For attacks, the province has to be adjacent or have a beachhead established from the sea. Strategic conquest is similarly simplified in a useful way: instead of moving troops tile-by-tile, you simply choose which province you'd like to move them to. Contrast this especially with Colonization, which has an equally large number of resource types but with resource pools and production local to each town, resulting in an utter slog. This simplification allows Imperialism II to have a pretty complex economy with more than a dozen different resource types.
#Imperialism 2 windows 10 how to#
There's no decisions to be made about how to develop resource tiles, only which ones to prioritize. This would seem an oversimplification, but in the context of 16th-19th century empires, it's sufficiently accurate.Ī second, more subtle simplification is that each resource tile can only produce one thing. All industrial production and unit creation is done there, and all resources gathered are stored in a single pool. Imperialism II cuts through this whole problem by centering all economic activity on your capital. At the start of the game, when you have only one or a handful of bases, each detailed management decision is important, but near the end, the game becomes a slog of making lots of little rote decisions. To be successful, you must expand and conquer, but this expansion means that you have an ever-increasing number of bases (cities, planets) to administer. The core problem with many 4X games, especially the Civilization series, is that the game really bogs down over time. Having given an enthusiastic overview of the game, I'm going to dig into some of the reasons why I think this is such a great game. (And it can be turned off if you want.) At a strategic level, the AI is probably not as clever as it could be, but there's plenty of thinking to be done in terms of where to attack, where to feint, blockade, dig in. The turn-based tactical combat is fairly simple but effective, relying on positioning and applying the right force at the right point. Strategic conquest happens at the level of provinces. This is not to say that the game is a pure economic simulation: there's plenty of conquest too, as much as you want. But creating an empire must be a carefully balanced upwards spiral of all your concerns - by mid-game, the difference between a well-managed empire and one stunted by bad decisions is vast. The game doesn't force you to commit to a path: you can switch industrial production from one turn to the next, or turn half your workers into soldiers if you have the resources. Lots of resources but no fleet to bring it in? Tough luck, should have planned better. Have lots of iron? Useless without lots of wood.
And this resource allocation matters: it's a game for people who like to plan out dependencies. This sounds like a lot, but the game lays it out in a very clean fashion, allowing you to allocate your resources as you see fit. Furthermore, skilled workers want luxuries from the new world, and you need money to do research and fund conquests, which you can acquire through trade or the import of precious materials like metals and gems from the new world. Workers and troops do need food, however, so you must also expand your food production. The finished resources can then be used to create further tile improvements, military units, additional shipping capacity, fortifications, or used to hire more workers. Once in the capital, the raw materials can get processed into finished resources by the nation's workforce. To get access to these resources, the tiles first need to be developed, and then connected up to the player's capital by a land or sea route. The game world is divided into provinces belonging to some player, and each province is made of landscape tiles, some of which can produce raw materials. It's clearly a spiritual predecessor to Paradox Interactive's various Europa Universalis / Crusader Kings / Victoria games.
You explore and conquer the new world and eventually vie for dominance of Europe with the other major powers.
It's a grand strategy game that has you play as a major European power, starting in the 16th century.
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