Demise of Nations

Building an empire is no easy task, although some people have managed to do it throughout history. People like Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and many others have ruled over great empires many centuries ago, and there have been other attempts as well, some of them quite recently. However, it’s much easier to try your hand at world domination in a video game instead.

Demise of Nations is a 4X grand strategy game with turn-based mechanics, in which your goal is to take the reigns of the desired country and make sure you survive long enough to create an empire for yourself. There’s obviously more to it than that, but the game has a fairly friendly difficult curve, which means that you get plenty of time to learn the ropes and get your affairs in order.

As always, you must strike a balance between economy, military and diplomacy, since it’s not enough to put all of your money into soldiers. The game allows you to make all sorts of interesting decisions, including conducting research, gathering resources and making sure your population is happy. Thus, it might take you a long time to finally get a victory.

Every time you start a new game you can customize everything about the map and the game mode. There are quite a few modes to choose from, including supremacy, conqueror, domination or capture the flag. Most of these have their charm, but not all of them are as fun as they sound. On the other hand, you can download more maps and extend the fun, which is quite the nice touch.

As far as the graphics are concerned, you shouldn’t expect very much in this regard, given the fact that they are about as basic as they can get in the genre. The top-down view does not allow for too much detail, but a fair bit of work went into the maps themselves. The interface is very helpful and well-designed, which makes it very easy to find your way around, even if you are a beginner.

In the end, Demise of Nations is clearly not as complex as Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings, but it has its own charm. Hence, you can get quite a few hours of entertainment out of the game, especially since you can download more maps and extend the fun.