Decay. Sacrifice. Desperation. Hopelessness.
Those are the kind of words that define Empire. This is not a game about establishing some grand kingdom to weather the tests of time. It is about hanging on by a thread, surviving just a little bit longer against inevitable defeat. You will fail. But how long your meager empire survives, how it dies, be it slow starvation or desperate battle, depends on your planning and tactical skills.
Empire encompasses numerous genres and when examined apart, you might think the game would falter under the weight of so many elements. City building. Deck building. Resource management. Tactical battles. Roguelike aspects. But somehow Empire works. You guide a small civilization eking out an existence amid a dangerous hostile land. Every turn erodes the land, drains resources. Eventually you will have to move on, rebuild, as the landscape is slowly corrupted by the ever-growing Desolation and monstrous hordes.
Advance week-by-week, collecting food, materials, gems. Expand your cities to earn new soldiers or new perks or explore the fog-shrouded environment and establish new cities. All the while, the Desolation grows, spreads, infests your land. You can send your armies to fend off the growing threat, but that eats up precious resources perhaps better used for other actions. When you do fight, combat plays out on a Plants vs Zombie-esque grid. Each turn, your troops and your enemies move forward; your only commands are issued from a set of four cards taken from your deck. These cards allow you to perform various actions such as halting movement, changing positions, boosting stats, and recovering hit points. Suffer a causality or lose a city and useless Strike cards begin cluttering your deck.
You can expand your cities with farms and academies and shaman huts, each with their own perks, but you can never get too attached to your settlements. You always have the choice to abandon them, and settle anew; in fact that is a crucial aspect in surviving for longer periods: deciding when to continue growing your cities and when it's best to move onto fresh land.
Empire distilled the elements of various genres into a unique blend that not only works, but works wells, providing challenge and strategic depth. Failure is inevitable, but maybe through your planning and decision, you might just stave off destruction a little bit longer