Empire: Wargame of the Century

Empire: Wargame of the Century is a Turn-Based Strategy game, developed by Northwest Software and published by Interstel Corporation, which was released in Europe in 1988.

Empire’s a strategic game of conquest that can accommodate up to three players (computer or human). The player starts the game with one city and has to conquer all the other cities (between 50 and 80) on the planet. Each city (once captured) can be assigned to produce a particular unit e.g. army, battleship, transport ship etc to help in the war effort.

Each unit has a movement limit per turn: the player can either use the mouse or numeric keypad to move them one step in any of eight directions until their allowance is used up, or can use the mouse pointer and click on a destination several paces away, whereupon the unit will then move toward that objective every turn until it either gets there or its path becomes blocked.

Empire doesn’t have state-of-the-art graphics or sound, but the gameplay’s good and it’s fun to play. The computer opponents can be tough and there are several set map ‘worlds’ to conquer. But the repetitive nature of the game and the limited options mean you’ll soon find that one war’s much like another - and that kills off your interest quickly.