Oriental Empires

Turn based 4X strategy game, recreating the civilizations of ancient China. Develop your land, build great cities, raise huge armies and fight epic battles, with hundreds of soldiers fighting right on the game map. Advance your technologies, culture and religion to create one of mankind’s biggest empires.

Oriental Empires is a strategy, simulation and indie game developed by Shining Pixel Studios and published by Iceberg Interactive.
Released on September 14th 2017 is available only on Windows in 6 languages: English, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian and Polish.

It has received 2,916 reviews of which 2,344 were positive and 572 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.8 out of 10. 😊

The game is currently priced at 28.99€ on Steam.


The Steam community has classified Oriental Empires into these genres:

Media & Screenshots

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Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows
  • OS *: Windows 7 64 bit (32 bit NOT supported)
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-3230M @ 2.60GHz or equivalent AMD processor and above
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 256 MB DX 9 Compliant videocard with pixel shader 3,0
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c
  • Storage: 2 GB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible Audio
  • Additional Notes: Minimum Resolution: 1024 x 768

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Dec. 2024
This has been on my wishlist a while, and it had a deep price reduction on the Black Friday 2024 sales. I expected a CIV clone, but instead got more of a Heroes of Might and Magic clone minus all the supernatural elements, but with added historical realism. It is a hex-based game, which I prefer for this genre, I have played this game once so far for about six hours straight. While I could have played the Han, I instead played the group of people from near Szechuan/Sichuan (their name escapes me; I'm not a East Asian / Sino area studies specialist), and learned lots about the historical evolution of East Asian technologies that enabled urbanization and empire formation. That in and of itself is probably worth the price for me. What else do I find compelling about the game? In no particular order: Peasants can be set to develop farmland, built roads, clear trees and the like (though gated by technological advances) without needing to build a settler unit. You can learn about/ invest in four technologies at a time, with each turn counting as investments into each of the four. You have advisors, there is a marriage system (though not as advanced as others), and innovations allow you to add more kinds of advisors/flunkies. Corruption is an issue, as it becomes worse over time. You can build shrines to placate the peasants, but I'm not sure if the shrines only benefit the nearest settlement or are empire-wide. The same goes with the installations to improve nobles' moods. Bandits flee combat. So, too, will your foes. And your units. It is relatively easy to recapture a settlement, at least before you add walls. Troops come in two flavors: nobles and peasant levies. Peasant levies are cheaper to maintain. Nobles are more effective. I had begun researching crossbows, having already gotten chariots, bows and metal weapons. Copper and jade can be mined. Mulberry trees improve your silk production. Internal trade is important. External trade is important. I don't know how large the map is, as I never reached the edge. Also, I don't know China well enough to place the rivers in my mental map, so I couldn't estimate hex-size. In general, I find this game similar enough to western games that I can usually understand what is going on, but it is inflected with enough mainland East Asian history to make it intriguing.
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Aug. 2024
A distinctly Chinese (with hints of Mongol and Korean) 4X style game. Somewhat minimalist tactical battles (stack v stack in automatic combat). A fun economy to master. Alright diplomacy (which is normally pretty weak in 4X, so IDK). I somehow keep coming back to it.
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July 2024
Good game, Civ x Total war. Took awhile to learn and to get used to the battle formations/tactics. Wish there was also a auto button for armies too. Once your empire and armies get to big, hard to control all armies one by one in the late game. Or at least have generals able to control certain amount of stacks surrounding him. I'm kinda stuck defending my East side nation, bottle neck area with endless spam of armies from another. and trying to go north and around but also being spammed up top. trying to re recruit and defend over and over every turn gets stale. luckily my income is crazy. The most annoying mechanic in the game is the stupid repeated Noble rebellions. Even with maxed out cities and garrison armies and edicts etc.. Nobles will rebel 5-6 cities if your leader doesn't have enough Authority to maintain the Empire. Then you have to march all the way back or create new stacks with generals to get them back while hoping they don't join them (couple of generals with new armies I sent, joins them). Good: Fun, nice to watch your people farm etc.. watching armies fight in formation or use tactics. watching cities grow, buildings being built. armies stack next to each other and move into massive formation. slow tech but fun. issuing laws/ edicts. Capturing their lords or generals is fun. executing certain people in court can actually have an effect, many despise my lord for killing a very liked lady at court haha Appointing great people in your court to positions.. but the positions are limited.. only 2 advisors... really? this map is huge! And they don't do anything to be honest no perks etc... they just grow old, get rich and gain authority Bad: Late game, the other nations spam peasant troops and manages to kill half my trained special troops, even if my army is bigger. Makes you wonder if to just not bother with elite troops. for example.. Enemy had 3 noble riders and 4 peasant men.. me.. 3 stacks, Spearmen, Arti, calvary, elite Imperial guards etc.. and I end up losing with also my general captured xD Stupid high chance of random noble rebellions, just because your leader has less Authority (gets annoying fast, espiecially when a vassal takes one of your cities and refuses to give it back) Best way is to have an heir with high one, and get your leader purposely killed hahaha Can't dismiss queen or 1 concubine. have to execute them.. Why execute them? because maybe they both not given any babies at age 45+.. Wish they allowed at least 5 concubines instead of 1. You are the Emperor so why not? Diplomacy: Should be able to cancel your vassals as they don't obey you much anyway. no use of them really. They refuse to pay money every turn, nor attack enemies unless you pay them. No right of recruitment, even though they are your vassals, you have to pay for it too. Vassals should at least minimum allow to recruit troops in their lands. No actual help with formations and battle tactics, had to learn as I went, terrible information guide on how to use Artillery for support armies. Another bad thing to gripe about is the siege.. no ladders, no towers. just bomb the city with Arti and burn it with fire arrows.. NEED MORE GENERALS AND LORDS IN COURT. It's crazy how big this map is, but your limited on how many you recruit(prisoner generals you have captured that are very good) NEED LOYALTY BAR. They show.. battle prowess and city management skill bars. but does not show any loyalty bars. my own grandson rebelled against me and he loved me the turn before it showed. It was so random xD NEEDS MORE POSITIONS IN COURT. 2 advisors, 1 heir, 1 wife, 1 concubine and 6 general/farming politicians slots in court for a massive empire is really not much. Don't understand why this was limited. Final point.. Even though many bad points, I still recommend the game, because I got it very cheap on sale. And I still had many hours of fun playing it. If you like micro manage nearly everything, from marriages to lords, generals, to laws/edicts, tech, armies and cities.. Then this game is for you. but it gets tiring. Graphics even set to max is okay.. not the best but its an old game. needs more vibrant colours. Can turn on auto farming, auto tech choice, wish there was an auto road build too. I would recommend taking out any nation FAST as possible. Raze as many cities as you can. Make your own. Vassals will keep demanding their old settlement back. Confucious is the way to go for peasant happiness and nobles. So lesser chance of Noble AND peasant rebellions. The map is extremely huge. and you need to be careful on how many cities you build.. because if your Emperor is weak in Authority, then expect lots of Noble rebellion. (chance the army you send to take back the city will join them.) GET IT ON SALE ONLY.
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June 2024
When other strategy games were going into micro DLC and losing their focus on a coherent design, this game stayed on course. Better than Total war and Civilization because its not trying to be to many things for too many different game designers. If you like strategy but feel like other strategy games just don't get it, try this.
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Feb. 2024
Mods are what keeps this game alive. A few of the Mods receives more views than the base game, but unfortunately most of them are made in Chinese without English translation. A few of Mods are well made to fix some of the issues from the base game Balance: faction and units, peasants militia beats all other units no matter what upgrades you have. This is fortunately fixed by some of the Mods Lack of tutorial: game is very complex for new players without proper explanation of some of the mechanics, units, palace system, edicts . This game is seriously need a sequel to enhance its wonderful grand strategy vision.
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Last Updates

Steam data 22 November 2024 03:25
SteamSpy data 21 January 2025 17:25
Steam price 22 January 2025 12:48
Steam reviews 21 January 2025 01:45
Oriental Empires
7.8
2,344
572
Online players
50
Developer
Shining Pixel Studios
Publisher
Iceberg Interactive
Release 14 Sep 2017
Platforms
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