What is Imperialism II: Age of Exploration?

Remember the original Imperialism? Then you know how satisfying it feels to build an empire into a dominant global power. Now Strategic Simulations brings us Napoleonic types the spifiy Imperialism II, an even more clever way to play history and knock other nations down for the count. The original title covered Europe in the 1700s and early 1800s. The sequel pushes you back to an earlier era, beginning around 1500 and ending near 1850 — known as the Age of Exploration.

As a ruler, you bankrupt competing European nations into oblivion, seduce them with diplomacy, or blow them away with superior military strength. But you also cross the ocean to explore the Americas, dark lands that become visible only as your units move about the countryside. You’ll have to deal with friendly and hostile natives, as well as explorers and spies from rival nations, but a whole new range of marketable commodities awaits: cotton, sugar, tobacco, precious gems. Success in the New World is vital to your domination of the Old.

The rest of the game is familiar to long-time strategy players. A mind-boggling array of management decisions swamps you: feeding and clothing your population, building up resources, financing military units, buying and selling goods, and maintaining an adequate fleet. At the same time, you’ll stay busy on the diplomatic front, tendering treaties and creating alliances.

While Imperialism II doesn’t offer anything new to the strategy genre, it’s probably the most difficult strategy title available on the Mac. You have to monitor more than a dozen information panels as the game progresses. Those new to strategy will find this tough, and you may make several false starts before learning to juggle the challenges. However, a good tutorial takes some of the bite out of the learning curve.

A few welcome improvements make this sequel easier to play, including an option to transfer authority to the computer rather than making all the decisions yourself. This helps at the beginning while you’re still learning, but don’t let the artificial intelligence become a crutch. The other big improvement is the refined interface navigation. Instead of a sequence of mouse clicks to get to a specific information screen (as the original required), you can now reach almost any screen with one or two clicks.

As for graphics and sound, the sound effects are quite simple — for example, sawing on wood, seagulls, and creaking timber when you activate ship icons; or slashing through brush when an explorer moves into unknown territory. The graphics feature a few small animations to keep the game moving (explorers peer through telescopes, merchants count their money).

If you get the game, be sure to use the update. This patches version 1 of the game, which displayed an “unknown error 25” from time to time. The patch also corrects certain commodity values — for example, the cost of fur, the cost of forts, coal production, and 12 other functions.
Imperialism n rewards you with addictive play. Taking a walk through history has never been more fun.

Lee, John. (August 1999). Imperialism II. MacAddict. (pg. 72).

Download Imperialism II: Age of Exploration for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver