A surprisingly robust grand strategy game with a tantalizing early game and a fun mid-game, but the endgame leaves a bit to be desired.

You'll be surprised by how the game, and your experience with it, really starts to evolve as the world state progresses. Each city conquered, each public industry built, each new military unit or technology builds upon the other, until you realize, with pride, that your tiny little steppe village is now an urbane, cultured, shining beacon of vice and si - err, democracy. Yes. A shining beacon of democracy.

The war, military, and staff aspects of this game are absolutely top-notch, and I had a lot of fun just playing around with my cabinet and developing new models for vehicles. The top-down turn-based combat is pretty interesting; imagine Hoi4 but put through the engine for a Civlization game. It can be a little clunky and you're basically forced to micromanage everything, however. You're well-rewarded for making good tactical decisions, both on the front and in the bureaucratic offices, as military research, model design, staff operationalization, covert operations, and even diplomacy are all very important in your quest to conquer the world. The game's politics, however, might dissuade you from making such good decisions, as factions (made up of all your military, bureaucratic, and cabinet leaders) will always be making demands, and you might decide to make certain sacrifices in order to ensure a certain faction stays in power, or to ensure a rogue faction doesn't.

(can I just say that the model design is like my favorite part of the game that's not the actual fighting? I love model design. I love how you can name your models, and I love how iterative designs have better stats based on how much field testing you've done with them. As an engineering student, I find the implementation of model design really damn cool)

I feel like the civilian aspect of the game could be developed more, especially from the midgame onwards, after your realm has become sufficiently "civilized." I wonder if maybe a good downside to having a big, prosperous nation with a lot of free, happy people is that civilians start using the trains and bus networks more - taking capacity away from the war going on on the other side of the world. I dunno; it could add some interesting tension.

Also, there's not much really to do once the endgame rolls around. By this point, you've basically already won the planet; even if all the major powers in the world joined a coalition against you,you could still defeat them all. The power disparity is too great. And they won't besides, because you're allied with half of them. Also, the longer the game gets, the longer the wait between the turns is, which makes playing big games a chore.

But overall? This game. This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gorgeous. It's a godsend for weird people like me who wanted to play a game about war logistics and got bored with Anno, Civ, Stellaris, Hoi4, and Alpha Centauri. If you have a lot of free time and really enjoy the intersection of traditional grand strategy and logistics/production games, then I absolutely recommend this game. If not, then I'd say try it out with caution. This is a really, really, *really* niche game, but a rewarding one.

A surprisingly robust grand strategy game with a tantalizing early game and a fun mid-game, but the endgame leaves a bit to be desired. You'll be surprised by how the game, and your experience with it, really starts to evolve as the world state progresses. Each city conquered, each public industry built, each new military unit or technology builds upon the other, until you realize, with pride, that your tiny little steppe village is now an urbane, cultured, shining beacon of vice and si - err, democracy. Yes. A shining beacon of democracy. The war, military, and staff aspects of this game are absolutely top-notch, and I had a lot of fun just playing around with my cabinet and developing new models for vehicles. The top-down turn-based combat is pretty interesting; imagine Hoi4 but put through the engine for a Civlization game. It can be a little clunky and you're basically forced to micromanage everything, however. You're well-rewarded for making good tactical decisions, both on the front and in the bureaucratic offices, as military research, model design, staff operationalization, covert operations, and even diplomacy are all very important in your quest to conquer the world. The game's politics, however, might dissuade you from making such good decisions, as factions (made up of all your military, bureaucratic, and cabinet leaders) will always be making demands, and you might decide to make certain sacrifices in order to ensure a certain faction stays in power, or to ensure a rogue faction doesn't. (can I just say that the model design is like my favorite part of the game that's not the actual fighting? I love model design. I love how you can name your models, and I love how iterative designs have better stats based on how much field testing you've done with them. As an engineering student, I find the implementation of model design really damn cool) I feel like the civilian aspect of the game could be developed more, especially from the midgame onwards, after your realm has become sufficiently "civilized." I wonder if maybe a good downside to having a big, prosperous nation with a lot of free, happy people is that civilians start using the trains and bus networks more - taking capacity away from the war going on on the other side of the world. I dunno; it could add some interesting tension. Also, there's not much really to do once the endgame rolls around. By this point, you've basically already won the planet; even if all the major powers in the world joined a coalition against you,you could still defeat them all. The power disparity is too great. And they won't besides, because you're allied with half of them. Also, the longer the game gets, the longer the wait between the turns is, which makes playing big games a chore. But overall? This game. This game is goddamn gorgeous. It's a godsend for weird people like me who wanted to play a game about war logistics and got bored with Anno, Civ, Stellaris, Hoi4, and Alpha Centauri. If you have a lot of free time and really enjoy the intersection of traditional grand strategy and logistics/production games, then I absolutely recommend this game. If not, then I'd say try it out with caution. This is a really, really, *really* niche game, but a rewarding one.