After the Empire Reviews

This is a really weird game. Its kinda like Hamurabi for the old atari computer. You basically make only a few decisions like declaring certain wars and production levels. Get it on sale

Having played a few games and winning one, there is an a ton of depth driving the gameplay, which can seem simple until you get your ass handed to you, and start to play with the command commands and looking at your rivals to understand how religion and culture affect buildings and how you can blockade, sabotage, use the three differnt forms of warfare. I have enjoyed what little time I have put into, it, and using the help mode and tutorial is a must. Also, try playing in 720p if the font bothers you. Really like this game. price is more than fair.

The core game loop is pretty boring. Almost plays like a toy. Can't recommend it. But if you're looking for interesting game concepts to see in action give it a try? Everything is automated except for the declaration of war, so all you're doing is choosing who to declare war on and waiting. There are three types of war, why? I guess variety and strategy but honestly it you steamroll properly it doesn't matter much.

The game provides a grand strategy experience in an abstract and exciting way. Still the game is full of problems. The resolution issue makes it so hard to read whats going on its frustrating. The UI is so clunky its like you get to time travel back into early 00s.

Having played this game for almost 4 hours I can now write a review. Initially the game looks very complex but if you persevere with the tutorial and take your time reading all the text the game can be more easily grasped. It does have a steep learning curve but I assure you once you get the basics it can be quite compelling. You start off by choosing a territory amongst a list on the top right of the screen. This is in order with the strongest territory at the top so you can guage which territory will have the easiest start. Then you choose one of six archetypes which, as far as I can tell are a kind of philosophy which provides various bonuses to different things. As there are 3 types of attack (Military, Crypto and Glory) these choices affect the bonuses for each of these attacks. So if you prefer to win with military force you choose an archetype geared towards military bonuses. This helps with the production of fleets etc... I found the easy level of play quite comfortable to learn the game but not really that challenging. On the normal level it was more challenging and fun. Graphically the game is not really great,although I personally find the graphics ok for this kind of game. Actually I quite like the graphics. You can tilt the galaxy map for aesthetics if you wish. When a war is declared on a territory you see your little fleets surrounding the enemy territory and you see a percentage going up towards 100, The more past 100% the faster the civilization loss in the territory. When the civilizations are reduced to zero the territory is taken over by the attacker, or whoever contributed the most attack power. You can also research and build buildings in each territory which help your faction. I know that I have merely skimmed the surface with this basic review but there is so much depth to this game that I cant possibly explain everything. In summary I love this game and I found it very addicting and I am looking forward to playing more. Also the price is very low compared to other similar games. Excellent value for money. I think I will purchase the Viceroy also from the same developer. Thanks for reading this.

Great strategy game that is easy to play but hard to master. Would be fantastic with mp but I dig the weekly competitions making sp a lot of fun. A nice indie game proving design trumps graphics. I recommend this game to my friends and especially any serious strategy gamers.

At first, you get lost in all those numbers and abstraction. You also grasp the basics, play on Easy, and doing to at your own pace and with no unavoidable conflict, you win without much problem. You grasp more and more intrincacies, and begin playing on higher levels, with unavoidable conflict and AI actually declaring wars. And it becomes a drug. Can spend hours mixmaxing every index and percentage to the limit, and miserably failing in the proccess. While from outside everything seems automated, it's not… There are tons of aspects to tweak, both at game creation and after, and missing one of them at the wrong time can mean doom. Sure such gameplay is not for everyone. I however, are enjoying utterly every minute of this. So had to give it a thumbs up. AtE is a hell of an overlooked gem. A shame the devs went bankrupt, because I'd love and gladly pay to see much more of this.

Pros: this is a neat little game. For a game that only takes a couple hours to beat (after I learned it), it is effective at giving the feel of a very-high-level empire ruler scenario. The lore and names are quite compelling for something that only represents AIs/religions/cultures with little icons. The game presents interesting tactical problems, and outside of the strategic realm choosing where to attack, emphasize attacking, defend, etc. is quite fun. The cons below are pretty specific but don't take them to be a lack of a recommendation. This costs half what a movie does and I got more entertainment out of it than most movies. --- Cons: The gameplay seems...built to be deep, but doesn't present choices as effective as I'd like. 1. The styles of military conquest aren't different enough that I play them differently: there are three types of warfare (glory/fleet/crypto), and always a sort of cultural and religious ranking about which is most preferred, not so preferred, and hated. Call it good war/ok war/bad war, regardless of how fleet, crypto, or glory is ranked. There's nothing intrinsically different about playing a military empire regardless of which you choose. 2. I don't see any penalty or reason not to economically blockade all 3 types of trade routes (guilds/routes/pilgrimages) if you're going to do any one of them. It's not like wars where one kind of war makes more rebellion. Why would I keep goods flowing through one type of trade route if I'm blocking another? I don't get it. 3. Maybe I'm not playing right, but the economic presets seem not to matter too much either. Just go with the tutorial recommended auto allocation and you can win at least up to hard (which is the middle difficulty). I felt like I miiiiight get some benefit by reallocating rearguard territories for economic or civic...but not really. Considering this is a game I want the feel of big strategy from without the endless time sink of a big 4x space game, I felt like the time to figure out a new preset for territories that might get threatened or attacked at a moment's notice and then switch them back wasn't worth it. But then again some territories are effectively at peace because their bordering factions don't care to war with you. If you could assign and deassign territories to custom groups and *then* allocate presets (instead of to the automatic border/near border/interior groups) this might be more worth it. Either way, I beat the game without fussing with it.

EDIT: Developers have stopped responding in the forums and there are bugs that haven't been fixed. The game is still fun and playable for me, but it is disappointing to imagine how much further this game could go with a few small updates. Pretty great little strategy game. Watching the colored fleets surround each territory and battle for victory is soothingly satisfying. I have yet to beat the hardest difficulty, which shows how the AI is pretty smart (and as the game states, they do NOT cheat with resources).

This is a distillation of the 4X genre into something strange and kind of unique. The visuals might set some people off, but personally I found the bare aesthetic pretty nice. The background and story of the game are both interesting. It is pretty simple once you get down to it and can be a little hard to pierce the diluge of information the game presents you with at the start. Otherwise, well worth your time and money if you enjoy space strategy games.