If you've been around folks who've played strategy/war games for any length of time, you've probably run into a guy lovingly referred to in gaming circles as a "grognard." A grognard is a person who, especially when playing games based on historical battles, is an expert about everything. They know the forces that took part, the strength of those forces, who was in charge, the weather, everything. And if it's a fictional scenario, you can bloody well bet that these guys know how things "should" work cause they live, eat and breath strategy/war gaming. So you can see that it's awfully hard to please these guys when trying to put together a new war game on the PC.
But the guys at New World Computing just may have hit the spot with their newly released Empire II. Why should this game make the hardest of hardcore wargamers happy? Because when you buy Empire II, you aren't really buying a game, you're buying a game engine. What you get in Empire II is a map designer, unit designer, scenario designer and an icon editor. The many scenarios that are included in the package were made with the same modules you get in the Empire II package. The actual gameplay isn't anything new from any of the other big-name products on the market, and other packages have given scenario editors to design your own battles, but I can't think of any other product that gives the ability to change virtually anything about anything in the game like you can in Empire II.
First, though, let's take a look at gameplay. If you've played any hex-based war games before, then you know how Empire II works. You see the map from an overhead view and your units are represented by counters that look a lot like cardboard cutouts. Each unit has its own movement and combat rating, and certain units have the ability to fire several spaces away. You can play in either sequential mode, where movement occurs in order, or parallel mode, where movement occurs simultaneously. While parallel is probably a little more representative of actual war, I think that the sequential mode lends itself better to gaming, but it's all a matter of taste.
Commanding your units is a matter of choosing a unit and using the tool bar on the right side of the screen to issue orders. You can also call up a menu on each individual unit and issue orders there. Either way, the interface is understandable and easy to use, but it does require a little more clicking than I'd like. The graphics, while functional, are only so-so. All of the standard terrain is here like mountains, rivers, desert, forest and cities, but don't expect them to be anything more than representational of the real thing. But they really can't be described as ugly, but they certainly aren't pretty.
What sets Empire II apart are all of the editors included. A huge HURRAH for the Empire II folks for throwing in all of the stuff they have. The map editor lets you choose the size for the battlefield, then you just pick a terrain tile from the toolbar and put it on the map. Lots of other games give you this option, but Empire II is just getting warmed up.
One of my favorite features is the ability to edit your units. Any attribute of any unit you want to change or create can be done with the technology editor, and there's a lot more to designing units than just assigning movement and combat ratings. Just inside the editor itself, you can change unit movement characteristics, movement terrain modifiers, unit combat characteristics, ranged-fire terrain charts, ranged-fire target modifiers, unit sighting charts, and even unit sound effects. This gives the player the ability to design any kind of weapons and warriors you can think of.
Even the icons can be specialized for each unit through the icon editor, which is nice to have but can be frustrating to work with if you've worked with real paint programs. Once you have the map, unit and icon set that you want, everything can be linked together using the scenario editor. Caveman battles, any battle in actual history, futuristic wars, any wars real or imagined can be created through the combination of all these editors. The only feature I found that was lacking was the ability to create my own terrain pieces. If you create a futuristic army, you're still left with the same terrain that Waterloo was fought on.
Empire II is one of those products that, while very good, will only appeal to a narrow audience. If you're after a strategy/war game that will be fun to play, easy to use, and looks great, then you might be after something like Steel Panthers or Panzer General. But if you find yourself scoffing at the tiny efforts of these game designers to make a real wargame, if you consider yourself among the society of "grognards," you'll enjoy Empire II. It can even be played by multiple players, so you can forget about computer AI and go for a real contest against another human. About the only real shortcomings of this package are the lack of great graphics and the lack of a terrain editor. It's an enjoyable game to have around when you really want to immerse yourself in the technical aspects of war gaming.
