Empires rise and empires fall. It’s an inevitability that’s happened time and time again throughout human history. From the overextension of the British Empire to the inner divisions of the Roman Empire to the inability to establish peace by the Mongol Empire, whether from internal strife or external pressure, these entities are meant to break.
Empire’s End is a new two-to-four player design from John D. Clair and is published by Brotherwise Games. It asks players to control an empire at the height of its power only to find destruction on the horizon. Do you have what it takes to thwart the disasters that await? Can you salvage the ruins using innovations and military might? Or is your empire, like all others before it, on the brink of utter annihilation?
Gameplay Overview:
The height of your empire begins with eleven healthy locations randomly arranged by the starting player. All other players match their locations to this setup. Each empire begins with two of every resource type (wheat, axe, hammer, and coins which are wild), a private screen to keep these hidden, as well as a hand of four disaster cards.
There is a central board that displays the phases of play and these alternate between four distinct options. A phase is fully completed before the time tracker moves to the next phase. Once this reaches the end of the track, players score based on their healthy locations as well as any end-game innovation bonuses.
The disaster phase happens immediately and begins the decline of your empire. During this phase, a disaster card is drawn, and it shows which location is being targeted for destruction. The disaster card also features an innovation that is obtained by the player who takes it. The first player may either accept this disaster or pay a resource. Each disaster has a different resource requirement. If a player cannot pay, they must take the disaster.
Players take turns deciding whether to pay. As resources gather onto the disaster card, the urge to take on the disaster increases. Once a player relents and takes the disaster, they also receive all resources on the card, as well as the innovation. This player flips their location tile to its destroyed side and adds innovation to any healthy location. A destroyed location is not scored at the end of the game.
Gained innovations provide ways to conserve or produce resources, add military strength, trade out disasters, and gain end-game bonuses. Innovations are only accessible if attached to a healthy location and must be attached to a healthy location without an innovation before beginning to stack these.
Innovations can also be built. During the industry phase, players can spend hammers to rebuild destroyed locations. They can also build innovations from their hand of four disaster cards. These cards can also be sold for a coin during this time (up to two). The industry phase may also be associated with certain locations and innovations that are available to use, such as reducing the cost to build innovations or repair locations.
The economy phase allows players to trigger available economy abilities on their location and innovation tiles. Based on what’s not yet destroyed, players gain resources, points, and the option to convert resources. Again, these are only available for healthy locations, so it helps to be mindful of your needs when considering a disaster.
The last phase to mention is the military phase. A card is drawn from the military deck which dictates the combat strength needed to reach certain rungs on the card’s reward tiers. Before determining military strength, each player secretly bids axes and coins to add to their healthy combat strength icons on their locations. Players compare and the winner receives a bonus. All other players face an upheaval penalty and must rearrange their locations according to the card instructions.
Game Experience:
This is a lighter game than I was expecting and as such, it’s easy to learn. It is not easy to master though as you must constantly struggle with the risk/reward of taking disasters at the right time. The calculation of how many resources to pay while being mindful of your neighbors gaining too much is a great tension. And the No Thanks style bidding is the highlight of the design.
The destruction of locations can begin to feel punishing, but this is truly in the spirit of the game. Finding the right innovations to provide benefits to overcome points lost to specific locations (or finding ways to boost resources to rebuild them) has strategic depth. There is also the addition of double disaster phases where players can choose to pay for one disaster and take the other, or if the resources pile up, take them both.
Due to the nature of such a design, balance may be more player-driven than system driven. I played a session where one player took on disasters too readily, and the rewards were not enough to keep them competitive. There is luck in the disaster draw, as this dictates which location is being targeted, and as the phases continue each player’s tableau begins to look different.
The bonus innovation for gaining a disaster is a nice touch. There may be an innovation that fits with your strategy, but you do not want to take it immediately. You want some resources in return for taking on such a risk. But others may key in on this benefit and stop you from gaining too much. Once innovations are slotted into your tableau, there’s extra incentive to keep certain locations healthy to not lose out on their benefits.
It must also be mentioned that Empire’s End is well produced. It comes with an excellent plastic insert with individual player trays. The tiles, cards, and resources are well designed. And the illustration by artist Kwanchai Moriya is excellent. A nice added touch is a gloss finish on the fire of the disaster tiles which provides a little flicker of glare during play.
I’m not enthusiastic about this as a mainstay in the collection. While fresh during its initial plays, it does begin to feel more exercise than experience. As you travel though the phases, you begin to realize that while your landscape is changing and there’s always motivation for scoring, the promise of an empire ending is not actually present. It lacks a gameplay arc outside of the destruction of locations. It presents as more than an abstract game, but ultimately ends up being nothing but.
The Roman theme is also overdone. Yes, the Roman Empire did fall. So did so many others that would be fun to explore. The game could have developed based on a specific empire, incorporating the story of that specific downfall into the length of play. Era one with specific disasters and military events, moving into future eras with their own stories to tell. It would take more work, but it would be meaningful and provide more reason to show it to others.
This issue is apparent in the non-disaster phases. While they can be completed simultaneously, thus adding to quick gameplay, they are also generic and feel like busy work. This is most apparent in the military phase, where the bonuses are not exciting, and the upheaval is not particularly punishing. These generic phases take us from point A to B and shift the game state a couple of notches.
Final Thoughts:
Make no mistake: the “bidding” system in Empire’s End is asking players to pay to not take punishment is great. It’s central to this design and adds the most tension to each session. There are just a lot of additional steps in place that take an already abstracted game into a very generic space. Outside of the bidding, there is no central focus that elevates its theme. And as I’ve discussed in my thoughts above, with the right amount of attention, this could’ve become much less abstract and much more engaging. I think Brotherwise put a lot of love into this design on the production side. However the initial design began to crumble as soon as it stepped away from its original inspiration.
Final Score: 3 stars – Reminds us that some empires deserve salvaging and others . . . not so much.
Hits:
• No-thanks bidding
• Innovation bonus
• Excellent production
Misses:
• Tired theme
• Lacks a meaningful arc
• Abstract military phase
