It's Empire, but does it strike back?
The year is 1799. Russia stretches from Northern India to North Sea. Sweden, Persia, Georgia, Poland-Lithuania, Courland and Crimea have been annexed and no longer exist as nations. All that is left from the once-mighty Ottomans are Hungary and Egypt. Prussia has just lost Konigsberg and Silesia, and hangs desperately on to Berlin, listening for the sound of Russian boots. No, this isn't a dream. This is the victorious end of the grand campaign in Empire: Total War.
The latest entry in the Total Way franchise boasts many changes, though most of them of cosmetic nature. The core gameplay is still the same - a mix of turn-based civilization management and real-time battles - and that's a good thing. There are three main non-cosmetic updates. The inclusion of real-time naval warfare, the overseas colonies and trade, and the introduction of territorial upgrades beyond the city walls, where they are vulnerable to raids by invading armies. All three make quite a bit of sense, but the latter works out much better gameplay-wise than the former two. The vulnerability of the sources of income and general well-being of an area adds a great deal to the depth of the game. A damaged building does not produce benefits, and to damage it an army has only to walk over it on the map "Just build everything" strategy used in previous games also no longer works. You simply have to make a choice every time you have an option to construct a building, and it's a choice that will shape the course of you country's development. You'll see what I mean when you place two universities in the same province. Thankfully, you can destroy buildings in E:TW.
Now, the naval warfare, as I mentioned, doesn't work as well. It may be that by virtue of its starting position Russia isn't a very seafaring country in E:TW, and had I played a more navy-focused nation I would have something different to report, but the several navy battles I'd engaged in early in the game turned out to be long, drawn out affairs during which I never really felt in control. Monitoring a ship's damage and maneuvering it in battle seemed to me more of a headache than a pleasure. Later I mostly resorted to auto resolve option.
The colonial trade was somewhere in between the other two major changes, appreciation-wise. It wasn't really a headache, but I never felt the income from the overseas trade to be vital, nor could I quite get a feel for its material influence in the grand scheme of things. I had three fleets sitting on money signs across the world for about fifty years, and barely ever touched them.
The rest of the changes were of minor variety. Characters available to you were changed again. No more princesses or merchants. Now you have gentlemen - scholars and duelers, rakes - spies and assassins, and missionaries. As in previous games, the characters add little. Missionaries are the only ones that seem to make a real impact, converting the population to your faith, pacifying it. The spies are the same as in the previous entries, and the gentlemen might as well be routed automatically to help with research, as technology stealing percentages are so low as to be a waste of time, and dueling - the only activity with its own little movie now - is pretty much pointless.
In other changes, a cabinet of ministers now affect how the country is run depending on their traits. The diplomatic portion of the game has more options. There are more buildings to construct and they have a lot of various benefits and drawbacks. High end units include rocket batteries. Sadly, the before-the-battle general speeches I personally found charming have been removed. You will periodically see pop-ups of historical events happenings along the timeline, but these have no bearing on the course of the game itself, and seem to be included only for the sakes of trivia and immersion.
Overall, E:TW seems to be the same game we all loved with deeper country-management options and a couple of additions I could do without. It would have been an 8, had I not been allowed to continue playing the same game beyond 1799. Now I am looking forward to gazing at Africa across Gibraltar.