In Imperialism you rule one of the Great Powers in a world modeled on the real world of the nineteenth century. As the game begins, your country and the other Great Powers begin a period of rapid economic, military, and social advancement due to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. You must first harness these historic forces to develop your own country, and then use your new found wealth and resources to compete successfully with the other Great Powers in the realms of diplomacy, trade, and war. Only one Great Power can establish the pre-eminent Empire in the world.
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"Use your powerful industries to take advantage of the smaller nations: buy their cheap raw resources and sell them back expensive finished goods" - Imperialism Tutorial Advisor. The observation that the mechanics of grand strategy games like Civ or Total War are informed by imperialism is not a particularly original one, judging by just how many academic papers and articles I found on this very subject once I started diving into the rabbit hole that led me to Imperialism (1997).
Its struck me as particularly insidious just how invisible the ideology of conquest, expansion, conquering "primitive" cultures etc is in these games that few are particularly bothered by it. And Im no exception, I have like 300 hours in rome total war 1, a game in which the optimal strat is usually to enslave the population of each new settlement. These mechanics are so abstracted from a sort of bird's eye view armchair general perspective that it becomes easy not to take stock of what exactly you are doing i.e imperialism. In all honesty, I think I'll just add a bibliography at the end of some of the articles I read because it really is quite interesting and I wouldnt want to do a disservice to this subject by expressing it poorly.
Imperialism 1997 plays as something like a Civ (or maybe Victoria 3 but Im not too familiar with paradox games cause everytime I try to play one I feel like it would be easier to learn a new language instead) grand strategy management game set in the 19th century. The objective is to be elected leader by the council of governors, which is a complicated way of saying you need to have half or more of the provinces of the world vote for you, either by direct conquest, colonies or even just allied nations. To accomplish this, you need to build up your industrial base, influence minor nations, forge alliances, invade countries etc. Despite being a bit overwhelming at first it quickly became very absorbing, for much of the early/mid game it was like there was always a different bottleneck preventing me from reaching my goals, not enough wool to make cotton, not enough money to buy timber from the world market, enough resources but no rail connection between the capital and the depot etc.
The Imperialism™ comes into play firstly when it comes to trading, which is very important. You see, if you want a resource you dont have, you have to buy it. Obviously! But its not a question of just money, importantly you need first of all enough of a merchant marine to ship it from the other country but also you need to have someone willing to buy it in the first place. I played fairly poorly and peacefully on my first playthrough so by the time I had a solid economy I was late to the colonialism party and most of my neighbouring territories had become colonies of rival nations, who imposed a trade boycott on me. Meaning I had a whole bunch of manufactured goods but I couldnt sell them to anyone, and even worse I had no way to get the important resource of iron and coal to fuel my industries. When I finally colonized a neighbour I did the same to them and started raking in the cash.
The process of colonizing a minor nation involves establishing first a trade consulate, then an embassy and then basically bribing them until they agree to become a part of your empire. You can also send a "developer" who looks like a soviet propaganda poster of a capitalist to exploit land and resources of the country so you can have it for yourself.
"Damn, I need access to iron but no one will sell it to me cause they are found in enemy colonies, maybe I should take some of them for myself through military force..." I thought, before reflecting that I was sounding like an imperial japanese general. And I think thats the genius of Imperialism that I like. Its... cynical? The newspaper articles you get shown at the beginning of each turn have some funny bits and attempts at satire, it all goes to create a sense of being a real Bismarck type figure, plotting to consolidate power and wealth through amoral violence and exploitation.
I've heard certain games described as a satire of their respective genres before, but most of the times I find it hard to agree, to me it always seems more as just being that very thing but not pretending the player is heroic or similar stuff? But I do get that it's the type of conversation that boils down to either you agree or you don't and I can equally see how someone could be skeptical of my claim that Imperialism 1997 is a satire of colonialism and its framework in strategy games when you are, at the end of the day doing the imperialism. But for me, I think the key difference is that Imperialism 1997 is IMO so didactic in its mechanics to teach the player what it's doing without beating them over the head with it.
Unfortunately, it's a late 90s PC game and even GOG has failed to put out a version that's stable enough to play a proper game. I had a lot of fun, but after a few hours into my game the next turn button crashes the game. A real shame because in classic grand strategy fashion, 8 hours into the game was when I finally "felt like I understood the game".
Just as an aside, my usual hatred of manuals and low attention span definitely contributed to that slow learning, but its a real dick move to advertise your game as having a tutorial and then opening said tutorial with "open the manual to page 93 to follow along the tutorial". Whatever, I got the gist from the ingame advisor tips and experimentation.
Further Reading Links:
https://usso.uk/2020/11/playing-with-not-against-empires-video-games-and-postcolonialism/
http://opiniojuris.org/2021/10/25/international-law-and-popular-culture-symposium-depictions-of-colonialism-and-oppression-in-4x-video-games/
https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/4462/
https://uppercutcrit.com/chasing-the-anti-colonial-video-game/
Its struck me as particularly insidious just how invisible the ideology of conquest, expansion, conquering "primitive" cultures etc is in these games that few are particularly bothered by it. And Im no exception, I have like 300 hours in rome total war 1, a game in which the optimal strat is usually to enslave the population of each new settlement. These mechanics are so abstracted from a sort of bird's eye view armchair general perspective that it becomes easy not to take stock of what exactly you are doing i.e imperialism. In all honesty, I think I'll just add a bibliography at the end of some of the articles I read because it really is quite interesting and I wouldnt want to do a disservice to this subject by expressing it poorly.
Imperialism 1997 plays as something like a Civ (or maybe Victoria 3 but Im not too familiar with paradox games cause everytime I try to play one I feel like it would be easier to learn a new language instead) grand strategy management game set in the 19th century. The objective is to be elected leader by the council of governors, which is a complicated way of saying you need to have half or more of the provinces of the world vote for you, either by direct conquest, colonies or even just allied nations. To accomplish this, you need to build up your industrial base, influence minor nations, forge alliances, invade countries etc. Despite being a bit overwhelming at first it quickly became very absorbing, for much of the early/mid game it was like there was always a different bottleneck preventing me from reaching my goals, not enough wool to make cotton, not enough money to buy timber from the world market, enough resources but no rail connection between the capital and the depot etc.
The Imperialism™ comes into play firstly when it comes to trading, which is very important. You see, if you want a resource you dont have, you have to buy it. Obviously! But its not a question of just money, importantly you need first of all enough of a merchant marine to ship it from the other country but also you need to have someone willing to buy it in the first place. I played fairly poorly and peacefully on my first playthrough so by the time I had a solid economy I was late to the colonialism party and most of my neighbouring territories had become colonies of rival nations, who imposed a trade boycott on me. Meaning I had a whole bunch of manufactured goods but I couldnt sell them to anyone, and even worse I had no way to get the important resource of iron and coal to fuel my industries. When I finally colonized a neighbour I did the same to them and started raking in the cash.
The process of colonizing a minor nation involves establishing first a trade consulate, then an embassy and then basically bribing them until they agree to become a part of your empire. You can also send a "developer" who looks like a soviet propaganda poster of a capitalist to exploit land and resources of the country so you can have it for yourself.
"Damn, I need access to iron but no one will sell it to me cause they are found in enemy colonies, maybe I should take some of them for myself through military force..." I thought, before reflecting that I was sounding like an imperial japanese general. And I think thats the genius of Imperialism that I like. Its... cynical? The newspaper articles you get shown at the beginning of each turn have some funny bits and attempts at satire, it all goes to create a sense of being a real Bismarck type figure, plotting to consolidate power and wealth through amoral violence and exploitation.
I've heard certain games described as a satire of their respective genres before, but most of the times I find it hard to agree, to me it always seems more as just being that very thing but not pretending the player is heroic or similar stuff? But I do get that it's the type of conversation that boils down to either you agree or you don't and I can equally see how someone could be skeptical of my claim that Imperialism 1997 is a satire of colonialism and its framework in strategy games when you are, at the end of the day doing the imperialism. But for me, I think the key difference is that Imperialism 1997 is IMO so didactic in its mechanics to teach the player what it's doing without beating them over the head with it.
Unfortunately, it's a late 90s PC game and even GOG has failed to put out a version that's stable enough to play a proper game. I had a lot of fun, but after a few hours into my game the next turn button crashes the game. A real shame because in classic grand strategy fashion, 8 hours into the game was when I finally "felt like I understood the game".
Just as an aside, my usual hatred of manuals and low attention span definitely contributed to that slow learning, but its a real dick move to advertise your game as having a tutorial and then opening said tutorial with "open the manual to page 93 to follow along the tutorial". Whatever, I got the gist from the ingame advisor tips and experimentation.
Further Reading Links:
https://usso.uk/2020/11/playing-with-not-against-empires-video-games-and-postcolonialism/
http://opiniojuris.org/2021/10/25/international-law-and-popular-culture-symposium-depictions-of-colonialism-and-oppression-in-4x-video-games/
https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/4462/
https://uppercutcrit.com/chasing-the-anti-colonial-video-game/