Art of War 2: Global Confederation

A wise video game narrator once said that ‘War never changes’. But that’s not exactly true, is it?

I don’t believe tanks rolled into a group of hoplites at the battle of Troy, for instance, or that stealth bombers ever flew above the trenches of the Somme.

Art of War 2: Global Confederation doesn’t set out to change real-time strategy warfare. In fact, it sticks fairly rigidly to the template laid down by the Sun Tzu of the genre, Dune 2.

However, while some elements are timeless, there are others that don’t quite work in the modern battlefield of a mobile device.

The year is 2038, and it seems a sinister sounding Global Confederation has conquered the world and united all countries together in peace and harmony.

Alas, this isn’t exactly the case as locals around the globe don’t much like being ruled by one super-government, so it’s your job to put down pesky local rebellions and bring peace back to the world.

This is done through those RTS staples of base-building and tank-rushing. While there is a rock-paper-scissors system of sorts in place, most of the time is spent sucking up pressure before unleashing a mighty group of units to crush the enemy.

To keep things relatively manageable, resource harvesting is automatically carried out by your command centre(s), meaning there’s always a steady flow of cash to go around for research or buying units.

Selecting said units once they’re built, though, can be a pain.

Selection is handled by either clicking once to select an individual unit, clicking three times to select all units on screen, or holding down the fire/’5’ key and dragging a box across multiple units.

This old standard of RTS controls from the PC unfortunately means you end up selecting mixed unit types in one big mess on a mobile, making subtle tactics a lot harder to implement.

On the flip side, the inclusion of the RTS staple quick-select troop buttons, assigned by holding down ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, or ‘9’ with units selected, allows for some quick switching and more control on the larger battlefields.

These later fights can be fairly epic for a mobile title, with the generous unit limit of 50 and striking graphics helping to give the impression of a chaotic and exciting battle.

It would be less chaotic if the troops wouldn’t race off at the merest sniff of the enemy, and the cheating AI didn’t have the habit of spawning extra troops from the side of the map, though.

The AI and the lack of some key control shortcuts from other titles in the mobile genre will prevent newcomers enjoying Art of War 2 fully, but veterans should find a challenging, well written, and satisfyingly graphic modern-combat RTS that should last quite some time.