Every year, there are a few games that blast you away. More often than not, these games are low-key productions. While they may be featured on a major expo, such as E3, the expectations remain relatively low, and so, when the game hits the shelves, nobody pays attention. Those few brave souls who purchase the game, however, get much more than they bargained for. War and Peace is one such game. Combining complex strategic and tactical combat with resource management, a diplomatic model and a surprisingly good A.I., Microids have delivered what many larger developers couldn’t: a solid real-time strategy on a global scale.
Game mechanics
Have you ever played Europa Universalis? Have you ever wondered how it would feel if you could actually direct your troops in the battle? War and Peace provides the answer. On a global scale, the game is strikingly similar, albeit a little less complex, to Europa Universalis. Instead of provinces, you have cities with their areas of influence, and instead of passively watching your units getting slaughtered you’ll be able to command them.
At the beginning of the game, you’ll be able to select one of six nations. Each nation has its strengths and weaknesses, which adds somewhat to the replay value of the game. These minor adjustments can get really complex; for example, the Ottomans feature 34 different deviations from the default values. Once you have a nation, you can proceed to selecting a game you want to play. In addition to eight historical campaigns, there are two free-form “conquer the world” games. The historical campaigns are not entirely accurate, though. While the power distribution at the beginning is pretty much according to the history books, it’s up to you and the A.I. to play it out. For example, in one game my English have signed a peace treaty with the French and allied themselves with the Russians, for the sole purpose of retaking the United States. It worked like a charm.
The power nodes in this game are the cities. Each town allows you to construct a certain number of structures, depending on its size. The buildings will either help you to gather resources, build units or have special functions, such as restoring the health of your soldiers, conduct research or train your generals. Building a structure or training a unit requires both of your resources – gold and men. Trust me if I tell you that both resources will be in very short supply even in easy games.
War and Peace has a very limited number of units. There are nine ground and five naval units, with he ground units further divided into sets of three – three infantry units, three cavalry and three artillery units. While it may seem that the number of ground forces is very limited, it helps balancing the game. As it is common in modern real-time strategies, each unit has a different set of strengths and weaknesses against different types of opponents. To make matters even more complicated, these strengths are greatly influenced by the formation the units are in. For example, cavalry will plow through a line of infantrymen without a problem, but if you put your infantry into a square formation, the cavalry will hit a wall and disintegrate before you know what’s going on.
The world at the end of the 18th century was not all about fighting, though. Nations conducted research and exchanged diplomatic notes. Both are possible in this game as well. While neither feature is as complex as those in Europa Universalis, they serve their function very well. Research is divided into two categories – administrative research, where an advance will enable you to gather more resources, and military research, which strengthens your units. Diplomacy is comparable to that in Civilization III. You’ll be able to exchange resources, sign peace and declare wars. The computer will be surprisingly active in this area, and unlike in Civilization, it will honor its agreements and won’t backstab you at the earliest opportunity.
When does the game end? That depends on you. At the beginning, you’ll be able to set very detailed victory conditions. Sadly these conditions don’t include things like killing a certain general or destroying a nation. For example, in the Waterloo scenario even after France was annihilated, I had to declare war on another nation only to capture 10 cities, the victory condition I set for myself.
Interface
A poor interface in such a complex game as War and Peace can sink an otherwise great title. I’m happy to report that the interface in this game is superb. The screen is very well laid out, with all information readily available to you. Moving around a large empire is very easy as well, as there is a shortcut to each of your cities, which tells you how many units you have there, whether they are attacked by an enemy and if so how many attackers there are, and you can even issue build orders through these shortcuts without leaving an important battle.
To make matters even easier for you, you have several keyboard shortcuts for selecting units and for various formations, and as it is common in many other games of the genre, you’ll be able to create shortcuts for your various armies and then select them by pressing a single button. The game speed can be changed as well. Under the default setting, one year takes an hour to play (5 minutes per month), but you can slow it down to as much as five hours per year or pause it altogether. I found myself switching between 20% of the normal speed and pausing the game, successfully transforming it into a turn-based strategy.
The main view is well organized. While sometimes you’ll have problems trying to figure out where you are, you’ll be always able to zoom out to get a better view. All towns are labeled, which helps the orientation a lot. A combination of mouse and keyboard interface will make you fly across the landscape in a few short minutes of getting used to the controls.
Technical considerations
Given the size and complexity of the game, War and Peace is surprisingly stable and not overly demanding on the computer. The whole world is displayed in a true 3D view with a free-floating camera, and even in battles with over 100 units the game never crashed or even slowed down, at maximum graphic settings. Microids have released a minor patch that tweaks the game somewhat, but is not necessary to keep the game up and running. The only downside here is that the publisher used the Starforce v3 copy protection, which didn’t allow me to play the game from a backup CD, as I normally do.
Gameplay – 8
War and Peace is a very complex title. However, the intuitive interface, good tutorial and free-form mode that allows you to test your strategy all contribute to making the learning curve as low as possible. The game never gets frustrating, and instead will keep you at your computer into early morning hours.
What really adds value to the game is exceptional balance. All units have counter-units, and every kind of attack will face the appropriate defense. In addition, the developers made a wise decision of deviating from a geographically accurate world and instead creating one that makes more sense for a strategy game. There are strategic towns to conquer and important bridges to defend, and the computer does a very good job at recognizing both.
Probably the biggest strength of the game is the surprisingly good A.I. Even in the easy mode, the A.I. showed very competent strategic and tactical thinking. The computer-controlled enemy knows which towns to defend to the death and which to leave to their fate. It takes great advantage of weak points in your defense, but never overextends itself. In tactical combat, the enemy tends to use all its units in the most logical fashion and even goes as far as outflanking you in order to take down your general or charge your supporting artillery. I found the game very challenging but never frustrating even in the easy mode.
Unfortunately, even the most competent A.I. can’t hide the main drawback to this game – the lack of a multiplayer mode. I’m a single-player gamer, but I understand that many people can’t imagine playing a real-time strategy without human opponents. This is the case here, though, and it’s a shame that a multiplayer mode wasn’t included.
Overall, the gameplay is superb. The game is very well balanced, and the A.I. is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a real-time strategy game. Keeping the learning curve low and the interface very simple eliminated any hint of frustration from the game. However, the lack of a multiplayer mode forces me to not give the gameplay a perfect ten.
Graphics – 7
The graphics are better than what I’d expect from this kind of game. The whole world is in 3D, and fighting battles under the snow-covered Alps or in the desert in sight of the Pyramids is a truly monumental experience. The game boasts 12 different architectural types of towns, and while sometimes they are in the wrong place (such as palm trees in Prague), all towns look very impressive. Unfortunately, the unit graphics are not up to par. All units are 2D sprites, which look quite pixilated from up close. There are so few animation frames to them that they often look like play pieces in a board game. While I can understand the need for keeping the unit graphics simple (after all, battles can involve more than 100 divisions, all containing dozens of units), it is also hard to enjoy the battles from up close.
Sound – 10
The music in the game is great and very appropriate to the time period. However, what really surprised me was the quality of voiceovers. As with other real-time strategy games, you get a unit acknowledging a command with a simple word or two. However, what makes this game special is that not only each unit has one of several custom responses, but also utilizes the language of the nation you play for. Yet, there’s more to it: the developers paid such a close attention to details that they even included different accents. While Austrian units sound like they were from around Vienna, the Prussian units use a high-German accent. Furthermore, the volume of battle sounds varies on your level of zoom and distance from the battle; yet another nice addition to the game.
Replay value – 9
The game is being sold for $30 and offers over 50 hours of gameplay. With 6 highly custom nations, 8 preset and 2 free-form scenarios, the general in you will be able to play this game over and over again for weeks. Thanks to the great A.I., you’ll be never certain of an easy victory. My only complaint here is the lack of a scenario editor and the ability to play for other nations. I would gladly try to make Portugal a colonial superpower or try to conquer England with the U.S., but without an editor I’m unable to do so.
Overall – 8.5
Slowly but surely Microids is becoming a brand of quality in PC gaming. After its superb Syberia and unique Post Mortem, the company surprised me with this real-time strategy title. The developer paid close attention to all that matters, such as game balance, interface and A.I. Adding great graphics and superb sound has elevated this game to a permanent fixture on my hard drive. The only serious drawback to this game is the lack of a multiplayer mode, but even without it a serious history buff and strategy gamer will be able to spend countless hours with War and Peace.
