Empire Total War is the latest release in the Total War series and as such, had much to live up to. It surely didn’t disappoint. The two biggest additions to this release are naval battles and additional theatres to play in. Total war addicts will remember that in previous games, the games scope was limited to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Empire extends gameplay to India and the New World with a clever interface that makes it easy to manage your empire in various theatres.

While this means lots more potential in terms of diplomacy, trade and conquest, it also means you have to be very careful how you manage your empire, more so if you’re playing as one of the Colonial factions such as Great Britain or France. There is also a wide range of factions to play as, from the European powers such as Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Spain, to Old World factions like the Ottomans and Maratha Confederacy. It’s unclear right now how you can unlock the rest of the factions such as the Cherokee and Mughal Empire, but it still makes for extremely immersive gameplay.

One disadvantage of having such a wide range of factions is that it can slow down gameplay.  On the system that we tested it, the time per turn slowed as the game wore on to an almost unbearable three minutes.

Battles:

The other major addition to Empire is naval battles. In previous total war games, it was the land battles that brought realism, strategy, and stunning graphics all into one neat package, Empire has picked up where they have left off. Though playing on the highest graphics setting can be very taxing on your pc, it is certainly worth it as you watch hundreds of individually animated troops fire volley after volley into each other and be torn apart by grape shot. Empire merely extended this to naval battles. Here, as with land battles, there is a bit of a learning curve as ambitious generals must understand how to use the wind, various ship and shot types, and strategy to beat their opponents. The only drawback is that the AI isn’t quite up to par, even on the highest difficulty setting. However, it is still tremendously worth it.

Characters:

Unlike other Total War games, Empire places more emphasis on espionage, diplomacy, trade and global strategy. Each civilization comes with two agents; gentlemen and rakes for western powers, and hashishins or thugees and eastern scholars for eastern powers. The scholars and gentlemen can be used to increase the speed of technology research at your own institutions or to steal technologies from others.

The technology tree is the same for all civilizations, however, it’s divided into three parts and various sub trees so you have to be careful where and when you want to research certain technologies to reap the benefits of research. Rakes, hashishin and thugees are used as spies, to sabotage enemy towns, or assassinate enemy characters and can be extremely useful when used properly.

Trade & Diplomacy:

In Empire, blockading ports or raiding trade routes has severe consequences for the other civilization and over several turns can end up choking your enemy. As such, a strong navy is crucial to the maintenance and expansion of your empire and you have to be careful to spend the appropriate amount of money and research on it. It also helps to have trade agreements with other large empires, as that will generate more income than smaller trade routes. Another change in Empire was with diplomacy. Now, not only can you see your citizens’ attitude towards another nation, but you can see their attitude towards you, and can influence it with trade and military agreements and gifts. It also helps to have military agreements with a few strong powers as that will deter potential aggressors, or at least make it easier to retaliate when they do attack.

This also means that you have to be careful who you attack as they could have military agreements with other nations which could result in the loss of trade agreements, or worse, blockades, raids and conquest. In Empire it is no longer you against the world, but rather your allies against your foes, and if you pick and choose your battles accordingly you can make substantial gains in very little time.

The Final Word:

Empire is an extremely ambitious game that raises the bar for what strategy games should be like in terms of sheer scope, depth, gameplay, and immersive battles. While it has its flaws, they can be fixed for the most part with a few good patches, and shouldn’t detract from the fact that Empire is an exquisite game and thoroughly worth the money.