Containing MetalJim’s review of a new board game called Imperial. It’s like Diplomacy, but with stock ownership…

Just last night my local game group tried out a brand new board game called Imperial. It’s a pretty recent German import, available now in the U.S. in a Rio Grande edition that costs $60 at full retail. The designer is named Mac Gerdts — his only previous credit of note was a recent game called Antike, which is a decent update of the old Avalon Hill Civilization game.

One look at the board for Imperial and you will recognize some similarities with the map for the Avalon Hill classic Diplomacy game. Actually, Imperial only shows six major powers (leaving out Turkey as a major nation), and has a few other minor differences in terms of how the provinces are defined. Still, it’s a map of Europe, and the time period is not that far off from the world of classic Dippy.

Imperial, however, is first and foremost a game of investment and stock manipulation. The basic gist of the game is that players buy up controlling shares in the economies of the great powers. The great powers then use their factories to produce troops, which then go out and fight over various neutral (and taxable) territories. Increased taxation means more victory points for winning nations, which in turn yields a greater end of game victory point reward for the principle shareholders in those nations.

Let’s clarify — players don’t actually get any turns, as such. Players will have various opportunities in the game to buy shares. However, during the bulk of the game, the countries simply rotate through a fixed turn sequence. The player who controls a given nation when that nation’s turn comes up gets to decide what that nation does on its turn. If you don’t actually control any nations, you just sit back and count your shares and hope that enough money comes your way to allow you to buy some control.

The game does flow along pretty quickly. A country can only perform 1 action on its turn, and the country has some limits on what actions it can choose based on its position on something called the “rondel” visible on the game board. Basically, you can’t repeat the same action twice in a row. If you want to move a little bit faster around the rondel to get back to a particular action type (such as producing a new factory) you will have to pay money out of your own pocket. Otherwise, the controlling player can move a country’s token from 1 to 3 spaces. Actions are pretty simple to resolve. Building a factory, for example, simply requires removing 5 million “imperial units” from that country’s treasury and putting a new factory on the board. That’s the country’s entire turn. Countries will end up getting a lot of turns during the game, but each turn flies by pretty quickly, keeping down time in check.

Let’s keep this in perspective. I have a personal treasury of my own. Each of the six countries on the board has its own national treasury. When I buy shares in a country (such as France) it goes into the nation’s treasury, and can be used by the player controlling that country (hopefully me) to build factories and import armies, hopefully making the country stronger. If a country goes on to take over neutral territories, the “taxation” action puts new money into the treasury (from the game’s central bank), and gives victory points to that country which will increase the value of my shares at the end of the game. If I later choose the “investor” action for that country, then the principle shareholders get paid money back equal, on average, to about 40% of their original share purchase price. The more often that the “investor” action gets triggered for a given country, the more that it’s treasury gets depleted. Yes, you are free to run a given country’s treasury into the ground. However, you are not allowed to sell off your shares. Thus, if you are heavily invested in a country, you don’t really want to see the whole thing go down the tubes.

Unlike classic Diplomacy, the game of Imperial scales well with 4 to 6 players. You don’t really want to think about the game in terms of 1 country for 1 player. One player can end up controlling mutiple countries, but that doesn’t necessarily put that player in a leading position. Even a well-run country can easily be taken over by a player who has been saving his money.

Still, there are some important similarities with Diplomacy. Like Dippy, each country in Imperial starts off with a couple of major supply centers. Some factories only produce fleets, while the other factories only produce ground troops. Like Dippy, combat is pretty straightforward and simplistic. If units from two different countries find themselves standing in the same space, then they fight as long as at least one player wants them to fight. In that case, units are simply removed from the board on a one for one basis, even if the armies wipe each other out in the process.

Also like Dippy, it turns out that the map puts a lot of pressure on the countries positioned towards the center of the board. Germany is really in the thick of things, and doesn’t get any extra resources to deal with the fact that it is surrounded by potentially hostile powers. Like Dippy, In Imperial Germany and France will get into some sort of dustup over Holland and Belgium, and once that happens, England will come in to mop of the pieces by landing some ground troops of its own. As with Dippy, Italy is also in a weak position at the outset. Italy has an easy enough time racing towards Tunis. However, Italy soon finds itself caught between France and Austria. In Imperial, both Austria and Russia are capable of putting fleets into the Mediterranean. Long term, Italy’s chances for expansion are somewhat limited. As in Dippy, England starts off with a lot of fleets, and it is unlikely that other countries will land armies on English soil.

There are lots of layers of metagame to discover with a few repeated plays here. In a game with fewer players, it will be easier to arrange your own alliances by using your starting capital to take over neighboring countries. Alliances between players can slip and slide a bit during the game. Players who find themselves invested in the same countries will undoubtedly want to work together. If you have some capital in reserve, you can stave off a potential war by buying out the country that threatens to make your life difficult.

As for our group, we only made it about two thirds of the way through a five player game in about two and half hours. I would certainly budget four hours for a first game with a new group, but one expects playing times will drop under three hours with repeated plays. That’s not bad for a big and meaty game of intrigue, wheeling and dealing, and military conflict. For the record, I was ahead on points when we called it quite due to time constraints (store was closing). The fact that I was doing well increased my enjoyment of the game, though I don’t think I was really in the driver’s seat going towards the end game.

Other online reviews at boardgamegeek.com suggest that Imperial can run into a bit of deadlock towards the endgame. Although private money is kept secret, and does count towards victory points, players may be shy about pushing one country over the endgame trigger victory threshhold if they are not certain of winning the game. A few of the players in my group last night were having a little trouble grasping the kep concepts of how the money was flowing around in the game, and what strategies would lead to player success versus nation success. I was surprised to discover just how inherently weak Germany was as the game progressed, but I was happy that I had chosen to invest heavily in France.

There are a couple of rules variants mentioned in the box. Apparently in the most basic version of the rules, players already start off with a certain number of shares in various countries, but no money in pocket. One step up, which is the version that we played, allows players to use their starting money to choose what countries to invest in. I think that this is the better way to play. The other rules variant concerns whether you are allowed to buy shares after the turn of any and all countries, or whether your invest opportunities are limited by a little “investor” placard that goes around the table. Either variant seems perfectly playable there.

Imperial is a reasonably heavy game, and it does feature some aggressive conflict. You can’t wipe a country out completely, and players can still buy into different countries, but the guy who invested heavily in Germany at the start may discover after less than a quarter of the game that he is already pretty well screwed. The components are of superb quality, and you get a lot of wood for that $60 purchase price. The mechanics are reasonably innovative but still simple enough to keep the game moving along at a good clip. I look forward to playing it again.