My latest foray into this strange and wonderful world has been Empire: Total War, another entry in the Total War series. The second game in the series, Medieval: Total War, remains one of my favorite games of all time, combining Risk-like strategy gaming with real time battles featuring thousands and thousands of troops. And you just can’t go wrong with the Middle Ages. (That game definitely deserves a whole entry unto itself. Hopefully I’ll get around to that one of these days.) After Medieval, I had insanely high expectations for Rome: Total War—it was an equally exciting period, the graphics looked amazing, and the scale was even more epic. Unfortunately, the final game left me underwhelmed. It was fun, sure, but after a while it just got boring and repetitive, and before long it felt more like busy-work. The same is true with Medieval 2: Total War—a lot of the color and atmosphere of the first game was gone—essentially it was Rome with a different coat of paint.
That’s why my first impressions of Empire are fairly positive. For the first time since Rome, this one actually feels like a different game, and in a good way. I wasn’t big on the 18th Century before, but it’s an incredibly rich period, and real time battles where everyone has guns are decidedly different the typical swords and spears. This was the era that brought us Louis XIV, Maria Theresa, George III, and Napoleon, The Seven Years War, various succession wars, the American and French Revolutions, epic battles at sea, and the colonization of North and South America and India. It’s the closest we’ll ever get to a video game adaptation of Barry Lyndon—you can even fight duels! The story based Road to Independence campaign is a lot of fun, and I hope some more mission based gameplay is in the series’ future. There is more empire management, more towns, more strategic options, more battles (this time you can fight at sea), more territories, more diplomatic possibilities—generally more of everything.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t, to put it simply, work. Crashes are constant. There are plenty of bugs. I can’t even check on my empire’s trade status without a giant error that forces me to restart my whole computer. Most disappointing, though, is the difficulty. The other nations are incredibly stupid. Civilization games can be brutally challenging at the highest difficulty levels—not so Total War. Like I said, even in the context of a game called “Total War” I’m not all about world domination. In the real 18th century, wars were fought for years over tiny bits of territory. I want to be able to fight a prolonged struggle in Sweden over a small strip of territory in South America, damn it! Instead what we get are suicidal nations that attack for no reason, and refuse to surrender until they’ve lost every bit of territory. If I conquer Berlin and decisively crush the Prussian army, that should be the end of the war. The more time I spend conquering regions the less time I have to build schools and research philosophy. The battles are awesome, but they should mean something—if I win, the world should take note.
For real 18th Century strategy gaming, then, there’s still nothing better than Risk. Now I know it’s not really set in the 18th Century. The game pieces look sort of like Napoleonic soldiers, and the territories all have archaic names and borders that exist only in the world of Risk. Otherwise, it could be in any time (that’s why the game is so adaptable to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings settings). But I say it’s in the 18th Century, and I have yet to see any reasonable counter arguments to that claim. (I will also accept the early 19th Century, but now we’re just nitpicking.)
The point is, through the years of Warcraft and Starcraft, Civilization and Total War, there’s really no strategic rival for a good game of Risk. Sure, you can’t build infrastructure or fight epic battles, but the pain of human interaction makes up for any deficiencies. A bunch of friends sitting around a Risk game is not unlike a bunch of 19th Century British imperialists sitting around a map of China discussing the opium trade with their thick cigars and monocles. Deals are brokered, alliances formed, friendships challenged, hypocrisies exposed, and snacks consumed. Of course deals and alliances can only go so far, and at the end one player must inevitably toss friendship aside and make a final bid for personal glory, like Napoleon or Alexander before him.
Nothing tests a friendship like a good game of Risk. Everything that happens is random, governed by the roll of the dice. After your brilliant strategy to conquer Iceland with a huge army has been thwarted by an opponent with a single army and a string of unfathomably lucky rolls, you may be tempted to rip the board from the table and use it to wipe that smug grin right off his face. This is normal, and part of what makes Risk such an exhilarating experience. You have no idea what’s going to happen. Ever. No doubt Risk is where the well known phrase “Everyone’s your friend until somebody invades Kamchatka,” originates.
Once Empire gets some of its bugs worked out, it will no doubt be a fantastic strategy game. If multi-player ends up working, it could be a very Risk-like experience indeed. Right now I’m conquering the world as Austria, and I’m certainly having a good time of it. But for pure Enlightenment era bellicosity, there’s no replacement for cranking up Handel’s Sarabande, getting a bunch of Tostitos and up to five of your friends, and proceeding to crush their pathetic dreams of empire under the weight of your own imperial majesty.
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