This game is amazing! (Imp II AAR)

**screwtype** · 10-13-2006, 18:59

I'm talking about my old favourite, Imperialism II

After I finished telling econ21 how good I was at this game, I went back to it to prove the point - and lost six campaigns in a row!

Bruised and battered, and considering admitting defeat and winding the difficulty level back a bit, I decided to give it one more try. I thought perhaps I'd been getting a bit overconfident so this time I concentrated on expanding my labour force at the expense of everything else.

I'm please to say it worked - but I can't help thinking I had a bit of luck. The AI, for once, seemed to get a slow start and didn't make an early declaration of war on me. This gave me the little break I needed to build up my economy a bit. In fact I did such a good job that by about 1620 I had pulled right away from the bottom of the ladder and was third most powerful faction!

This caused the AI factions to decide to pick on somebody else for a change, so they all declared war on Spain instead of me. Woohoo! I saw my chance and added my own DOW on Spain (unlike a normal DOW, which upsets your AI competitors, DOW'ing a country which is already at war with other factions gives you a substantial popularity boost with those factions).

Because Spain was busy trying to fight off half a dozen different countries, it was relatively easy for me to grab a couple of her home provinces that were grain rich. Having got what I wanted, I then quickly made peace, fortified the two captured provinces and connected their food resources up to my economy. This in turn enabled me to rapidly increase my labour force, from 30 to a total of 50 - enough to make a real game of it.

A little later I decided to risk a DOW on a minor faction, to grab just one more grain rich province. I figured this would give me the decisive break, but when I did the DOW, Spain took over the minor nation and DOW'd me! Fine - even with the new provinces, she really wasn't strong enough to stop me, so I took the province I wanted and made peace again.

I was then able to crank up my labour force rapidly from 50 to 80 - but here's where the game gave me a suprise. The AI factions all suddenly realized I was gaining a decisive break and went nuts, DOW'ing all the minor factions left right and centre! In no time the AI had gobbled up virtually all the minor factions' territory in a desperate attempt to stay competitive!

Well - too bad guys, I've got the lead and there's no way you're gonna stop me now

But that's what I love about this game - there is so much thought that went into the design, that even after playing hundreds of campaigns, it's still giving me a challenge and the AI is still capable of suprising me. It behaved just like a human intelligence in this one - great stuff!