Strategy Gaming Online - Previews : Imperialism 2

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PREVIEWS

Imperialism 2

DEVELOPER : Frog City
PUBLISHER : SSI
RELEASE DATE : 22 of Mar. 1999

My first encounter with Imperialism by Frog City was a good news/bad news thing. Good news: great game! Bad news: I needed to spend the next month kissing up to my spouse, who was decidedly NOT pleased with how I was spending 99.99% of my time at the computer. Imperialism was a classic, and its successor Imperialism 2 takes the firm ground of its predecessor and builds even further. Clearly adherents of the "If it ain't broke..." school, Frog City kept the overall look and feel of the original, but added substantial improvements in management, scope, and gameplay to create what amounts to a serious new release.

The premise is simply world conquest. In the original, the player managed the development of a simple economy and military in order to dominate the world. In that sense, not much has changed. Your goal is still world domination. The method however is much more complicated. In Imperialism II everything that was intrinsic to the gameplay has become more complex.

Where the original Imp1 was set in the 19th century, Imp2 has gone backward to a 16th-17th century model. The major powers are now the "Old World" and a significant portion (typically 60%+) of the map is obscured, awaiting exploration. Cleverly they leave the New World to its historical role as an instrumental rather than intrinsic good. To win the game, you must control the Old World. Period. The New World is not a "victory condition", but expansion and domination of the resources there is (in every game I've played) a prerequisite to supportable growth. For that matter, the artificial "consensus" method of victory is gone - simply control more than 50% of the Old World territories. Very simple in concept, a LOT harder in execution.

I like this a lot - the players are given more of the choices that faced their historical counterparts, without the arbitrariness of "victory points" or some other subjective equation. Thus the player's position toward the new world is of critical import, and how one will approach the "natives" is a stance that must be determined rather early on. Do you conquer the natives? Or try to treat with them and defend them from the other opportunistic powers? Both policies have advantages. I haven't yet seen that a mercantilist system can win, but of necessity a previewer's experience with a game is not as in-depth as a full reviewer.0

Mechanically, they've tweaked the interface to minimize micromanagement. For example, the rail net which had to be monitored constantly in Imp1, is now rationalized as a road network. The commodities now travel automatically on the network up to its capacity, meaning one less thing for the player to baby-sit. Water transport, since it involves the management of a scarce resource (hull space) is still manually allocated. Production and expansion is also built into the system - the industry screen where you built your city is gone (kinda too bad about that) and production is a consistent pattern of 1 thing + 1 thing = new thing, rather than the hodgepodge of values in Imp1. This helps disproportionately in the mid game, where you can more clearly know what to expect as far as production and results in future turns.

I like the idea of random events. From USENET it was evident that this was probably a suggestion that originated from a player - definitely a gold-star idea. I didn't find the technological section that intuitive at first, and it felt like the tech development was a little more hard-won here than Imp1. However, the list of tech developments is huge - something like 3-4 TIMES the number of advancements as Imp1 - making the development of a technical "direction" another priority for the player. In Imp1, tech basically fell into your lap, and the tree was so narrow that by the end, everyone eventually had the same things. I doubt that will be the case here, and this alone will provide a lot of replay value.

Finally, the tutorial was very good at explaining how the system worked. Rather than forcing the player the read it out of a manual, the tutorial is in the game, and was sufficient to get this reviewer playing without the tedious RTFM.

The AI seems significantly better in Imp2 than it was in Imp1. After a few playings of Imp1, it was evident that certain strategies were consistently rewarding. I haven't yet found that yet - the searching is the fun. The Tactical Combat is still a blast, and they've made some much-needed changes to balance attackers and defenders. In Imp1, there was a limit to the number of attackers, but not defenders, so repeated hurling of piecemeal assaults was necessary to batter down a particularly strong city. Limiting both sides makes this much more even.

I have the usual small assortment of quibbles. At some point, Frog City made the determination that this game would be representational of the Euro-American explorations, and have omitted any references to tribes or peoples outside of the western hemisphere. I think this is unfortunate, but can probably be remedied by a simple patch if the gaming community clamors for it. Further, I'd be interested in seeing a more historically accurate situation - much stronger armies in the old world powers making that situation militarily static, until the balance is tipped by the addition of resources from the New World. Currently they've modeled this by giving the Major Powers wimpy forces that must be built up. As a student of diplomatic history, I think this gives too much advantage to the power that DOESN'T explore, as I had some early successes by exclusively building troops and attacking another major power right out of the gate. If this tactic would prove sustainable for the full game is in doubt, of course.

In play, the game 'feels' right. As you can presume, I played a LOT of Imp1. This is similarly presented as the former title, but it definitely has a sense of Westphalia and the Age of Reason. Maybe it's a confluence of the good music and scrupulous attention to good-looking graphics, but once again, they've achieved a very immersive game. Look forward to the release of the game in the end of March. As I put it to Alan Wasserman, senior producer, playing this whetted my appetite badly. I hadn't even finished the first game, and I was seriously complaining that the map was too small (it's much bigger than the original). In fact, I was already anticipating that I wouldn't get enough - a pretty good sign, in my book. My preview copy (beta) is a really good game. Imperialism 2 looks like it will be a GREAT game, and a worthy successor to it's ancestor.

The company line:

All new high-resolution art and graphics, vibrant colors, engrossing baroque style.

Over 40 military, naval, and civilian units from 300 years of history.

An enhanced AI that has been optimized to make use of nation specific personalities, strategies, and diplomatic agendas.

A hidden New World, different in each game, contains resources and opportunities not found in the Old World.

An ever expanding technology tree offers over 100 technologies and discoveries allow the player to set the direction of their Great Power's development through research.

Robust diplomacy and trade options that figure heavily into gameplay.

Completely revised Tactical Battle System gives more control to players during conflicts.

Face historical foes such as Queen Elizabeth I of England and Cardinal Richelieu of France. Each national leader has their own distinct personality and style of play.

Random events such as plagues and infestations can affect outcome of gameplay.

A new and simplified interface makes the world of Imperialism 2 more accessible to first time players and is more intuitive for experienced players.

Instructive tutorial get players up and running in no time while playing through up to 50 years of the game.

Unlimited gameplay with the choice of playing a historically accurate scenario or randomly generated scenario.

Two level zoom feature lets you take a "grand, strategic" look at the world.

Multiplayer support for up to 6 players.

Previewed by Steve Lieb