Imperial Glory

by Eidos

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007LWMRG
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: April 26, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,123 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC | Edition: Standard | Language: English

From the Manufacturer

Forge the destiny of the world amid the turbulent times of the early 19th century. Lead one of the Great Empires in titanic conflicts, or achieve economic dominance backed by shrewd diplomats and resolute military. Choose to rule as absolute despot or constitutional monarch. Unleash Hussars, Lancers, Dragoons, and Imperial Guards across more than 50 battle maps--from the green fields of England, to the icy wastes of Russia and sweeping deserts of Morocco--all in stunning, full 3D. Fight for naval dominance in breathtaking, real-time sea battles. This is an age of change--be at the leading edge of modernity or your civilization will fall by the wayside.

Features:

• Two distinct gameplay modes: turn-based Imperial Management Model, plus Real-time Land and Naval Battles in full 3D.
• Spectacular land battles: Striking environments provide the backdrop for gruesome scenes of combat. Fully interactive Battle Maps allow you to gain a defensive advantage by occupying buildings, forests, boulder fields, and more. The varying climates and terrains of the 50+ maps dramatically change the look and feel of battles. Realistic weather effects influence your troops' ability and will to fight.
• Historically accurate units and weaponry: Faithfully reproduced units, which differ from Empire to Empire, reflect the color and splendor of the era. Authentic period formations and maneuvers provide great tactical depth.
• Breathtaking naval battles: Varying classes of ships are manned by crews with differing skills and abilities. Choose to sink your enemy, or immobilize, board, and capture their vessels.
• Choice of empires: Choose from the five Great Empires of the period--Great Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, or Austro-Hungary, in your struggle for domination. Each Empire has its own strengths and weaknesses that can change as play progresses.
• In-depth management model: Provides challenging, rewarding gameplay encompassing war, diplomacy, politics, commerce, and technology. Develop and expand your Empire throughout Europe and North Africa, across 51 Provinces and 29 Maritime Regions.
• Comprehensive development model: featuring over 70 advancements, with separate Military, Political/Diplomatic, Resource and Commercial Branches, and a unique system of historical Quests.
• Multiplayer mode: head-to-head real-time battles allow you.

Product Description

Imperial Glory captures the turbulent times of the early 19th century and its titanic conflicts. Lead a great empire into battle, or expand a smaller one through economics and diplomacy. It's an age of change, and the winner will be the wisest and strongest. Be at the leading edge of modernity, or your civilization will fall by the wayside.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent game, some faults., June 7, 2005

By 

Acoma - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Imperial Glory (CD-ROM)

As most of the reviewers here I immediately made comparisons to Rome: Total War which is an all-time favorite of mine that I still play.

Land Battles:
Beautiful graphics, simple controls and formations. All the areas you fight in are very well done. The terrain is interactive as well, where you can take units and place them in buildings, blockades, etc.. for increased defense and observation. There are basically three different types of units which fits well in the time period...Infantry, Calvary and Artillery. The major complaint I have with the Land Battles is the units need to be patched...badly. Very rarely have I had enemies rout or retreat.

A few things that need to happen to greatly improve Land Battles would be to increase the range of artillery dramatically to become an effective unit on the battlefield (as they historically were). Militia units need to be treated as militia units, one or two salvos from a Line Infantry unit should rout them..period. As it stand now militia units are more like very inexpensive and cheap fanatical infantry. That's one hell of a militia unit to be able to run across the map into a bunch of muskeeteers, see half your buddies die then take yer tree branch and face off against a professional soldier with a fixed bayonet. Militia will charge Artillery blasting the heck out of them, run right into a calvary charge and brave point blank musket fire. The best fights i've had, have been between armies of non-militia units where you really get a taste of Napoleanic warfare displayed on your screen. Bottomline here is the land battles would be dramatically improved if one musket salvo would rout a militia unit so the only way a bunch of club weilding peasants could defeat a professional army unit would be overwhelming numbers. As it is now, why did man invent the rifle in the first place, if they are just expensive useless toys. Just go down to your local pub and round up a bunch of drunk farmers and give them their +5 Clubs of Heroism.

Once a unit engages in melee combat there is no way to disengage them until they are done. I suppose there is some realism to this where you can't really shout orders to an entire unit when they are in hand-to-hand combat. This takes some tactics especially when fighting against militia as frenquently when they would charge into my Line Infantry i had to quickly order the rest of my units to stop firing on the militia because i'd hit my own men as well.

Calvary is a very powerful force. These are useful to crush militia and of course, the calvary will charge right towards them and the ubermensch superhuman peasants will fight to the last man against a thundering charge of trained professional Hussars (Can you tell i hate militia yet?).

Artillery as I mentioned above needs to be fixed. It's basically useless right now unless you want to shoot up a house to get Infantry out of, but as you approach any building they tend to come out on their own anyway. I still create them in my armies because....well, just because I like having armies with cannons *shrug*.

Navy Battles:
Personally I enjoyed these. The battles are simple, but I imagine things could get very complicated if battles consisted of like...5 ships fighting 5 ships. This will pretty much never happen tho as each country minus Britain seems to be complacent with having one ship to count for their Navy *yawn*.

Strategic Map:
This is where you conduct all your research, diplomacy, troop movements etc. No real big complaints here. Different countries will have different challenges. As mentioned by another reviewer England will rarely see Land Battles unless they choose to, so if you don't want to go to war that much and diplomat most of the game then England is a good choice. Playing a power like Prussia however is pretty difficult as they are going to be at war pretty much from the beginning and fighting..a LOT.

As mentioned by other reviewers here it is very time consuming and requires a lot of your country's resources to build advanced infrastructure and trade routes. Building Armies is NOT fast at all, takes a lot of time and a lot of resources especially since you are also using those resources to build your trade and advanced infrastructure. It can take at least 2-3 years to field a viable invasion force especially since you can only build Land units in capitols. There are pros and cons to this, but the endstate is you are much more careful on where, when and with who you fight. The annihilation of a big army can set you back and squash your military ambitions.

Peaceful Annexation in it's current state is pretty much FUBAR. The computer is much more apt to peacefully annex another country and I seriously have no idea how they do this so quickly. For example, I eventually peacefully annexed Portugal playing as England but in order to do this it took a ton of resources building consulates, newspaper offices, etc. I even tried Improved Relations Diplomacy option and threw 5,000 gold at them, they rejected it and my relations with them went down! This part of the game needs to be patched to decrease the ease of which the computer can peacefully annex another country and alter the bonuses and penalties of dealing with other countries.

What also needs to be fixed is the zerg of other powers offering you their surplus of government cheese for gold AND when you reject them your relations decrease. So if you are working on peacefully annexing a country you basically HAVE to take whatever they are offering unless you want to lose relation points. Of course, there is a way around this and that's to say screw diplomacy and just build your infrastructure and trade enough to build some armies and start to conquest.

If a patch is released that fixes range on Artillery, nerfs Militia and the Relations to other countries this game will be a 4-5 star game imo. As it stands now, it's a decent game to pick up if you like the Turn-Based Strategy Game with a RTS spin on it (Like Total War). On the Campaign game it takes awhile for the game to get going, but once you do it's fairly enjoyable. I'm still playing it as i love this type of gaming genre despite it's faults. Hoping for a patch soon.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good looking package ... nothing inside, July 26, 2005

By 

Maskirovka (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imperial Glory (CD-ROM)

As other people have commented here, this game aspires to be the "Total War" equivalent for the Napoleonic Wars. Unfortunately, all the game has is pretty visuals and no substance:

1. Unlike "Total War" -- morale is not a factor -- units of soldiers fight to the last man, every time -- playing it was like watching a bunch of robots in period costumes fighting each other.

2. Unlike "Total War" -- the strategic game is completely uninvolving.

3. Artillery in the game is dramatically underpowered. As others here have noted, there is no "canister shot" for breaking up cavalry charges. And the AI behind the artillery is so stupid that your batteries will cheerfully fire at targets beyond their range with no effect whatsoever.

Maybe "Imperial Glory II" will fix these problems. But in the meantime, I'm out the 50 or so dollars I paid for this pallid imitation of the "Total War" series.

Oh well, at least I didn't buy the Strategy Guide.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very attractive - but not without flaws, June 4, 2005

By 

Zachary (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Imperial Glory (CD-ROM)

I had tracked this game for a very long time, basically since it was first announced and I was pleasantly surprised to find it in my local gaming store. I immediately handed over the $40 hoping it was worth that amount. After about a week of gaming I can safely review this after playing all the aspects.

Imperial Glory is really made up of three parts, which are each extensively covered in helpful tutorials. A lot of games seem to lack a helpful tutorial but luckily the designers for Imperial Glory were kind enough to add in THREE tutorials to help get you started.

--- The first part of the game is the land battle maps. The 3-D graphics are simply superb and the troops are very attractive as they march, charge and especially when firing volleys. The land battle controls are easy to use and quite simple. The interface makes sense and there is little to no clutter. My favorite part of the game is where you can actually create your own battles between any of the five playable empires (France, Russia, Austria, Prussia and Great Britain) in any of the provinces and you just duke it out with whomever your opponent is until you win. These are mainly fun but I have a few problems with the land battle aspect of them game.

- The "total victory" option means your enemy always fights to the death. That may be "glorious" in a sense, but it's pretty unrealistic and causes you many casualties. The enemy never seems to retreat and will always fight to the last man.

- The artillery range is pretty ridiculous. There is hardly a point to having artillery because the range is so small. You seem to be less than three hundred yards away when your cannons and howitzers finally come into range and the enemy always targets those expensive weapons first. The high ground for the artillery is hardly an issue because despite whatever altitude you're at, the range is still pitifully small.

- The maps are always the same in the provinces. And I mean always. It is always winter in some places, always summer in others. I personally don't have a big problem with this, but some may be peeved when they fight in July in Poland and see snow.

Despite these setbacks, the land battles are by far the most fun and attractive part of Imperial Glory.

--- The second aspect of Imperial Glory are the naval battles. They are pretty slow moving and dull in my opinion. Unlike the land battles where the map was different for all provinces, the sea battles - like in real life - look exactly the same. The naval battles are fun due to the amount of firepower you have and the potential amount of damage you can deliver. Once again, the controls are VERY easy to use and VERY understandable. You fire port or starboard broadsides and between which broadside, there is an appropriate time to reload. You can even board the enemy ship and capture it! If you are a fan of naval warfare of the Napoleonic era, you will not be dissapointed in the gameplay here.

There is one thing that gives me a hard time in the naval section. There is a certain area in which you are allowed to fight. If you leave the area then you lose the battle. The concept is crazy...imagine if it was like that at Trafalgar: if you leave this red box, then your ship is sunk and loses the battle! Sometimes it is hard to turn the ship so you sail right out of the boundaries and automatically lose.

--- And finally the third aspect of the game: the campaign map. This is the part easily compared to Rome: Total War, the part that has caused me the most stress, anger and joy in my experience with this game. The layout is much the same as Rome: Total War although besides that the two games have nothing in common. I dislike the comments that compared a Napoleonic game to a game on Ancient Rome, two very different time periods that deserve two different layouts.

In the campaign map, you must concentrate on your resources - Gold, Raw Materials, Population and Food. These are what create your buildings and units and without them, you lose.

Each resource can be gathered in different ways and I was thanful to find that there is no micromanaging resources, like in RTS-style games. Each province has a set amount of resources that it gives your 'national treasury' but that is barely enough. You need to build buildings and forge trade routes in order to increase your raw materials/food and gold respectively. Buildings and units are very costly and by losing a battle, your economy can be severely hurt due to the amount of money and resources it takes to create these armies.

Diplomacy has a number of options that range from declaring war to offering marriage. One option is the peaceful annexation and the enemy seems to take full advantage of that. In one game, Austria had peacefully annexed the Ottomans while Britain managed to annex all of the Iberian peninsula. Each country has a number of "sympathy points" which range from 0 (when you are at war) to 100 (and only then can you peacefully annex them).

Armies are created from barracks and all armies out of their barracks intake food. It is key to have enough food to feed your armies. Each army is commanded by either a Captain, Colonel, General or Marshal and can move one province at a turn. There are hardly enough men in an army to be considered real - a maximum of 60 per infantry unit and 36 per cavalry means a maximum of maybe 300 men per army. Quite a contrast compared to the half million involved in the Battle of Leipzig!

A series of complicated building rules and research punctuate the campaign map games. Each turn is one month and the game ranges from 1789-1830, which gives you plenty of turns. Each unit, building and research take turns to complete which provides for a slow pace. Indeed, I found myself watching the TV between turns due to the slowness of the changing of the turns, but your computers may be a little more updated than my four year old Pentium 4.

The campaign map may be the least user-friendly area of the game, but it could hardly be called confusing at all. The left-click/drag way to move armies easily puzzled me at first. However it only gets easier as you get on.

In conclusion, Imperial Glory is a very fun game despite some flaws it has. I am impatient and I find the long load times to be a pain in the ass (when loading a saved game it took near 4 minutes) but the wait is really worth it when you see the game. Worth $40? Nah, but most games aren't worth their opening prices. Imperial Glory is fun, pretty and addictive and I suggest it to all people who are interested in the Napoleonic era.

Pros:
-Beautiful graphics: the troops, ships, and landscapes blew me away
-Easy to use interface provides an understandable gaming experience
-Friendly tutorials help introduce the game to you easily
-In depth research, building and diplomatic systems

Cons:
-Land battles have some fishy stuff going on (i.e. artillery range is too short)
-Ridiculously slow loading times
-Naval battles have a boundary
-AI seems to be able to peacefully annex much better than the human player

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