This weekend I purchased Imperial, and had a chance to play on sunday night. Overall I enjoyed myself, although there were some rough patches and we weren't able to completely finish the game.
As a quick summary for those unfamiliar: imperial is a game of war and investment, where the player with the most stock in a country gets to decide the actions of that country. Therefore, control of countries can pass between players, and it's possible for players to control multiple countries or even no countries. The combat rules are simple: units blow each other up 1:1. Countries have markers on the "rondel", a circle with different spaces detailing what actions a country can take, and movement is limited to 1-3 spaces ahead of the move the country took last turn (additional spaces can be moved at the cost of 2 dollars from the moving player).
We started at around 7pm, and agreed to stop on the last full turn that ended after 10pm. Playing were myself, my girlfriend, and my two friends. Initial passing out of the flags left me in control of britain, one friend in control of russia, my girl in control of italy and germany, and my last friend holding austria-hungary and france.
Play was slow at first as we all tried to get a handle on the rules, as well as adjusting to going multiple times in a single round. Being reduced to a single country early on after a stock takeover was no fun for my girlfriend, and she became somewhat unenthused. One of my friends, however, welcomed this, and allowed people to take control of all his countries early on in order to focus exclusively on investing (players with no countries are permitted to buy stock more often). Meanwhile, the friend sitting on my other side took his good sweet time with all his countries (even controlling 4 at one point for a single round), and even had the opportunity to be a diabolical leader. He threw his countries' military against themselves and against the military of the other players, only to follow up with especially profitable tax rounds the following turn in the absence of a costly military upkeep (and netting a bonus for himself for so drastically filling his countries' coffers.)
Ultimately we had to stop because it was getting late and we all needed to navigate home. My girlfriend ultimately won by being deeply invested in germany which was also one of the more successful countries at the stop time. She noted that for winning she didn't really enjoy herself, because it was often a long time between her turns. This highlights one of the important things about the game: variable numbers of turns for players. People expecting to play a variation on risk might be suddenly shocked when they have no countries or more than one. This is balanced by the fact that losing control of all your countries never means staying out of the game, but even then people who don't know what to expect from imperial may find themselves turned off in the same way she was. Because A) i bought it and B) I was expecting it, controlling only great britain (and briefly italy or russia) wasn't off-putting to me.
Hopefully, this has shed some light on imperial, if anyone else has played please share your experiences!
Nice session report and quick review. It's always sounded like an interesting mix of a game, and one that is on my list (admitedly mid-way) for a game I'd like to buy / play. Sounds like a game prone to analysis paralysis though
actually, the AP is never too bad. It tends to be its worst when one player controls two countries that take their turns right after the other, and even then it's not too bad. Additionally, each country only ever takes on one task in a turn with maneuver (move all units) being the longest.
To help stem AP, only 3 out of the 8 spaces on the rondel are freely available to the country: the 3 immediately clockwise of the country's marker. A player can pay 2 dollars out of their personal cash to move an extra space, but players so rarely have large amounts of cash-on-hand that if they consider that option they likely know what they want.
The different moves a country can make are:
1) Factory: the country pays 5 bucks to build a factory, this is usually a simple phase because the board dictates where factories can potentially be built.
2) Import: the country pays 1 per troop unit, up to 3, and imports troops into their country. Also a simple phase
3) Production: each of the country's factories produces the appropriate unit (naval or land) for free. By the end of the game we wouldn't even wait for that player to get their pieces onto the board before moving on to the next country.
4) maneuver: each unit can move one space, armies can be ferried across sea spaces by ships. units can move freely to any space in their own country before or after their move. This one caused the most headaches.
5) invest: the country pays out to it's shareholders. additionally, one player during the game has the investor card which will trigger when the investor square is landed on OR passed. this player gets 2$ and can purchase any stock they want. The stock purchasing option is also afforded to anyone who controls no countries, hence the possibility to focus strictly on investing. this one would occasionally cause confusion about where money was supposed to go.
6)Tax: the country gains 2$ per factory and 1$ per neutral territory conquered, then pays 1$ per military unit. Depending on how much tax is collected, the country may grow in power, which causes the stock to become more valuable at the end of the game. The game itself ends when any country reaches 25 power. stock is multiplied by 1/5th of it's country's power at the end of the game (so the 25 power country will be x5).
For those keeping a running total, maneuver and produce each have 2 spots on the rondel rather than 1.
Much like powergrid and it's different phases of turns, people will gradually learn what the different phases of the rondel entail. Each individual phase is relatively simple except for the nuances of movement. Also the game comes with 4 handy phase summary cards.
Imperial is a cool game - I find it like merchant princes controlling the fate of a game of Diplomacy. 4 players works best, but 3 is playable. I wouldn't want to play it with 6!
Linear Mode
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