A very challenging IMP 2 campaign

Don't know if you guys have ever played Imperialism II, but if not, you ought to buy a copy and give it a try. Great little strategy game, you can get it for about $5 these days.

Anyhow, here's a little synopsis of my latest campaign. I wrote it because I rate this as one of my best ever IMP 2 wins. Perhaps it might also inspire someone to take a look at this forgotten little gem of strategy gaming.

I picked Spain for this campaign, because I like a challenge and it was the weakest power, with only 2 iron ore (the minimum for any major power) and NO fertile hills.

IMO picking a country with no fertile hills always makes for the hardest possible game, because you have to find cotton and then research cotton weaving, then conquer a province with some cotton and build it up, before you can expand your workforce or army. Alternatively you can buy some wool or fabric to tide you over but this is more expensive still, and these resources are often not on the market at all early in the game.

There were several extra problems I had however which made this game particularly hard.

The first thing that happened is that I found a diamond tile really early, so I quickly conquered the province and built up some infrastructure for the diamond. Basically, I had to build a port for the diamond. I also developed a lone cotton tile which I hoped would be enough to tide me over the early turns.

Then disaster struck. The dirty, rotten, backstabbing French declared war on me - in 1528!!! I don't think I've ever been DOW'ed so early in a game, I've had a few DOW's in the 1560's but 1528 is unheard of!

I couldn't defend my diamond/cotton province because I simply didn't have a big enough military, and with no fabric to build more units I actually had to abandon it to the French without a fight or risk losing what little army I had. (To add insult to injury, the French ended up as the weakest power in the game).

So I lost not only my diamond and my sole cotton tile, but also the precious infrastructure I had built up, including a port. This set me back by about 10 turns and as anyone knows in this game that early bit of development is absolutely vital, especially at the hardest difficulty level.

To make matters worse, there were no easy "gimmes" amongst the New World capital provinces, all of them were three tenters, and NONE of them had more than about one cotton tile max. However, I did have the good luck to find a second diamond tile shortly after losing the first to the French, and although it was in a capital province it wasn't that strongly held and I managed (just barely) to conquer it. This gave me a modest source of income and I was able to beat off repeated French attempts to invade it with my two carracks.

Since I had no fabric at all, I was forced to use the money from the diamond to do nothing but buy, buy, buy as much wool and fabric as I could lay my hands on. And here's where I had a bit of luck. My only land neighbour in the New World was England, and it was England who happened to have lots of wool, and later fabric, to sell, so this kept England happy and stopped them DOW'ing me. I couldn't have defended my provinces from a land attack with my weak army and lack of fortifications.

Anyhow pretty soon I was way behind the other powers and by the time I got a smallish army together, almost the whole of the New World had been conquered and I ended up with just four New World provinces. I was also getting further and further behind in tech because I had to use all my money to buy fabric from England.

It was pretty obvious that being well and truly in last place the other powers were going to pick on me first and sure enough that's what happened. Almost as soon as the French made peace, I found myself at war with Sweden, then Portugal, then Holland. These three countries continuously made war on me, sometimes alone and sometimes together, for about the next 250 years of the game!

I did think several times of quitting because the situation seemed hopeless, but decided to stick with it to see if I somehow pull the win. Because my NW provinces were completely surrounded by English provinces, the other powers could only attack from the sea, and I managed to beat off I don't know how many sea invasions with my three carracks (until they were finally sunk by accidentally tangling with a galleon). It's just as well I had only the one neighbour in the New World, because in the Old World I had a two province border with Portugal and needed virtually my entire army on that border for most of the game.

I basically had to rely on pikemen, but over time I managed to build eight arquebusiers, with these I eventually conquered one of the Portugese border provinces. It was a tough, touch-and-go battle but I managed to do it by mauling a couple of Portugese attacks on my border provinces and then counterattacking immediately afterward before they had time to rebuild and redeploy their army.

The capture of this Portugese province proved vital because it had some wool, which meant I was no longer entirely reliant on the English (and sea transport) for fabric. Although I still had no navy, my army grew to be big enough to beat off multiple simultaneous sea invasions and fortunately the powers blockading my port would eventually get sick of the lack of progress and make peace, giving me a much needed respite if only for a few turns.

In between the almost continuous wars, I managed to upgrade my arquebusiers to musketeers and use them to take a second Portugese Old World province. At last my fabric problems were over because this one had four wool tiles. Now finally I could utilize one of my country's natural strengths which was the potential for labour from my 23 grain tiles.

All the same by the midpoint of the game I was far behind in tech, the other powers had frigates at sea where I only had galleons, grenadiers when I still had musketeers, and heavy artillery where I only had forts protected by royal artillery. But having six or seven wool tiles courtesy of the Portugese finally enabled me to stop buying fabric from the English and use the money to build spies and tech upgrades instead.Somehow, I managed to just hang on until I got the crucial techs - grenadiers, heavy artillery forts and ships o' the line.

What I did then was strip my workforce back to the minimum while I built SOTL's and grenadiers. I then invaded my worst nemesis Holland, by making three feint attacks to force them to spread their defenders. I captured the crucial province which cut off half their grain, forcing them to transport by sea, and at the same time, blockaded their home port with my fleet of 8 SOTL's. They immediately sortied with 8 or 9 raiders (yes I was still well behind in tech) and a couple of SOTL's but it turns out raiders are no match for SOTL's and I captured a couple and sunk the rest.

I then gradually captured a few more Dutch provinces while building up my blockading fleet. I eventually had 16 SOTL's blockading their port but - just to demonstrate how formidable a foe the Dutch still were - I moved 5 of them away for a moment for an invasion elsewhere and the Dutch immediately sortied with a large fleet and defeated my blockading fleet of 11 SOTL's! Fortunately only about three were sunk and I managed to extricate the rest, combine fleets and buiild a few more, then go back and reimpose the blockade again.

Just to give an idea of how far behind I still was, it was 1766 before I got the "military victories strengthen new units" message (I usually get this about 200 years earlier!) However, by this time I'd taken about half the Dutch provinces, and was about to take the rest when I checked the diplomacy screen and found that the English and Portugese had perfect relations with one another! I realized I had to act quickly before England invited Portugal to join its empire and win the game, so I DOW'ed the Portugese and quickly took their capital to knock them out of the game.

After that, it was pretty much the usual end-game slogfest, I finally managed to take the 32nd OW province and win the game in 1846, but this was definitely one the toughest campaigns I've ever fought!

If you want to try it yourself, type "Dobayag" as the map key (making sure it starts with a capital letter and the rest in lower case) and choose SPAIN. I play at difficulty 400, foraging on, cost of attacking normal, NW defense normal. I think you'll agree it's a very challenging map!