Reviewed: June 23, 2005
Reviewed by: John DeWeese

Publisher
Eidos Interactive

Developer
Pyro Studios

Released: May 17, 2005
Genre: RTS
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen

6
8
7
6
6.9

System Requirements

American gamers may not as familiar with the era as they are with World War II or the Civil War, but the little Corsican in the funny hat has recently started a new trend in strategy gaming. Cossacks 2 and the upcoming Age of Empires 3 are also set in the same overall period as Imperial Glory, and all three games allow players to build an empire in 19th Century Europe.

Imperial Glory sets itself apart from the competition by copying the style of Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War. This is not a real-time strategy game like Cossacks 2 or Age of Empires, as diplomatic and economic decisions are turn-based. You can recruit a wide variety of units - from lancers to riflemen to 12-pound cannons - then move them across the strategy map against rival empires. When battles do occur, the action switches to real-time, allowing players to command hundreds of soldiers on land or dozens of warships at sea.

Imperial Glory offers:

• Gameplay as one of five great empires: Austria, England, France, Prussia and Russia.
• 3-dimensional land and sea battles on fully interactive maps, where units can take cover in buildings or behind walls
• A strategy map featuring 50 provinces and 30 maritime regions
• 5 Historic battles and multiplayer action

Terrain is more than decoration. Your troops gain a big advantage if they can take cover in the woods, behind walls, or within churches and houses. You can also choose several formations when deploying soldiers, from creating a square to stop cavalry to fanning out in a double line for maximum firepower.

I wouldn’t say the computer is brain-dead, but the AI lacks aggression even on hard settings. Too often the computer allowed me to flank without trying to outmaneuver me. The AI likes to sit on key terrain, but I found it pretty easy to coax the computer away from the town or hilltop it was guarding. My own soldiers tended to ignore enemy units 20 feet away if I didn’t give the command to fire or charge.

The French troops were the worst, always smoking and eating cheese when they should be marching and trying to surrender as soon as I zoomed away. Just kidding – nobody ever runs away because Imperial Glory doesn’t have a morale system. This makes cheap militia into fearless commandos, able to charge into cannon fire and live long enough to wipe out the entire battery. Cavalry are equally overpowered since infantry squares can never rout them with musket fire. There is also no way to order a retreat if a melee goes bad.

Considering the micro-management involved, I was dumbfounded to find no way to pause or slow down a battle to give new orders. There was also no speed-up button to get troops across the battlefield and into action.

Battles are tiny – the biggest showdowns I played had less than 2,000 per side. I understand my computer would explode if a game tried to faithfully recreate battles with half-a-million men, but why can’t I command a real army?!?

The land battles were at least decent fun. Unless you are playing one ship against one ship, the naval battles are hopeless. You have to micromanage every ship, making sure it’s using the wind to best advantage and firing a broadside at just the right moment. The battle boundaries are so small that if you pay too much attention to one fight, the rest of your other ships are bound to sail off the map and be counted as casualties. Your ships may very well crash into each other despite your best efforts at trying to create some kind of formation. The classic moment came when I tried boarding an enemy sloop with my flagship but ended up colliding with the smaller ship’s stern and sinking instead.

If the campaign had as many rough spots as the real-time battles, Imperial Glory would have earned a 5 for gameplay. Fortunately, this title starts to shine in the strategy mode as you build your empire starting with a handful of ships and regiments. There are many options for world domination, from taking neutral countries over by storm to expanding slowly using bribes and propaganda. You can set up trade routes, build newspaper offices and embassies in foreign countries to boost your empire’s prestige, even fund rebellions in enemy empires.

There are four resources you need to watch: gold, raw materials, food and people. You can increase production by building factories, food warehouses, or hospitals for a bigger population. You cannot raise taxes for more gold, but you can easily set up land and sea trade routes. You can also try and trade food or raw materials with other countries, though the computer will normally force you into buying high and selling low.

Every country in the game has a sympathy rating of between 1 and 100. If you play nice by giving gifts or allying with neutrals, your rating goes up. If you play the bad guy by randomly attacking neighboring provinces or breaking treaties, you will lose sympathy across the region. The good news is if a sympathy score reaches 100, that country and all its armies join your empire for free. You can never annex another empire, but you can bring them to your side by marrying off an heir.

Being able to capture countries without firing a shot is a nice touch, and unlike Rome: Total War, alliances actually work. Allies will come to your aid in most situations, but be aware that the same is true when attacking another empire’s buddy nation. The computer can be pretty ruthless, watching for you to invade another country three provinces away before launching its own sneak attack. The game seems to enjoy punishing over-ambitious players. It’s ok to defend your own land, but go on the offensive and you could start a war with several countries at once. There is nothing more frustrating than watching a former ally join another empire’s alliance, all because you got greedy.

New troops can be recruited only in capital cities, but if you absorb another country into your empire, you can raise armies in their capitals as well. Units can only move one province per turn month, so it’s important to have frontline production centers for cranking out reinforcements. A nice feature is the officer system – as your captains gain experience they become colonels and even generals, allowing them to move more regiments at a time.

You can unlock new technologies, units, and tactics by using the research system. If you want to take great leaps forward quickly, you can also undertake optional quests. For example, the Rosetta Stone quest requires you launch an expedition of ships and infantry to Egypt, after which you are rewarded with increased research points for a game year.

What more could you want from a strategy title with working diplomacy and an easy-to-use economic system? Well, more balance would be nice, since the Prussians are almost unplayable because of constant attack and no real advantages until late in the game. The Austrians and French do well in the beginning but tend to suffer in the middle game. The British can sit on their island and buy up all the prime real estate, while the Russian empire is large enough to absorb most attacks. Bigger starting armies for the weaker empires would be a big improvement.

The battlefields are overly detailed, with small hamlets, windmills, and lush woods dotting the landscape. You may even see the occasional cow wander across the field as your troops march by. Every battle map is region specific, from gold-domed churches and frozen lakes in Russia to sun-drenched hills lined and vineyards in Italy. If a battle takes place in a capital province, you will get the chance to fight in the recreated streets of Paris or outside the emperor’s palace in Vienna.

I liked the look of musket and cannon fire, especially how a barrage from 12-pounders could send an entire regiment flying. Hand-to-hand battles just don’t look realistic. Soldiers just swarm around in a circle like a frat party gone bad. I’ve read the American version comes without blood and gore, so maybe melees are more intense in the European version.

The naval maps were surprisingly the best, featuring wooden ships recreated down to the porthole and realistic waves. The strategic map looks like a handcrafted Risk board. Your units all carry brightly colored banners that gently flutter in the wind. I must also give the designers kudos for creating easy-to-use overlays that show how much each province is producing and how many trade routes you have set up.

Gamers with a higher-end machine will get the most out of the graphics, although they still looked good on my dated machine. Some of the maps seemed too colorless, but I could not determine if this was because of my graphics card or because the artists were trying for a darker look.

You don’t have an adviser talking to you like in Total War, but unit commanders do give basic commands such as “move the guns forward.” The accents are the most realistic I’ve heard in historical games, but then again your soldiers don’t talk much. Gunfire and the clash of swords against bayonets sound realistic. My only complaint about the sounds of battle is a bug that causes units assaulting a building to keep screaming, “Attack! Attack!”

The campaign’s pace is slooowww, forcing players to spend many turns building up units and infrastructure before launching into world conquest. There will be long periods of cold war stand-offs where two alliances must carefully position themselves for an attack. Real-time strategy fans or those who liked Rome: Total War’s fast paced battles are likely to be turned off by Imperial Glory’s laid-back pace.

The multiplayer option seems promising, but I could find only a handful of opponents playing at any one time on Game Spy.

If you are a big Napoleonic fan or enjoy a turn-based game where diplomacy is more important than combat, Imperial Glory is a good buy. I’d recommend waiting for the price to drop about $10 before picking it up otherwise.

A game set in Napoleonic times should allow you to control a vast empire. With battles that feature only a few hundred troops per side, I felt like I was watching a skirmish rather than a critical battle. The tactical game has too many overpowered units, while certain empires in the campaign need a much needed boost. Naval battles – something the Total War series doesn’t offer - should have been a big plus for Imperial Glory instead of the game’s weakest link. Imperial Glory outdoes Rome: Total War in terms of diplomacy and a streamlined economy, but that doesn’t entirely make up for the lack of action in battle mode.

The graphics are slick and I can tell a lot of historical research went into making this game, but I can’t shake the feeling that the Pyro designers are still using muskets while the competition has moved on to assault rifles.