'll find a lot to love in Cultures 2.

System Requirements:  Pentium II 500;  8 MB RAM;  16 MB Video RAM; 8 CD-ROM;  600 MB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.

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