SR: Imperial
As Shelak was visiting for a couple of days we decided to start a two-player session of Imperial. I had acquired this game, designed by Mac Gerdts at Essen 2006 and now was the first chance to play it (yeah, I know...). We went through the rules quickly and since we were already familiar with Antike it was all pretty self-explanatory. Still, the game has only few common elements to Mac Gerdts' first game.
In Imperial, players take the role of international financial investors trying to earn the greatest influence over European states in the age of imperialism. The game shows a beautiful map of Europe and comes with truly gorgeous wooden playing pieces, among them ships, armies and factories. Based on the loans by the investors all nations expand by building new factories, troops and fleets to expand their power in Europe. Each country can collect taxes from occupied territories to pay interest to their investors. The player granting the biggest amout in loan(s) to a state will be able to control their government and is eligible to take the turn for that particfular country. As financial control over the imperial nations changes, new strategic alliances are formed and new conflicts emerge.
As I said, the game was pretty easy to learn, however, it takes a couple of turns until we started to (!) grasp the tactical and strategical implications. I was able to get control over the French government and speculated to earn taxes as the next action. However, since the previous government had built that many armies (that also need to be sustained by the tax income), taking the taxing action did not seem a great idea. Instead, I decided to maneuver the armies, gaining control over additional territories (i.e. more taxes) and battling against enemy armies to reduce the sustainability cost. What a great plan, I thought. Pah, Shelak was able to loan more money to France and to regain government control. Guess, who took the tax income in France's next turn?
Mechanisms like this make Imperial a very unique, interesting and challenging game. In addition, the game also teaches us something about the power and influence of large investment corporations or large cooperations. Sarcastically speaking, Mac Gerdts could have set the game in today's times as well. On the other hand, it is a beautiful simulation of the imperialistic, (pre-)WWI times in Europe.
Altogether, we both liked Imperial a lot, even as a two-player. We definitely should give it another go with more players as well as revisiting the game again to play another full session.