How Empires Work was sent to me by Crow Cottage. How Empires Work is an incremental grand strategy game. It plays out with a clock you can speed up or pause, as you would expect; there are even some basic troops you can move around and enter into a basic form of combat.
The huge difference here is the fact that you start with one city and just collect taxes and recruit troops. The troops will fight off bandits. Over time, you can expand to a new city and start the process over again. Soon you will be able to automate the processes of doing things like collecting taxes and recruiting troops. Even making small armies and shipping taxes and trade eventually all become automated.
This is where the challenge comes in. Automate certain things too soon, and your economy will crash. Don’t make any mistakes; this game is not as in-depth as the grand strategy games you are used to, and while most things can be automated, not everything can. You will spend a lot of time clicking to collect things, for example. Building roads is necessary and relatively cheap, for example, but new technology can be insanely costly.
For an early access title, however, the game is pretty good with a lot of potential. At $10, the game has some decent playtime attached to it, and I am hoping for some more polish and a few more automation options; this 7/10 game can definitely reach higher. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
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