Review: Empire: Total War

Powdered wigs are an underused accessory among video game characters. Until now, the Total War strategy series has neglected the days of muskets and grapeshot in favor of swords and legionnaires. Empire: Total War, however, is focused entirely on the 18th century and the new setting results in the biggest step forward yet for a series that was already spectacular.

As with previous games in the series, Empire's gameplay is composed of two parts: a turn-based map view where you manage your territories and armies and real-time battles on land and sea. The map view is a bit different this time around. Instead of territories being handled as one uniform block of space (like Risk), they're now regions with several different locations within them. Dockyards, farms, mines, etc can be attacked and defended separately from the capital cities. It enables you to wage wars of attrition, destroying the food supply and sources of income of an enemy territory rather than attacking the more heavily-defended cities.

You can create custom real-time battles from the main menu but to experience the turn-based aspect of the game as well you'll play one of two different campaign modes: Road to Independence or Grand Campaign. Road to Independence is a four-episode campaign that chronicles the start of the United States, from the first settlement at Jamestown to the Revolutionary War. It's essentially an extended tutorial, with more and more gameplay elements gradually added over time. The storyline gives a little extra meaning to your victories, as well. You're not just winning a battle - you're building a nation.

The Grand Campaign might not have a storyline but it's far more replayable. You choose one of eleven nations across three theaters (America, Europe, and India) and control them for either fifty or a hundred years. Every nation starts with a different set of territories and resources at their disposal, making each Grand Campaign a unique challenge. Just as importantly, each nation starts with a different set of relationships with the other countries. When playing as the Maratha Confederacy (a faction in India), I had to wrest control of the subcontinent from the hostile Mughal Empire. Once I was on the brink of defeating them, I was attacked by Persia, a country who was hostile toward me due to religious differences.

There's a lot of micromanagement for your nation but diplomacy, researching technologies, building units/structures and managing government policies are all handled through very straightforward interfaces so it's all a bit less daunting. The fact that supporting buildings like farms and ports are separate from the cities on the world map makes it easier to keep track of the different renovations and repairs you're currently working on. If you enjoy the real-time battles more and aren't as keen on the Civilization-ish stuff, it doesn't take long to do all the nation management stuff quickly so you can go back to invading shit. Likewise, if you're not good at the real-time battles, you can just auto-simulated battles and spend your time with governance instead. Personally, I found the battles to be a sort of reward for my administrative work.

Gunpowder appeared in previous Total War games but in Empire it's a much more central component of warfare. While there's still melee units and your riflemen will brandish bayonets or swords if needed, the battles in Empire require you to master the use of rifle and cannon units. Rifle squads and artillery can rain destruction on units from vast distances so you'll need to use the terrain or buildings to provide cover for your advances. Artillery can also punch holes in fortress walls and tear down buildings so mobility is key as well.

The best land battles by far are the assaults on fortresses because a city is usually at stake and the combat is focused on one spot on the map. They're challenging and impressive. While artillery bombards the fortress with cannon fire, your infantry will scale the walls with ropes and cross swords with the enemy rifleman holed up on the fortress walls. It's fun and also amazing to watch. These fights are hampered slightly by nagging path-finding issues, though. Troops take strange routes when trying to navigate in and around fortresses. At one point I was trying to get my riflemen from the fortress wall to the center of the fortress. You would think they'd head down the ramp into the fortress but instead they climbed back down the front side of the fortress with ropes and then stormed the front gate.

The only thing more visually impressive than fortress attacks are the new real-time naval battles. Players can send up to twenty ships into battle against an opposing navy. You're given an impressive amount of control over individual ships - in addition to managing their speed and angle of approach, you can also manually fire the ships' port and starboard cannons and select from three different types of ammunition. However, things get a lot more chaotic when you're controlling multiple ships. When left to their own devices, battleships take less than stellar angles in combat. They require more micromanagement than you can muster in these situations. The game lets you group ships together but other than moving them in unison is the only thing you can effectively do with said group. Again, these battles look great so I don't mind just pointing my ships in the general direction of the enemies and sitting back to watch but I wish I felt more in control of these encounters.

You can also play land and sea battles with up to seven other players but the real treat will be the multiplayer campaign mode that The Creative Assembly plans to add in a future future. This isn't the only reason Empire will get better over time; my experience with the game was relatively bug-free but many users have experienced crashes and save file corruption. These glitches are obviously frustrating but they don't change the fact that Empire: Total War is one of the best empire-building games you'll ever find. If powdered wigs come back into style, it's because of this game.

Players:1-8 players

Platform(s):PC

Developer:The Creative Assembly

Publisher:Sega

ESRB:Teen

Rating: