Comprising seven campaigns, including some of those most frequently requested by our gaming community, Empires in Turmoil expands Strategic Command: World War I to include some of the most momentous battles of the 20th century’s turbulent second decade. With battlefields stretching from Siberia to East Africa, the fate of empires is in your hands.
Assemble your armies and prepare for battle: the powder keg of Europe is ablaze!
1912 The Balkan League
Decades of nationalism prompted Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro to form the Balkan League: an alliance aimed at driving the Ottomans out of Europe. With long, indefensible frontiers to guard, and the Ottoman’s best forces fighting against Italy in Africa, the “sick man of Europe” has a difficult fight ahead of him.
But those same nationalist pressures that brought the Balkan League together threaten to drive it apart. Competing territorial claims ensure that the Balkan nations will eye each other with suspicion, while the arrival of Ottoman reinforcements mean that any fracture in the League’s unity may prove fatal to their war effort.
1913 The Broken League
The Balkan League may have triumphed, but the promises of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano remain unfulfilled. Mere weeks after defeating the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria turns its guns on former allies Greece and Serbia, seeking to conquer on the battlefield what wasn’t won in the London Peace Conference, and beginning a Second Balkan War.
Yet Bulgaria is not the only nation harbouring territorial ambitions: Romania looks to occupy Southern Dobruja, while a resurgent Ottoman Empire is eager to reclaim Adrianople. For the moment both remain neutral, but having shattered one alliance, the Bulgarians must now move quickly to prevent another from forming against them.
1914 Hindenburg’s Glory
Having been called out of retirement to take over command of the German Eighth army from von Prittwitz, von Hindenburg faces an unenviable situation. The Russian First army is advancing from the east while Samsonov’s Second Army is advancing from the south. Both must be defeated if East Prussia is to be saved. Indeed, the whole German war plan requires victory here. Can Hindenburg pull it off?
1915 Disaster in Mesopotamia
General Townshend’s advance on Baghdad has been halted, and his command, consisting of British and Indian troops, has been forced to retire to Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris. Here, they prepare to withstand a siege, fully confident that a large relief force will soon be coming to their rescue. But will it arrive in time, or are the British about to suffer one of their worst defeats of the 20th century at the hands of the Ottoman Empire?
1916 Lion of Africa
In the months following the outbreak of war, Germany’s colonies had fallen one by one to the forces of the British Empire and its allies. With little hope of reinforcement, most fell quickly, but a surprise German victory at Tanga has allowed one to fight on. It is now 1916, and German East Africa stands alone – but it stands.
Determined to crush this lone holdout and free up thousands of men for service in Europe, the British have assembled a second invasion force, poised to invade the Kaiser’s last colony from all directions. But conquering German East Africa will only be half the battle, as Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck is prepared to lead his Askaris on an audacious guerilla campaign, forcing his opponents to chase him all across East Africa!
1916 The Big Push
The French army and Sir Douglas Haig’s British Expeditionary Force stand poised to launch a joint offensive on the Somme to take the pressure off Verdun and potentially win the war in the west. Can you do better than General Haig? Or will you take on the role of Fritz von Below and stop the Entente’s offensive dead in its tracks?
1919 Shadow of the Tsars
On New Year’s Day 1919, while Europe celebrates the end of the Great War, Russia has never been more divided. The Romanovs may be gone, but the nation’s woes are far from over: two revolutions have shattered its government, a wave of uprisings have sparked a civil war, while the collapse of the Central Powers has breathed new life into nationalist movements and opened the door to foreign intervention.
Now equipped with Allied weapons and supplies, the White leaders Kolchak and Denikin sense the opportunity to topple the Bolsheviks once and for all with a grand offensive aimed at Moscow. However their forces are divided, while Trotsky’s Red Army benefits from a unified command and interior lines of communication. On a map stretching from the Vistula to the Urals, your decisions will shape Russia’s future. Will the country return to the old order, or will the Bolshevik revolution under Lenin’s leadership succeed in installing a Dictatorship of the Proletariat?
Features
- Seven new campaigns, including the First and Second Balkan Wars, the Russian Civil War and WWI’s German East Africa Campaign.
- New unit types including German Freikorps, African ‘Askaris’ and the famed Graf von Goetzen steamer
- New events including the Albanian independence movement, Allied and possible German intervention in the Russian Civil War, and an all-new victory condition making the destruction of the enemy army, as opposed to the capture of territory, the sole determinant of victory.
