Imperiums Greek Wars – Civ-style 4X turn-based strategy in Greece

With Imperiums Greek Wars a strong turn-based strategy game is released on Steam, which lets us relive Ancient Greece and its conflicts.

Imperiums Greek Wars has just been released on Steam and would like to take us to ancient Greece. Imperiums Greek Wars is a 4X turn strategy game. In this review, I show you PC gameplay and all information about the game. A historical turn-based strategy game by Kube Games in review, similar to Imperator Rome, just released on Steam.

This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Video:

German voice-over, many subtitles

Imperiums Greek Wars Review – Intro

Hi there, it’s the Zap. In this article, you will learn everything about the new 4X turn strategy and building game Imperium Greek Wars. It has just been released on Steam and wants to take us to ancient Greece. In this review, I’ll show you how the game is played, what’s in it, and in the end, there’s a rating from me. But most of all I want to give you with this review all the information that will help you to decide for yourself if it could be fun or not.

Imperium Greek Wars is developed by the indie developer Kube Games from the Czech Republic and is published by the company itself. It has just been released on Steam and currently costs 29,99 € or $27. I got a free test sample from the developer, but I always test all games with the thought in mind of how I would feel if I paid the full price.

Imperiums Greek Wars – Game Type

In this game, everything revolves around the history of ancient Greece. The two campaigns, currently included in Imperium Greek Wars, start around 355 BC and follow the events of well-known provinces such as Athens, Sparta, Peloponnese, Macedonia, but also many smaller and less known regions and ethnic groups. The times were rough and martial, and between trade and diplomacy, all leaders of the empires of that time were eager to achieve the best for themselves and their country, often unscrupulously and aggressively.

We are commander, treasurer, strategic planner, diplomat, and much more in one person. Imperiums is very complex and the game has many menus and submenus. Basically, the game is similar to the very well-known Civilization VI or its predecessors. It’s a so-called 4X Strategy game, if the term doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll explain it in more detail. The four Xs stand for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate-

So we build cities, settlers, and combat units, build temples and roads, explore the surroundings, and are constantly bordered by enemy units and states. Unlike in Civilization, you don’t start in an almost empty world, but all territory you want to repopulate has to be taken from another race first. But since there are ten or more other states active on the map, we can’t go to war with all of them at the same time, so we need extensive diplomacy functions and trade to survive.

Singleplayer, Multiplayer and Maps

Everything takes place in turns, so for each action, you can leave yourself plenty of time to think about it. This time is often necessary, especially in the beginning, because you have to read a lot to understand everything.

There are two extensive campaigns for solo players and in addition, there is an extensive adjustable random map generator for more or less endless replayability. This generator has a truly impressive range of settings for map size, landscape characteristics, number of enemies, and their difficulty level, for ages, lap duration, victory conditions, and much more.

Imperium Greek Wars also has a multiplayer mode, so you don’t always have to play the game alone. A special feature of the game is that it also supports a so-called hot-seat mode, which means you can play with several players on the same PC. In addition, the new Remote Play Together feature by Steam is also supported. This gives you the opportunity to play together with Steam friends, and everyone can join in, even if the other person doesn’t own the game. So for a game in the evening you only have to convince your friend that he wants to play with you, and not that he has to buy the whole game for that evening.

Then the game also has a map editor with which you can build your own maps and scenarios. Steam workshop support is also offered for this so that in the foreseeable future the scope of the game could probably be greatly expanded with player-made maps and scenarios. Often such games get a lot of different mods after a while and thus get a much longer life expectancy.

Imperiums Greek Wars Gameplay – Simulation and Strategy

The foundation of our economy is six goods or raw materials that we can cultivate or mine in the surrounding area. These range from food and coal to stones, iron, wood, and gold. In addition, our cities produce other important resources such as knowledge, influence, slaves, and citizens, and on top of this, there is the satisfaction of our people. So we have to plant fields and build mines, connect them with roads, and expand our cities, specialize, and establish new ones.

In order not to provoke our neighbors by our presence all the time and to prevent them from attacking us jointly at some point, we should also make extensive use of diplomacy. Here Greek Wars offers very extensive possibilities, which go far beyond what is usually offered in these menus. Besides trade agreements and peace treaties, there are also more complex treaty possibilities, such as joint attacks on enemy states, where it is stipulated in advance which country will attack which cities.

For our people to evolve and for us to gain an advantage over the barbarians behind the next hill, Greek Wars offers a complex research tree. A total of 61 different knowledge topics, diplomacy skills, city upgrades, unit upgrades, or completely new units can be explored. And there are always different options to choose from so that this really offers a certain strategic depth.

All in all, Imperiums Greek Wars has a huge amount of possibilities in the strategy area. Compared to Civilization, the city development and upgrading of the environment is a little less complex, but other areas like diplomacy are sometimes more extensive. In any case, both are on a similar level.

Gameplay – History

I’m not a history professor and therefore I can’t fully judge the accuracy of the data conveyed in the game, I don’t even want to try. But as a layman you will be provided with extensive stories and some information about the history of the tribes. For me this has brought some interesting reading hours. I was able to refresh a part of my knowledge of history around ancient Greece and also learn some new things.

If you simply like strategy games, the accuracy of the story is probably not a decisive feature. And for true fans of history, the game probably still offers enough of the beloved theme that you’ll be happy to live with eventual variations since the range of games in this area is not too extensive.

Tech, Graphics, Sound

The game runs stable and crash-free for me. Graphically there are no outstanding visuals, everything seems a bit old-fashioned and simple. But that has its own charm. Technically the game has a lot of possibilities to adjust it to different computers. But it will of course never ignite a graphic firework, even if you turn it up as high as you want. But I don’t think that’s necessary for this genre, on the contrary, games that offer too many effects often distract from the actual flatness of tactics and strategy.

The sound is on the good, upper-middle ground. The samples during fights or unit movements are clear and easy to assign. And I especially liked the music, there’s really a large number of titles and also the option to switch the songs directly in the game forward or back I haven’t been allowed to see very often.

Voice output is only available in the cutscene of the opening credits and there it is in English and pleasant to hear. The extensive screen texts, on the other hand, are translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Czech and Russian, and at least the German translation was almost error-free, very easy to understand, and well translated.

Opinion & Conclusion

Overall, Imperium Greek Wars leaves a good impression on me. It offers no action, no graphic splendor, or movie-like presentation. But if you expect something like that, I think you got lost in the genre anyway. It is very extensive, both in terms of functions and also the many buttons and submenus. But it offers a well-done tutorial campaign, which offers even the beginners with this genre a halfway easy start. And everyone who knows and likes Civilization or one of the many 4X games from Paradox will feel at home here quite quickly.

This is wrong in the Video: It should be mentioned that the developers behind this game have previously worked on Imperator: Rome for Paradox and have now gone into business for themselves with a similar but not identical historical background. But since I don’t know Imperator: Rome, I can’t make any direct comparisons here. It looks partly quite similar on screenshots. But how strong this similarity is and if Greek Wars is worthwhile for owners of Imperator Rome, I can’t judge.

It should be mentioned, that the developers behind this game have previously worked on Aggressor: Ancient Rome for Slitherine Software and have now gone into business for themselves with a similar but not identical historical background. But since I don’t know Aggressor: Ancient Rome, I can’t make any direct comparisons here. It looks partly quite similar on screenshots. But how strong this similarity is and if Greek Wars is worthwhile for owners of Aggressor: Ancient Rome, I can’t judge. It is also similar to several Paradox titles like Imperator: Rome.

However, the title of Paradox costs almost double the 29,90 €/$ charged here, and with editor and steam workshop connections you can expect at least a little bit of expansion through future user content. With Paradox games I am personally always a bit overwhelmed with the number of DLCs and additional content. Not only overstrained to keep the overview but often also financially. Some titles get easily 15-20 DLCs and if you want to have all of them together, it can cost you hundreds of dollars.

Through the well-done random scenario generator, map editor, the Steam-Workshop integration, and with the multiplayer, no matter if online, via hot-seat or with the especially fair Remote-Play-Together function, playing time with this title is possible for a long period of time and again and again. Here Kube actually exhausts everything to offer the buyer of her game many different possibilities for long-term motivation.

Imperiums Greek Wars – Screenshots

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Imperiums Greek Wars Test – Rating

With Imperiums Greek Wars, Kube Games succeeds in making a good start to independence. For less than thirty Euros you get a comprehensive and complex strategy game with an interesting historical background. For connoisseurs of the 4X strategy genre, the game is definitely worth a look. And also for beginners, Greek Wars can please because it picks up all interested players with the well-done tutorial. However, Imperiums Greek Wars now offers no innovative new ideas or outstanding features that make it stand out from the competition.

For this, I would like to award a 75% base rating. For a better rating, the game should have offered more unique ideas. Since the game works solidly, is well translated and I didn’t have any other quirks, there are no deductions from me here. For the especially lovingly done tutorial and the fair use of the Steam feature Remote Play Together I would even like to give a 3% bonus for beginners. So in the end the result is a respectable 78 % rating for Imperiums Greek Wars.

Well done, Kube Games, more games like this in the future, please.

Outro

Was “This is Sparta” also your battle cry, and do you want to re-enact the war for the Peloponnese right away, or are turn strategy and build-up games where you spend hours looking at a map not action-packed enough for you? Write me your opinion, let’s discuss it.

More game reviews and gaming news and also guides and tutorials can be found on the YouTube channel or here on https://zapzockt.de – Then I wish you a great day, stay healthy, ciao ciao, your Zap

Links and Sources

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Imperiums Greek Wars Steam Page

Imperiums Greek Wars Website

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