Posted March 24, 2014
After playing the game for a while, I decided "Hey, I should write a review. Those I found on the main page were always lacking in some way." So I did just that. Trouble is, I had too much to say. If you're looking for something that covers most of the game, hopefully this helps out. If not... Well, I'm not sure why you'd be reading all this other than boredom.
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I wont compare the game to Total War or any other hoopla we might call its contemporaries, mostly because I haven't played them before, and because this game has nothing to do with them. So, let me start by saying that Imperial Glory isn't a bad game- if you're into the Napoleonic Wars setting, strategy, empire management and stripped-down RTS. Also speaking as someone who made the questionable decision to completely skip the tutorials, it takes a little bit to wrap yourself around, the management and all the options you have available to you in particular, but it is quite forgiving should you make mistakes out of ignorance.
The core of Imperial Glory is the strategy aspect, the flesh its land battles and the skin that most people peel off and forget, but generally try at least once, its navel battles, and the game can be broken down into these three parts.
Strategy:
If it says anything about the empire management in this game, I didn't fight a single battle in my primary campaign for at least two and a half hours; building infrastructure, handling my empire's economy, slowly working up my image in smaller nations to ultimately annex them- peacefully-, and hopping around from one alliance between X number of major nations to the other dominant alliance with the other half- hell, sometimes I even ended up the big-dog in alliance with smaller, less influential nations like the Papal State, the Two Sicilies, or Egypt.
There are oodles of things to do during this portion, where you look down upon a map of Europe, Turkey and Northern Africa, and I have trouble drawing criticism to it when I've had so much fun with it, but if anything is to be said on that end it's that the economy seems... lopsided. Although you absolutely need every resource (Money, Resources, Population and Food) especially when you're constantly constructing buildings, there seems to be an over importance on Food and Money.
Damn-near everything takes gold, or wants gold. For that reason, it plays perhaps the biggest part in your economy, as you would expect, but the subtler, arguably most important thing you can have is food. With more food, you can maintain larger armies and field (or “sea”, I guess) more ships. In contrast, I found myself oozing resources at every waking moment, so it was often a means to obtain gold through trade, and population... Population is used, for “Quests”, which give empire-wide benefits and can only be claimed by one nation, and for constructing buildings, but that's it. It cannot be traded or in any way exchanged for another, potentially more useful resource.
Land Battles:
There isn't exactly a veritable wealth of experience to pull from when it comes to land battles. Not that I have played this part much- far from it- but because it is fairly historical. You have infantry, cavalry and artillery to choose from. Infantry is broken up into two sorts; range-oriented and “mixed”, as I shall call them. The former is what would come to your mind when you look at old paintings depicting a bunch of lads standing in a line and firing, and the latter is sort of like that, but they have shorter range and can stand toe-to-toe against opponents in melee. Both these types have two incarnations, one being the standard and another “beefed-up” sort. Finally, you have your most elite units, which are mixed as well.
Cavalry consists of hussars, lancers, cuirassiers and dragoons. Not a whole lot to say on them other than that they need to be used creatively, lest they be ripped apart by a hoard of marauding militia. Oh, I forgot to mention militia. That about sums them up. They have sticks. Back to cavalry, they're usually melee-only, and I personally found them best suited to baiting the enemy and circling around to take out artillery batteries. Speaking of artillery, you have three main sorts there, as well; 6-pounders, for infantry, Howitzers, for buildings, and 12-pounders, for both. Howitzers and 12's can be drawn by horses to make them move faster, and a word of advice; Don't set artillery up behind your lines.
So, is the combat any good? Yes, in an almost boardgame-y way. It still controls like most RTS games, but in the end, Imperial Glory's land combat could be described as a means to an end. Still fun, but ultimately this is a strategy game that lets you play out your battles.
Navel Battles:
Playing with ships. Sounds really fun, and I'm sure there are people that would like it in this game, but I'm not that person. At least not as of writing this.
Simply put, it's confusing and complicated. Thankfully it's all on a smaller scale than the land battles, but the one thing that really mangles this part of the game is the fact that you control each ship individually. Rather, you have to control each individually. You can put your cannons on auto-fire, taking away the need to manually fire them when another ship gets in your line of sight, but that doesn't help the flustercluck as a whole.
Even the AI has trouble with this part of the game; It shot its own ships at the start of a round. Don't let any of this dissuade you, though- you don't actually have to do this stuff. You can auto-resolve battles.
Final things to mention are that your units rank up (shown by stars) based on experience and sometimes empire-wide buffs or special buildings, that you put units into commanders to move them around on the map, whom start with three slots and accumulate more depending on their rank (different from units).
Crashes- this game has them. Run it in compatibility mode for XP and run as administrator and they should be done away with or mostly so. All of that being said, for how cheap it is, or if you can grab it for cheaper, I'd recommend it.
---------
I wont compare the game to Total War or any other hoopla we might call its contemporaries, mostly because I haven't played them before, and because this game has nothing to do with them. So, let me start by saying that Imperial Glory isn't a bad game- if you're into the Napoleonic Wars setting, strategy, empire management and stripped-down RTS. Also speaking as someone who made the questionable decision to completely skip the tutorials, it takes a little bit to wrap yourself around, the management and all the options you have available to you in particular, but it is quite forgiving should you make mistakes out of ignorance.
The core of Imperial Glory is the strategy aspect, the flesh its land battles and the skin that most people peel off and forget, but generally try at least once, its navel battles, and the game can be broken down into these three parts.
Strategy:
If it says anything about the empire management in this game, I didn't fight a single battle in my primary campaign for at least two and a half hours; building infrastructure, handling my empire's economy, slowly working up my image in smaller nations to ultimately annex them- peacefully-, and hopping around from one alliance between X number of major nations to the other dominant alliance with the other half- hell, sometimes I even ended up the big-dog in alliance with smaller, less influential nations like the Papal State, the Two Sicilies, or Egypt.
There are oodles of things to do during this portion, where you look down upon a map of Europe, Turkey and Northern Africa, and I have trouble drawing criticism to it when I've had so much fun with it, but if anything is to be said on that end it's that the economy seems... lopsided. Although you absolutely need every resource (Money, Resources, Population and Food) especially when you're constantly constructing buildings, there seems to be an over importance on Food and Money.
Damn-near everything takes gold, or wants gold. For that reason, it plays perhaps the biggest part in your economy, as you would expect, but the subtler, arguably most important thing you can have is food. With more food, you can maintain larger armies and field (or “sea”, I guess) more ships. In contrast, I found myself oozing resources at every waking moment, so it was often a means to obtain gold through trade, and population... Population is used, for “Quests”, which give empire-wide benefits and can only be claimed by one nation, and for constructing buildings, but that's it. It cannot be traded or in any way exchanged for another, potentially more useful resource.
Land Battles:
There isn't exactly a veritable wealth of experience to pull from when it comes to land battles. Not that I have played this part much- far from it- but because it is fairly historical. You have infantry, cavalry and artillery to choose from. Infantry is broken up into two sorts; range-oriented and “mixed”, as I shall call them. The former is what would come to your mind when you look at old paintings depicting a bunch of lads standing in a line and firing, and the latter is sort of like that, but they have shorter range and can stand toe-to-toe against opponents in melee. Both these types have two incarnations, one being the standard and another “beefed-up” sort. Finally, you have your most elite units, which are mixed as well.
Cavalry consists of hussars, lancers, cuirassiers and dragoons. Not a whole lot to say on them other than that they need to be used creatively, lest they be ripped apart by a hoard of marauding militia. Oh, I forgot to mention militia. That about sums them up. They have sticks. Back to cavalry, they're usually melee-only, and I personally found them best suited to baiting the enemy and circling around to take out artillery batteries. Speaking of artillery, you have three main sorts there, as well; 6-pounders, for infantry, Howitzers, for buildings, and 12-pounders, for both. Howitzers and 12's can be drawn by horses to make them move faster, and a word of advice; Don't set artillery up behind your lines.
So, is the combat any good? Yes, in an almost boardgame-y way. It still controls like most RTS games, but in the end, Imperial Glory's land combat could be described as a means to an end. Still fun, but ultimately this is a strategy game that lets you play out your battles.
Navel Battles:
Playing with ships. Sounds really fun, and I'm sure there are people that would like it in this game, but I'm not that person. At least not as of writing this.
Simply put, it's confusing and complicated. Thankfully it's all on a smaller scale than the land battles, but the one thing that really mangles this part of the game is the fact that you control each ship individually. Rather, you have to control each individually. You can put your cannons on auto-fire, taking away the need to manually fire them when another ship gets in your line of sight, but that doesn't help the flustercluck as a whole.
Even the AI has trouble with this part of the game; It shot its own ships at the start of a round. Don't let any of this dissuade you, though- you don't actually have to do this stuff. You can auto-resolve battles.
Final things to mention are that your units rank up (shown by stars) based on experience and sometimes empire-wide buffs or special buildings, that you put units into commanders to move them around on the map, whom start with three slots and accumulate more depending on their rank (different from units).
Crashes- this game has them. Run it in compatibility mode for XP and run as administrator and they should be done away with or mostly so. All of that being said, for how cheap it is, or if you can grab it for cheaper, I'd recommend it.
