It may just be that the ethics of 4X are more in your face with the relatively modern setting, but I actually felt a bit queasy when I realized that the cost of winning as the Emperor (historical outcome ftw!) was basically setting up a Militarist Japan, resurrecting the divine right of kings and putting the fascists in charge. If you can manage to run a strong economy, a few of these can absolutely devastate your opposition - in fact, the way to manage your happiness as the Imperial faction is to build police stations and propaganda offices everywhere and hire tons of extremists to murder political opponents, foreign agents, geishas etc. On the campaign map I found the secret policeman/extremist rabble-rouser to be maybe a little too useful for $500 you get a unit that increases influence, adds happiness, can assassinate all kinds of other units, can cause rebellions (best way of taking out an ally) and can bribe armies. It’s been said above that there is no tech tree for a traditionalist faction and this is true, but there is a hierarchy of buildings to get the best traditionalist troops, though you don’t strictly speaking need to research techs to get them, and as a traditionalist you will have no problems with happiness.
Unit/building icons are fake sepia photographs, giving it a sort of Madame Butterfly feel. I love the new campaign map, which is gorgeous with a mid 19th-century theme. Per-turn movement over land is also extremely slow to keep mobility you need either sea transport or the railways. Troops are very expensive compared to the base game, and the first 100 turns or so are difficult as you try to expand without allowing any armies into your vulnerable provinces. FoTS is really about two things controlling the seas and keeping a balance between modernisation, expansion and happiness (which, in the early game, is extremely tight).
I liked it a lot more than Mind Elemental did. Just completed a pro-Empire game as the Satsuma clan on Hard, going to have a go at starting my own republic.
0 kommentar(er)
