The game that we have been playing and learning from as a class for the past few weeks is called Empire: Total War. In terms of how the game plays, it is somewhat similar to the game that we have previously played earlier in the year called Civilization VI besides the live-action battles that you can participate in. Empire: Total war is described as a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics video game that I believe to be one of, if not the most historically accurate videogames that we have played as a class. Empire: Total War was released on March 3rd, 2009, on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The game was developed by the British video game company Creative Assembly and was published by Sega. How the game works is that the player must choose an 18th-century faction which consists of Austria, France, Great Britain, Maratha Confederacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Provinces. Then the player will try to dominate the rest of the players, whether it is the multiplayer mode or single-player mode. You can dominate other players or factions in a couple of ways, you can achieve dominance through military force, diplomacy, espionage, and economics. Similar to my experience with Civilization VI, I struggled to understand and learn how to properly play the game. In other words, I was not good at the game. It seems to be that turn-based strategy games are not one of my gaming strengths. One neat feature of the game is that
each of the playable factions that you can choose from at the beginning of the game has its own individual, and even historically accurate, perks. For example, if you were to choose to play as the British, then you would have a stronger navy that is funded by the taxpayers. In the Empire: Total War activity that we did in class, my group looked deeper into the Middle East and more specifically the Ottoman Empire. We found that the Ottoman Empire in the game covered a lot of land, which is historically accurate because the Ottoman Empire was massive back when it was at its peak. The geography of the nation-states that you can choose from plays a role in the gameplay that you will experience. Geography plays a massive role in the gameplay as strategic positioning allows for certain nations to have advantages. For example, Great Britain's location allows for their massive naval force to overrun any who opposes. Furthermore, mountain ranges and long distances must be traveled by militaries further showing historically accurate struggles faced by nations in this time. Uncertainty plays a role in the gameplay of Empire: Total War as going into certain battles brings forth a lot of unknowns. Even with knowledge of enemies’ abilities, the result of each attack is uncertain. One of the readings that we did for class that talked about the dominance of the Aztec Empire and the representations of that in Age of Empires II and Medieval II: Total War. In the article, the author says “Furthermore, one particular feature pushes the accuracy even further
by integrating the contrast in cultural approaches to warfare, which Cortés used to establish his dominance, into the game mechanics. Thus, as the camera pans over the Aztec army before the battle begins, the narrator singles out a number of Aztec "chiefs" wearing easily identifiable feathers and decorations. These are the prime targets of the player, who by the rules of the scenario must lead the Spanish troops, as the death of this handful of warriors brings about the collapse of the Aztec army.” The games are very historically accurate in terms of the factions and what abilities the factions have. They resembled what the actual empires had throughout history and assigned advantages and disadvantages accordingly. I can relate this game to my major, being finance, and learn some things from it because you must manage your empire and a lot of the managing is when to spend resources and when not to. When resources are mismanaged, you are setting yourself up for failure within the game. Although I struggled, I still had fun playing and learning from this game. I will continue to try these turn-based strategy games until I finally get the gist of how they work.