The official line runs something like this, and it isn’t that far from the mark.

A French regiment of three battalions in order mixed.

Empire (4th edition)—Recipient of two H.G. wells Awards for “Best All-Time Napoleonic Rules” and “Hall of Fame,” Empire is recognized as the world’s most widely played and definitive miniatures rules system for simulating Napoleonic warfare. Now in its 4th edition, Empire offers more to the discerning hobbyist than ever before.

Empire includes many color-coded reference cards for quick, easy access to many important tables of play, fold-out flow charts, die-cut counters for corps and maneuver element orders, terrain, and fatigue markers, plus the incomparable illustrated and detailed Empire rules book.

The comprehensive Empire rules carefully describe Empire Games’ proven Telescoping Time Concept, which allows you to accurately simulate a Napoleonic battle in the most time-efficient manner yet possible. Also, with Empire’s leader ratings, historical personalities “come alive” on the miniatures battlefield. What’s more, the exhaustively detailed appendices in Empire painstakingly describe the changing leadership ratings, troop-types, morale, fire classifications, artillery composition, and combat performance by campaign year and for theater of war for most all the entire Napoleonic period!

I played Empire III and Empire IV, and even got the Empire Campaign Game. I painted and based several armies of 15mm Napoleonics for them. Why did I stop? Why did my friends stop? I mean, if we hadn’t stopped playing the game years ago, we’d have finished the game by now. Yes, I guess the critical and unavoidable criticism of Empire is that it does take longer than the original Napoleonic Wars to play the game. Hence, you cannot play a game in a few hours. There are a great number of things I enjoyed about it, but it would necessitate leaving the game up for weeks on end to finish, and not every wargamer can afford to do that if they have cats, kids, or a wife.

Then, there was the difficulty of not being able to decipher certain rules in Empire III. Empire IV came out, and those rules were clarified…while others were muddied. Alas, we gave up. But for all of its shortcomings, there were a great number of niceties about the rules system. You had to roll a lot of dice in a multi-corps game, but while it appeared as if the chance of the die would create a winner or a loser, the great number of battalions firing tended to even out the vagaries of the rolls. In the end, I guess that the Empire Rules System was a bridge too far.