said he aimed to "provide food for thought about our current times while remaining entertaining and not overly depressing". HDI also considered setting the game during the Roman Republic, but decided against that due to the numerous other Roman games then on the market. In 1995, the renamed Holistic Design (HDI) and Microprose re-released it under the name Machiavelli the Prince. (Notwithstanding that Machiavelli was a Florentine and not a Venetian, the change was necessary owing to copyright issues.) Cities no longer accepted unlimited amounts of goods, particularly for high-value goods like relics and precious metals. The graphics were improved, along with aspects of the interface that (e.g.) permitted easier grouping of units, clarified the trade status of cities, and displayed the routes of long-distance ships. Ending the turn no longer required visiting Venice first. Machiavelli was released in two boxes: a thinner purple box with just the game and a thicker black box that included George Bull's Penguin translation of Machiavelli's Prince. Out of the box, the game usually crashed almost immediately if computer opponents were set at any difficulty except Novice. A patch (v.1.1) was released to fix the bug. HDI and TalonSoft (an imprint of Take-Two) released Merchant in 2001. Only small galleys and light guards were available at game start; other aspects of the game now had to be unlocked via payments to a Leonardo figure. Additional new "technologies" made the units further resistant to disasters or weakened opponents. Players who wanted to focus on trade could disable this feature and play with the units of the earlier games. Merchant attempted to allow simultaneous movement in multiplayer games but the option was notoriously buggy. A patch (v.1.1) was also released to fix several bugs, particularly with its TCP/IP multiplayer mode. Multiplayer Merchant Prince offered three multiplayer options: taking turns at a single computer (hotseat) or connecting two computers via cable (null modem) or internet (modem). Hotseat play supports up to four players; cable and modem play are limited to two human players against two computer opponents. Machiavelli added features to ease play by e-mail (PBEM), which supports up to four players. Merchant Prince II introduced TCP/IP support, but some players reported difficulties, including buggy trade routes. Reception While warning that the game emphasized trade and popularity over conquest or destroying enemies, Computer Gaming World stated in April 1994 that "Merchant Prince is a finely balanced, well