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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Imperialism 2
Comment: IMPERIALISM 2 is an extremly flexible turn-based strategy game which allows one to set up an almost infinite variety of scenarios. One may begin as a "great power" on an isolated island, or as a "great power" surrounded by neutral nations or surrounded by any number of other great powers. Conquest can be by trade/dipolomacy or by outright military conquest, or by any combination thereof. Battles can be "automatic" or managed manually. It is a great way to teach resource management and short-term and long term planning. It is a Windows 98 ( and depending on the distributor, also MAC ) driven game. It runs quite well on Windows XP but you may have to make sure that your spyware ( Zone Alarm and/or Spy Sweeper )is disnegaged as sometimes these programs "interrupt" the game. It does have options for playing opponents on the internet, but frankly, I have not tried it. If you wish to mimic the advantage of an effective intelligence service ( meaning you have an idea of what your opponent is going to do in the next turn ) you can save a game before continuing to the next turn. Then you can go back and load the previous turn and work out your strategies to meet the now known future challenges. (A bit like what we did with the Japanese at Midway in WWII). IMPERIALISM 2 combines, in a modest fashion, the satisfaction of solitaire and chess. Graphics are modest but more than adequate. I hope, for the sake of future generations, someone updates the software so it can be handled in the ever more complex Windows platforms. It is an excellent alternative for those tired of ultra-graphics and ultra gore.
Customer Rating:
Summary: How old is this game now?
Comment: I remember playing this game 5 to 7 years ago. I still have it stashed in my game box and after noticing it here, I am going to have to break it out and install it on my new computer. Oh the graphics are dated, but the game play is damn good!
Customer Rating:
Summary: RUNS ON WINDOWS XP...
Comment: The very best of the "4X" games, better than any of the Civilization games...and I love the Civilization games!! Better balance and gameplay than civ; I found that the civ games bogged down with enless detail as you progressed throught the ages. But that is me, and a minor fault, I have enjoyed endless hours with CIV 1-4. But Imperialism 2 gets my nod as the best of all time. I just wanted to note that it runs fine on my Windows XP box.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A classic
Comment: This game is a real gem, and is one of my all-time favourites. It is surprisingly good, given its age and relative lack of polish. The emphasis is on slow and deliberate strategy, rather than fancy graphics or crowd-pleasing action.
The game is a kind of distant cousin to the Civilization series. You send out explorers, build builders and military units, research new technologies, declare war and use diplomacy and trade to expand your empire, and so on. In many ways I think it is better than Civilization, perhaps because the economic model is so ingenious, and the gameplay often so edge-of-the-seat.
Everything has to be kept in delicate balance - your exploration and territory, your finances, your technological development, your raw materials, your workforce, the size of your military, the size of your merchant fleet. It is like trying to juggle several balls at once, and you are usually forced to neglect something. If something falls too far behind, then bottlenecks develop and your growth can suddenly grind to a halt. Neglect the military (which is all-too-easy given all the other demands on your economy), and you can quickly meet a sticky end.
You are often involved in a race against time, which keeps the game exciting and addictive. For example, you may be running deperately low on funds, and need to discover some precious resources before you go broke. Or you may be running low on food, and need to build some new farms before your population starts to starve. A particular challenge is building up your merchant fleet. You end up building ship after ship, and yet there never seem to be enough to transport all the materials you need to feed your hungry empire.
If all this sounds difficult, it is. But it is also great fun, and it is also quite easy to get the basic hang of. Although complicated, the economic system is also very logical and intuitive. It all hangs together surprisingly well.
While managing your economy is a challenge in its own right, the ultimate goal of the game is to expand territorially. This is also a slow and deliberate process, requiring careful preparation. Again, you will often find yourself in a desperate race against time, trying to grab land and develop new offensive technologies, before your enemies have time to build powerful defences. Each attack is an exciting gamble, where you pray and keep your fingers crossed that the enemy defences are as weak as you think they are. Defending is also a tense business, where you never seem to have quite enough troops to plug all the holes in your defences.
All in all, it's a highly addictive and intellectually rewarding game. If I have a criticism, it is that there are certain resources (diamonds and gems), which have an excessive amount of influence. Basically the opening phase of the game is a desperate race to find the diamonds. This is of course not at all realistic, and it is also slightly disappointing that so much should hinge on one thing.
It's a pity that there aren't more possibilities to customize and modify the game (which would have been one way to solve the "diamond-hunt" problem just mentioned). If Imperialism 2 came out today, there would no doubt be many more options to change the value and availability of resources, how much things cost to build and maintain, and so on.
What a shame that there don't seem to be any developers willing to take over the Imperialism franchise and give it a modern treatment. I think that anyone who has played this game knows just what an outstanding classic it is.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Might be best of its genre.
Comment: What is great about this game is balance. One word that could describe Imperialism II is "elegant." The player must constantly be planning ahead and balancing numerous policy objectives in order to avoid being overtaken by the computerized players. If you ever believe that going with the status quo is the best move for a turn, then you are in big trouble. The game develops slowly, but change is constant and unstoppable.
Contrary to the assertion of a previous critic, there are many paths to victory in Imperialism II. One can win with a country by accumulating wealth, population, learning, skilled workers, allies, or military might. However, it is extremely hard to develop all of these resources... almost impossible. A player needs to decide what overall approach she is going to take, and stick with it for 300 years.
My only disappointment is that the age of colonialism is not realistically rendered. There are no slaves in Imperialism II, for example. The only moral quandry that the player encounters is whether to use war or trade to obtain New World resources. So, from that perspective, the player appreciates why some colonial powers were able to incorporate native people into their countries peacefully, and some colonial powers instead turned to genocide. There is also no depiction of the impact that the colonial economic system had on colonists themselves. Wasn't the rebellion of England's North American colonies one of the most important events of the Colonial Era?
Still, a really fun game.
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