What if the world were a circle? I know, I know, play along with me: Everyone knows the earth is flat, after all. But what if your entire kingdom was just a single circle in the sky, floating along with helpful little village people, but not one of them wearing chaps? Circle Empires II is a real time strategy game with randomly generated maps that pits your tiny empire against the world, and there’s no room for diplomacy in this hypothetical circular world. It’s conquer or be conquered.
Plot Ahoy!
There’s no plot in Circle Empires II, and honestly, that fits the bill as a fast-paced RTS that can be played in bite-sized chunks. You have a variety of modes you can enjoy, such as Monster Hunt which involves finding a boss somewhere in the world and defeating it, while Full Conquest mode won’t end until you conquer every single space on the map. The Imperial Conflict mode pits you against a CPU-controlled empire that you’ll need to stamp out, plus there’s a daily challenge and survival mode too. You also have access to online multiplayer for both cooperative play and PVP, whichever is your preference.
Review Notes
Each map is randomly generated, a common feature in these types of games, and your task is to develop your economy, army, and territory to take out the opposing player. When starting Circle Empires II, you’ll only have access to one leader, but as you play you’ll unlock 15 more, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Different leaders have different bonuses like the initial leader beginning with increased amounts of food and building materials, as well as the different units they can deploy. There are a decent number of unlockables, from leaders to considerably larger map sizes, so you can get quite a bit of play time out of Circle Empires II should it fit your fancy.
The tutorial for Circle Empires II is incredibly brisk. You’re given a brief textbox that explains quickly how to select units, move them, and how to mount a unit on a wild horse. After that, you’re pretty much on your own, which actually works out fine because combat in the rotund kingdoms is simpler than it appears at first glance. You’ll quickly figure out how to make workers collect food and wood, which will facilitate the creation of your army or support infrastructure like buildings.
Some buildings improve resource collection, like the sawmill boosting how much wood you get from trees, while others are defensive, such as archery or poison towers that can debilitate enemy forces as they try to encroach on your territory. You can direct your army to attack specific units on the opposing side, but once you’ve eliminated problematic ones, your forces will mostly automate the process of routing the opposing side until they win, you make them retreat, or they all die.
I found it was easiest to continue gathering resources by regularly expanding my empire and increasing my networked territories while also giving me new opportunities to collect resources or stamp out enemy forces. This seems to be the premise of what Circle Empires II was built upon: building momentum, continually expanding, and managing your risk while you snowball your empire into a force to be reckoned with. Every new territory you encounter will have new resources for you to plunder, hazards, and possibly even hostile units that you need to contend with, but you need those resources to win.
Managing your risk when expanding is actually quite fun in Circle Empires II. Spreading yourself too thin can lead to your eventual downfall if vulnerable territories get snapped up by your opponent, one-by-one. Conversely, turtling up or expanding too slowly may leave you behind on progression, and your enemy will vastly outnumber you in resources, securing your downfall. Figuring out your pace and when to accelerate or pump the brakes on overtaking territories, is paramount to figuring out this game. You can also spend your resources to improve the stats of your units, boosting your food or wood collection, or increasing the attack and defense of your soldiers. Finding a good balance for what to spend your materials on in each match can be the difference between victory or defeat.
Sometimes your units will get hung up on something and not attack at all, however, which is kind of unfortunate since attacking opposing territories to gain resources is a main component in Circle Empires II. Either the pathfinding completely breaks, or your units will follow enemies around without striking them a single time. That pathfinding error is fixed easily enough by clicking enough times for your units to stop getting hung up by the edge of one of the circles at least. These issues only popped up a few times over many hours of gameplay, which doesn’t exactly make them a big deal. But it can be somewhat annoying to watch a force of 200 or more play tag with a single enemy and not actually be able to seal the deal so you can claim the area for yourself.
TLDR
Circle Empires II is a quick pick-up-and-play real time strategy game that’s pretty accessible, even if you’re new to this type of title. Controls are simple, there are no crazy menu-within-menus technology trees or anything of the like, and Circle Empires II reasonably estimates the attack power of your forces so you can know at a glance if you’re able to attack the next territory and win. The visuals are recognizable at a glance, and the mechanics are simple enough that this could be easily enjoyed by those who have never played a title like this before. But there’s a ton of room for optimization and quick clears, so RTS vets may still find something to enjoy too. There are even leaderboards where people show off their 2 minute or less wins.
In the end, Circle Empires II succeeds by keeping real-time strategy approachable without stripping away the thrill of growth, risk, and conquest. A few pathfinding hiccups can get in the way now and then, but its fast pace, clever circular maps, and satisfying snowball effect make it an easy recommendation for both RTS newcomers and veterans looking for something lighter and more immediately addictive.