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REVIEWS

Imperialism 2 is the descendant of one of the more successful strategic simulations in the last decade. Like its forefather, it is turn-based and focussed on the strategic development and advancement of the player’s country largely from an economic viewpoint. The differences between Imp1 and Imp2 are significant, but mainly subtle; nobody who cut their teeth on Imp1 would have any trouble immediately jumping into a game of Imp2 and being fairly successful.

There is a significant change of focus from the first game that illuminates most of the systemic differences in strategy between 1 and 2 – where Imp1 was a 19^th-century based game, Imp2 begins in the 16^th century. Thus the intent of the designers seems to have been to heighten gameplay by introducing (among other things) tightened econometrics, an emphasis on "New World" politics and expansion, and a generally higher cost to military activities. Did they succeed? Let’s see...

Players of Imp1 will first notice the distinct esthetic improvement of the interface. From Rococo screen details (there’s probably a specific architectural word for "funky little decorative curlicue detail-thingies that sit in corners" but I don’t know it) to a subtle period-appropriate background to the info window, a lot of useful work was done on the interface to support an immersive atmosphere. Each information screen is carefully designed to appear as "in-period" as possible. Ironically, one of the only departures from an otherwise consistent design philosophy is the disappearance of the "newspaper" format of presenting turn action summaries from Imp1. Instead, they have gone with a disappointingly humdrum hot-text list of events. I daresay a sheaf of ‘handbills’ (similarly hot-text’d) or something would have been a much better solution.

Similarly, sound in a strategic wargame is usually an also-ran; the "action" (such as it is) is cerebral and doesn’t commonly require the support of flashy audiotechnics. Frog City wisely recognized that aural cues are nevertheless a major enhancement to the "you-are-there" factor. Like a good movie, you shouldn’t really notice the music or background. Imp2 provides a queue of sounds that are everything they should – and shouldn’t – be.

As mentioned above, the gameplay is not distinctly different from Imp1, but there are subtle changes that ostensibly address some of the issues raised by the newsgroups with Imp1, as well as provide new challenges. To start, the world is divided into two main sections, the "old" and "new" worlds. At the start of the game, the Old World is made up of the major countries and some minors just like Imp1. However the map (significantly larger than Imp1) is now roughly 60%+ obscured ala standard generic "explore and conquer" games since Empire. You must send ships (later explorers) to discover the New World and the provinces and peoples in it.

Interestingly, the goal of the game has nothing intrinsically to do with the New World. Each major power is divided into 5-7 provinces. (Minors are 1-5 provinces.) To win the game, you must control 30 Old World provinces. So the New World, as is historically correct, is in itself irrelevant in the competition between the Major Powers. Instead the New World is an instrumental good; the game could conceivably be won by a power having no New World provinces – but this is highly unlikely. The New World has at least half the world’s wealth and a host of raw materials (such as tobacco and sugar) which are invaluable in the expansion of an Old Worlder’s economy.

Frog City did make a design decision in clearly focussing on what we would call a strict historical definition of "New World" – there is no Far East, no India, Africa, or Oceania. The provincial names are straight from a history, and the inhabitants are pure Western Hemisphere (the Cherokee, the Incas, the Aztecs, etc). Personally I see two ways interpret this. First, they could be cannily planning for a much-desired sequel adding new minors, new raw materials, and new horizons. Alternately, they could simply have wanted to limit the scope so they could address the issues specific to the American explorations.

I hope the first case is true, since clearly the second isn’t. Frankly, there IS no engagement on North and South American historical issues. It’s unreasonable that an economocentric game that purports historicity could entirely omit subjects such as slavery, disease, population export, and indigenous oppression. These simply don’t appear. I don’t object to their omission, particularly, although their (at least optional) inclusion might have made for an interesting philosophical as well as strategic game. I guess the market will decide if their decision works, for whatever reason.

Beyond this initial distinction, the game play of Imp2 is still the 4X system of Imp1 – eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, eXterminate. Your provinces are populated with a number of raw material sources (that you have to discover) which you then develop. Once developed, the raw materials are transported to your "industry" for conversion to final products which then can be used to further develop your raw material sources.

The transport system has been slightly changed from Imp1. Previously you had a limited rail capacity with which you had to manually expand and build depots to gather raw materials. This has been replaced by a road network (16^th Century, remember?) which automatically gathers and transports any raw material available nearby. Not however that this capacity is unlimited; roads can only gather a single resource from a single space per turn, until technological improvements are applied. Sea transport, a staple in Imp1, is basically unchanged.

The incoming raw materials are converted and processed at your capital, as before. But the industry screen isn’t changed – it’s gone. The familiar "cityscape" in which you built industries is now rationalized into the construction of goods, and there are subscreens for the hiring of labor and levy of troops. The manufacture of finished products has been distinctly simplified. All the raw/finished product ratios are now 2/1 (i.e. bronze is 1 copper + 1 tin, finished iron is now two iron ores, and finished fabrics are 2 of either wool or cotton), the end result being that manufacturing and economic expansion are a little more predictable and plannable. Despite the loss of a pleasant interface, I think the new industry screen is a much more efficient method of presenting the player with crucial information.

The previous Imp1 process of leveraging your labor through training is carried on here, but now trained workers require luxuries – for example sugar, tobacco, and fur hats – or they won’t work. Food is also MUCH more important than the original game – a reflection of the tightening of the economic model and a fair approximation of the earlier time period. These two facets combine to show the New World’s integral role in economic expansion. A power relying solely on peasant production (the initial level of worker) will quickly be outstripped by competitors using the 4x and 12x productivity multipliers of the better-trained workers – and sugar, tobacco, and furs are found only in the New World.

The units are essentially also the same (albeit with more variation thanks primarily to enhanced research alternatives mentioned later). You start with a relatively simple choice of cheap foot or horse soldiery, and the basic civilian units (such as the builder that builds mines and farms). As technological advances occur, your choices improve.

The detail combat screens are basically also the same as Imp1 – you can either move your units on a tactical scale and try your hand at simple generalship, or leave the computer to fight your battles (not nearly as well as a human, however). Some small tweaks have been implemented to make the battles more even, and to strengthen the defenses of fortifications – entirely appropriate to the time. With the right mix of forces for the combat, generally any battle is winnable. However, one of the remarkable aspects of 16^th century warfare was the length of sieges – commonly extending over years. It’s disappointing that this isn’t recognized in Imp2. All battles are a win/lose affair.

Commodities (both raw and finished) are bought and sold in the commerce window, basically the same as Imp1: you either buy or sell a product, and indicate (if selling) how much you will sell. Oddly, the Imp1 restriction has also remained – you can at most offer 3 items for sale, and 3 items to buy.

Likewise, it appears that the diplomatic screens are also largely unchanged – you set up trade consulates in minor powers, arrange embassies, and offer trade credits and grants exactly as in Imp1.

Finally, in the game play and interface, the only remaining facet is in technological research, which has been significantly changed for the better. In Imp1 the technology tree was pretty rough; that is, there were not too many choices (a few dozen) which meant that by the end of every game there was really no variation between the surviving powers. In Imp2, this tree has been greatly expanded to around a hundred choices. Additionally, there are a number of tech advances that really give character to a player’s strategy – for example, in Imp2 one must now develop "diplomacy" before embassies can be placed in minor powers. Further, the player can set research goals which are long term objects of research, and the system works to push your tech advances to that point of the tree.

One feature of the game that hasn’t been mentioned yet because it’s everywhere is Autoplay. Each of the various screens of information (transport, industry, trade, research and diplomacy) save one (unit selection) has the option of engaging the computer to manage it for the player. Don’t want to micromanage transport nets? Hit the button,, and the computer will make sure things are taken care of. Don’t want to have to pick through tech advances every other turn? Let the computer do it! Even diplomacy is able to be pawned off on your silicon helper, although I quickly shut it off when I noticed it was dumping grant money to minors whenever I started to build up my cash! (Although one might leave it on and rationalize that the sometimes-mystifying decisions it makes are the result of embassies months away, and the mysterious grants are the corruption also endemic to the governments of the time! It’s not a bug it’s a feature….)

Multiplayer is also present, but as most turn based strategy games, takes a looong time to play. The interface is functional and simple, and I never had trouble connecting to a game, neither did I have any drops or lockups.

That’s a brief overview of a very complex game, and doesn’t totally do it justice, but it gives you a background for my impressions. The tutorial is in-game, where the system walks you through various procedures, and is excellent. The unfortunate part is that because it is so good, one might be tempted to skip the manual entirely. RTFM. That’s all I can say. The manual is so jam-packed with information about nuances of the game and interface, you will simply not be successful until you take the time.

Let me start by saying that I played Imp1 for months and months. It was one of the top ten games ever, in my book. So when I got the opportunity to review Imp2, it was with bated breath that I tore open the box and flung the CD into the drive. Immediately, I loved it. Now, after playing it EXTENSIVELY (despite an annoying bug specific to my system – I installed it on another AMD-equipped box, as well as a Cyrix and two Intels and it worked fine so I know the bug isn’t theirs!) I can say that I like it. I don’t mean to damn them with faint praise – it’s still a great game. But did they started with a pretty damn great game. Did they add onto it enough to justify buying it? Probably; but I have a pretty large list of nits to pick. They are nits most certainly. None of them individually (or even cumulatively) result in a major detraction from the game.

But on to my conclusions…and let me preface them with my personal game ideology. I like a game that has difficulty settings. But I prefer to try to test the game model at a median level as close to reality as possible – higher settings give the computer an unfair advantage, and lower settings commonly cripple cool stuff. So the following comments should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, I think there are problems with the food model. Now, I was playing with the complex food economy enabled – I suppose I could have just shut it off and probably wouldn’t have had such an issue. But if I have to turn a feature off to find it acceptable, I don’t think that’s much of a feature. So please bear that in mind. Imp2 is fortunately equipped with three (yes, three!) full screens of options that can be toggled on or off (like complex food economy) or sliders where you can gradually increase the computer’s advantage against the player (such as your starting economic grade) or even against the other computer players (such as the New World’s ability to resist everyone).

As I mentioned previously, food is critical in this game. As a starting player, you have several imperatives that you must immediately address – it’s Guns vs. Butter in spades. First, you must secure food resources, hopefully by skillful placement of your capitol. (This can be auto-chosen by the computer.) In fact, it really starts even before that – in the startup of the game, you can choose to use the "real world" map, with a rough form of Western Europe and play history. Alternately you can choose the random map generator (again, like Imp1 every map has a key word, so you can return to a specific configuration later). In either case, you have to very carefully pick your starting power, as some are quite simply unplayable. As advice, I’d strongly recommend re-randomizing until you find a power with at LEAST 18 grain, 4 forests, a horse ranch, 10 hills, 5 mountains, and 5 swamp. You can still get gypped (I had a major that had 14 mountains and got 1 copper mine – agh!) but this would be the minimum playable form.

But to return to my point, you have several imperatives. First, secure food for your people. Now, assuming you are playing with a complex diet, your workers will each require 1 grain + a meat or fish (remember that everything is built on two’s). This means that your first efforts will be to build roads to fields immediately, or you’ve crippled yourself. And you must keep in mind a significant difference between Imp1 and Imp2: in Imp1, you could buy canned food. In Imp2, food is not a commodity! So you spend every turn trying to secure food resources for expansion – which is tedious. I played one game where I couldn’t possibly expand because I didn’t have any more grain. I had 350 units of damn beef in my lockers, but I couldn’t trade it all for a single grain. This really hurts gameplay, and is totally unrealistic.

In any case the food pressure is, in my mind, too dominant. Let it be an issue when you’ve industrialized and you have teeming masses of workers in your city. OK granted that’s a little out of time scale. But I don’t recall reading that the development of the Dutch mercantilists was hindered by the fact that they didn’t have enough fish! It should be in the game, yes. But it shouldn’t be such a huge factor.

The second imperative (initially) is expansion – you need to secure the resources (especially wool, timber, and coal) that will allow you further growth. If you don’t have at least five of each, you’re in for trouble. A very, very important mineral is tin – you need it for bronze, and it’s ONLY found in swamps. Find it, and hold it. In the mid- and late game bronze is so critical, it’s commonly the highest priced commodity giving you a 2-edged sword: you can use the bronze to build your army, or if everyone loves you, sell it for a tidy sum.

A major focus of gameplay (and presumably of the FAQ’s and conversation Imp2 will generate) is the method the player takes to dealing with minors (as in Imp1) and importantly the New World. One can start throwing military units into the New World with impunity, and assuming the start options aren’t biased against military activity, you will have some success. But you will be left with far-flung dependencies you cannot defend, and your budget will break. Political offensives – placing embassies and buying raw resources in the new world (once you have the trader unit) – are a little slower and over time can be as expensive, but the gains are important. Every time the minor sells material, you get a cut which mitigates the high cost of embassies and (almost as importantly) doesn’t take any of your transport capacity.

A word of play advice – if you pursue the diplomatic option, you might be a little nervous that other powers look to be snapping up minor provinces across the map. Don’t worry needlessly. In the mid- to late game when you have strong relationships with minors, when they attack the minors, you have the option of coming to the minor’s defense. If you do, it’s not unlikely that the major power will accept a peace proposal (if you have a military worth talking about). The key is: if you come to the minor’s defense, the minor joins your empire, as if you conquered it. Thus you can gain 4 or more provinces at a sweep, for no cost in blood, treasure, or reputation. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that you gain any of the minor’s units, which is a pain.

As is typical (for me) I have a short list of nits to pick:

• I despise "require the CD in the drive to play". Everyone has cd burners – if they want to be complete scum and copy a game, they can. Give up and let it die the same death to which we consigned "text document checks".
• I didn’t see it in the docs, but it should be noted that while you can build ports and roads in friendly minors, and of course you can build roads in conquered provinces, but you cannot connect these roads. It only catches you once, but what a pain to spend 5 timber and 5 vital iron to learn!
• Circumstances didn’t let me check this, but it appears that minor state militaries are retreating to non-contiguous areas?
• Tech improvement costs are too steep in the middle stages of the game – the fact that to double the output of a resource (once you have the tech for it) you have to spend 4 times the resource cost frankly sucks. This needlessly pressures the mid-game, and slows down the players right when they should be more focussed on the actions of enemies.
• If you buy a minor port, and an enemy has built a road from that port, you cannot control, tax or intercept resources shipped by that enemy.
• Some of the unit movement is clumsy due to the computer thinking every move is a build-action. In specific circumstances things become impossible – for example, if you have an engineer in one hex, and you want him to move to the next WITHOUT building a road there, you can’t. You have to move him more than one hex away, and then the next turn move him back.
• It would be nice if your units were shown in abstract on the large-scale map – sometimes it’s hard to find ships. Similarly, it would be nice if the large-scale map showed what areas are explored and which not.

So what are my final conclusions? I handed the rough draft of this review to a number of friends and their opinion was that I generally didn’t like the game. That is a complete mistake. The fact of a review is that the complaints take a lot more wind to express. I liked Imperialism 2. It’s going to replace Imp1 in my top-ten games ever, mainly because the interface is better-designed, information is presented much better, and the gameplay – while still economically focussed – is still more comprehensive. The AI is better than Imperialism 1, and, well, it’s a better game; the same game, but better.

Reviewed by Steve Lieb

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