Imperia Online is a strategy game where you are the owner of a province. There are twenty-five wild empires in each province and ten thousand empires on each continent. The goal is to dominate the world. Do this by fighting or by living peacefully, the choice is yours. Game play is real-time which in this case is a negative for the game. Time consumption and restraints make the game drawn out and boring.

When first logging on it appears there is much to do. Upon further inspection and reading the extensive manual the truth becomes clear. The first and practically only steps are to build up your province. Build Buildings to certain levels in order to upgrade Research. Build up Research in order to train soldiers, and you need at least one thousand soldiers before going to war. You will spend about three weeks just building up your province because it takes anywhere from five minutes to three hours + to build one building. You can’t build more than one building at a time and there are eleven buildings to build up. Apart from being extremely time consuming, it is also boring. There is nothing to do while building in a province or while soldiers are training. Your only option is to post on the message boards or join a public chat. There is one game you can play while awaiting buildings called Red and Black Gambling, but this is not available unless you meet the game requirements.

Building time restrictions are not the only hindrance to this game. Money and resources becomes a huge obstacle. Resources are iron, wood, and stone. All building and training jobs require some sort of resource including gold. Hire workers to assist in gaining these valuable resources, however the profit from this is minimal. It takes days to get enough gold and resources to train soldiers.

Game interface and layout is good. Advertisements are placed off to the right side, which is nice because it’s barely noticeable and unobtrusive. As for artwork, there is very little of that. Imperia Online is mostly text-based. There are a few basic outlines of buildings and soldiers. The best artwork on this site is under the provinces tab. A sort of rough map exists to show where your province is located and also all surrounding provinces. Clicking on one of these brings up a still shot of an awesome landscape. If the art found under provinces was used throughout the site, this game would be much more appealing.

Expand your Empire through field battle, fortress sieges, and pillaging. Though pillaging is the fastest way to earn money it earns you negative four honor as a consequence. Morale is very important in battle. It lowers due to fatigue, death, sickness, and each round moral drops by four. Terrain also determines how your troops will fare in battle. Certain terrains offer advantages or disadvantages. You can also form alliances to make battle easier. Battle your way through the ranks to become a general. At this point you can become an advisor in any Alliance you choose. There is a tax to be in an alliance, so you have to weigh the pros and cons.

Imperia Online is a good game once you get through the first two or three weeks of building up your province. The time restrictions certainly make it realistic. I would definitely recommend this game to strategy enthusiasts and anyone desiring world domination.