The gameplay of The Guild/ Europa 1400 is excellent and has been reviewed elsewhere, but I had to submit this review for one reason only: it crashes and is irreparably buggy.
I've played through something approaching fifteen generations spread across three games, but in two of those games I've encountered a crash-to-desktop error which occurs for no discernible reason. In the JoWood forums, moderators suggest reloading a savegame from 5-10 turns ago and replaying those turns in an attempt to avoid whatever's causing the crash. This is, obviously, not very helpful. Couple that with the fact that no new patches are ever coming out for this game again, and you have a game-killing bug.
I would have rated this game 5 stars, but when you play a game where you invest time and effort in reaching a goal, only to have a random amount of your progress erased for no discernible reason, it's just a game that you wouldn't want to spend your money on.