Empire II: The Art of War scenarios

Every self-respecting strategy gamer knows Empire, the mother of all war strategy games, as well as its updated version Empire Deluxe. Far less well known is their ill-fated sequel Empire II: The Art of War, which departed from the originals considerably by concentrating on smaller-scale operations rather than “global” warfare.

Largely forgotten, and mainly disliked by those who still do remember it, Empire 2 is actually one of my favourite strategy games. This is because while it is not too detailed, it is still complicated enough to be both realistic as well as extremely playable. Out of the box, Empire II comes with a handful of scenarios ranging from the ancient world to futuristic battles, and the included scenario and unit editors basically allow you creative freedom to recreate any battle you might wish to take part in.

Now, there used to be a website that stored and shared all the scenarios made for Empire 2, or at least everything the webmaster had been able to find. Unfortunately, that site went down years ago, and therefore many fanmade scenarios are no more available online. In order to correct this, here is a zip file that includes all the scenarios (both original as well as fan-made) that I have:

» Empire II: The Art of War scenarios (1.40 megabytes)

The pack includes 73 scenarios, plus an assortment of maps and technology files. My personal favourites are the Operation Barbarossa scenario (rusfront.scn), the Battle of Leipzig scenario (leipzig.scn), the Battle of Suomussalmi scenario (finland.scn), and the Afrika Corps scenario (afrikorp.scn). The computer is not the toughest in any of these (or in Empire II in general), so they are best suited for play-by-email.

If you would like to get the game as well, Home of the Underdogs has the Windows 95 edition of Empire II, which runs brilliantly under Windows XP’s “Windows 95 mode”.