Imperialism (game)
| Imperialism | |
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Cover art
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| Developer(s) | Frog City Software |
| Publisher(s) | Strategic Simulations |
| Distributor(s) | Ubisoft |
| Series | Imperialism |
| Platform(s) | Macintosh Windows |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) |
Single-player Multiplayer (up to seven players) |
Imperialism is a turn-based strategy game for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh computers, developed by Frog City Software and published by Strategic Simulations in 1997. In Imperialism, the player is the ruler of a 19th-century country, and aims to become ruler of the world by conquest or by vote. Imperialism was followed by Imperialism II: Age of Exploration.
There are two ways to play Imperialism: in a fictional, randomly generated world, or in a historical scenario. In the first case, the player selects one of seven "great powers" and starts ruling in 1815, a year considered by many historians the beginning of the 19th-century era in the real world. The goal is to be voted world ruler by a two-thirds majority in the "Council of Governors", in which all provincial governors of the world convene once in a decade. Governors in "minor nations" tend to vote for great powers that have favored their country in trade and diplomacy, whereas governors in great powers vote for strong military powers. If no two-thirds majority is ever reached, the game continues until the year 1915, when the power with the largest number of governors behind it wins the game. Although victory is determined by the Council of Governors, the game score is determined by how much a player has built, including the size of a Great Power's military, workforce, transportation network, merchant marine, diplomatic standing and number of provinces controlled.
Empire building can be achieved either through diplomacy or through conquest. In either case, the empire must have a solid economic grounding, which is established by exploitation of the country's resources (wood, ore, etc.), by industry (for example, turning raw materials iron and coal into steel) and by trade.
In the historical scenarios, the player chooses a European power - available are Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and, depending on the period chosen, Prussia and Sardinia, or respectively Germany and Italy. The game starts not in 1815 but either in 1820 (apparently so that France isn't too weak at the start of the game), in 1848, the year of revolutions, or in 1882, at the start of the arms race that eventually led to World War I. The end of the game is still the same, except that in the third scenario (1882) the Council of Governors does not convene until 1915.
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Wikipedia