by ChrB
I don't think they compare to each other at all. :) Granted, I've only played Archipelago twice and Clash of Cultures once, but I don't see many similarities.Sure, you explore in both, but there are military units and a tech tree in CoC which is absent in Archipelago, which on the other hand has a market which all players can manipulate.
Both are good games, but I vastly prefer CoC as it gives me this awesome feeling of building an empire from the scratch. Archipelago is more about getting an engine up and running and score some VPs through the secret mission cards I think.