1. Introduction¶

Imperialism: The creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. (Wikipedia)

Setting

This turn based strategy game is about the historic era of Imperialism where nations fought for strategic dominance by all means using industrial, diplomatic and military powers.

You start as monarch of one of several grand nations which all aspire to rule the world. Your country is not yet developed: the industrial output is still low, the military is weak and the diplomatic corps is lying idle. But you have a workforce willing to contribute to the industrialization and ultimately expansion of your nation.

Industrialization

What you could as a young leader is to modernize your country. Educate engineers which develop natural resources for you (like building mines for delivering coal) or build a nationwide transportation-rail-system. Command your workforce to produce higher-valued products from these resources. Then trade these away and make profit. With the new money you can extend your factories, feed a larger work force, trade or explore new resources, feed the people and finally make even more profit. Eliminate inefficiencies wherever they occur in order to maximize this profit.

Expansion

The time will come to invest in a military. Don’t wait too long or you might find yourself to be the objective of your neighbors. Sure, they will build a military too. But with a strong industrial base, one can build a powerful military. In the end the most often sought way to expand your empire might be war. Choose your victim carefully and finally tell your generals to advance. The price will be an even larger empire with even larger industrial base and that in turn will boost your army. The sky is the limit.

Conflicts

However, going to war in a world where there are several other empires the size of your own is dangerous. Your neighbors will not like what you do and might form a hostile alliance. Be careful. Your diplomats will warn you. Either conquer them all, you old warmonger, or act diplomatic, promise enough to some of them to let them ignore your actions or make alliances too. A world full of alliances can make international relations complicated and refreshingly interesting. With the right decisions, based on the actions of your opponents, with an efficient industrial base, clever diplomatic relations and a strong army, you’ll have the best chances to build a lasting empire.

Strategizing

Typical for strategy games is balancing of different goals, making sacrifices and balancing risks and rewards. Even more, the optimal strategy dynamically depends on the behavior of the competitors thus creating a fascinating circle of strategies and counter-strategies. We therefore want to present to the player decisions that matter:

Either create and arm a military now and conquer something or improve infrastructure and industrial base to support higher military later.
Either sell goods where they give the highest profit or dominate specific markets and ensure political influence in these regions.
Either invest in science to gain efficiency in military, industry in the future or invest money now.

This means the player has to set constantly monitor and adjust his priorities for selling goods, for production, for research, for improvement of infrastructure and industry.

1.1. Game Philosophy¶

This project is a remake of the classic SSI game Imperialism in the wider sense. We want to capture the spirit of the original game by adopting a large number of original concepts but also by improving inferior original elements and by modest mixing in of elements of other successful modern strategy games or a few of our own ideas. Although we value immersion into the historical context and try to avoid anachronisms this game is no historical and economical accurate simulation. By this we want to create a unique deep strategy game that delivers a grand setting (achieving world domination) by optimal interplay of economy, diplomacy and military actions as well as a worthy successor of the original Imperialism game.

Todo

Insert link to in-depth comparison to original game.

1.2. Programming Philosophy¶

We aim for supporting many different operating systems as well as for easy to use and allowing extensive customizations. We will use the tools for customization ourselves during the creation. We demand the source code to be in a clean and understandable state at all times. Standard and well tested libraries should be used extensively.

1.3. Availability¶

The finished product of this project can be obtained for free (without any fees for the game itself). The source code will be published under a free, open source license, the art asserts under a similar license suitable for creative content.