Imperial Glory

Modern history has been modeled by wars, ever since the ancient times of the Roman Empire and the Greeks. Once the technology has evolved, though, there is little need for entire battalions facing each other on the battlefield, since drones and bombs would make such tactics completely unfeasible in most cases.

Imperial Glory brings back the old wars of the Great Empires, featuring the famous conflicts between the British, Russians and the French. Although it is a tactical-based RTS at its core, the game does feature more than the usual amount of units on the battlefield at the same time, since it focuses large-scale fights between hundreds of soldiers. Thus, it emphasizes on your ability to coordinate the entire army, as well as arrange the units as to overpower the enemy without recurring to brute force and superior numbers.

Due to that, most of the time, your army is smaller than the opposing force, in order to force you to find alternative ways of dealing with the overwhelming numbers. Before the battle begins, you are allowed to manually place every group of units, to make it easier to spread out in the desired formation once the fight is on its way. Depending on the scenario, the two armies are usually separated by quite the distance, which gives you plenty of time to organize your forces.

As the combat begins and you have given your orders, there isn't too much for you to do, other than re-think your approach if things go south at any point. Thus, in order to stay on top of the situation at all times, the game camera can take you anywhere you want on the battlefield, using the mouse to pan it and the scroll button to zoom in or out of the fight.

Once you zoom in, you get a better look at the game's graphic engine, which is responsible for rendering a few hundred units at the same time on the screen. As you might expect, there is not a lot of variety between the same kind of units, but they can be told apart from other type of soldiers with ease. Thus, it is a real treat to zoom in and see every individual fighting his own battle, even though most of the time the battle is a cluster of units and dust.

In the end, Imperial Glory is a must-have game for any strategy fan, especially since it features truly large-scale battles that can never play out the same, regardless of how many times you go through them. The campaign puts much more options at your disposal, including diplomacy gimmicks and various resources you can use to your advantage.