If you want to challenge yourself and see how well you can build an empire, then these two games are for you.
A Brief History of the World is a fun turn-based empire building game from Sage Board Games. This game came out this year and everytime I sit down to play I get pulled to another task. Codito has produced a great number of electronic board games for the iPad, so if you are familiar with any of their other games you will be able to jump into this one quickly.
The game is played in 6 parts, which are called Epochs. During an epoch, you will be tasked to establish and expand your empire. As you grow you will earn gold and the player with the most gold after the final Epoch will be the winner. You will play on a map of Europe, using both land and sea. The game has a very detailed rules section and a tutorial you can play at any time. There is a lot to the game and to do well you will need to manage your time, resources, and moves carefully. This is not a fast game so you will need to make sure you have the time to invest in learning and playing the game. You can play online or offline.
Empires II: What Would You Risk for World Conquest? is another new empire building game from . The object of the game is to conquer the world, easy enough. The map is comprised of 77 or 165 counties that are grouped into different regions. Empires is also a turn-based game that can be played solo, online or vs another locally. You can also set the difficulty of your opponent in solo games. The game has a nice help section and a tutorial you can play to get hand of things.
The game is broken down into seasons and depending on what season it is will determine what you can do in the game. In the Spring you can purchase more armies while in the Summer you can carry out your troop movements, and so on. The key to victory is taking over territories from the other players- you do this by planning your moves, getting money to purchase more troops and keeping an eye on the board.
This game should not take that long to learn; I did not find it as complicated as other empire building games I have played. The speed of the game is not bad but this again is a game for those players that lilke to take some time and think through what they are doing. Roman was not built in day!
