A nice feature in the game is Quests. For it to become available you have to research it on the research tree. Completing quests gives great advantages to your Empire. Let’s take the “Agrarian Revolution” for example. In order to complete this quest you need to have created 3 land routes. Your reward when completing this quest will be that your land units will not need to consume food for a period of 12 turns. In total there are 16 quests which you can unlock. For each there are different objectives, and rewards will vary too.

One person might want to play the game in a friendly way, while the other one wants to play it in the brutal way. The great thing is that this game is accessible for both.
The friendliest way is by building a Consulate in the capital of a neutral country, which activates the possibility of peaceful annexation. This means that when the sympathy level towards your Empire from that country reaches 100%, which is easily done by pumping money in their country, they will bow to your might without any military resistance, and you get full control over their land and army. It’s a rather expensive way though.
The brutal way is by declaring war on a country, and invading it with your forces. The downside of this is that sympathy towards your Empire will drop dramatically all over the continent and you must be sure to have sufficient forces. Because when you slaughtered the enemy you will need a time of annexation before you get full control over the country. The time needed for this will depend on the troops you maintain in the country. During the annexation, the people of that country will raise a patriot army against you. If you don’t manage to defeat them, annexation will fail.

Enough about the management model now, let’s move on to the jewel of the game: the land and naval battles. When you decide to attack enemy forces, you can choose either to auto resolve the battles in the game, or have the opportunity to take control of the army yourself, and fight the enemy in real-time 3D battles.
The first thing that leaps out is the beauty of game engine. Since the game covers the whole of Europe and a chunk of Africa, the landscape and weather conditions are different in each region. This gives a great variety and not a single map looks the same, which will impress you each time you load up a new map. Actually, both the maps and the units are incredibly detailed, which makes the game more natural looking. Since I’m no history-buff I can’t say if everything is historically correct, but I can tell you I’m really impressed by Pyro Studios’ work: each unit type has a different set of skins and animations, which again gives a great variety to the game. Faces look different, clothes are dirty and have sand on it, even the way each soldier holds his weapon is different. Also there are different animations for attacking the enemy, be it melee as well as ranged attacks.