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Empire of Sin - Brenda and John Romero's turn-based Mafia strategy

Zboj Lamignat

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It seems my first guess was correct.

The setting has potential for a tactical game including varied objectives. They just better not go soft on the subject matter by limiting the crime to bootlegging only, it should have the full spectrum of crime businesses together with rival gangs getting pissed off if you encroach on their market in whores or gambling. Also gang diplomacy in addition to cop corruption mechanics.
DLC racketeering is in from day 1.
 

Kitchen Utensil

Guest
ss_114fe61637e03170a939383ccf91d3649d10dafd.jpg

Isn't 1090% change to hit a bit too low odds?

Missing isn't fun, didn't you know?
So just to make sure, 1090% could suffice.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
VtM:B2 and this, Paradox Interactive commits to modding even with third party games: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/will-be-workshop-available.1188897/

They made a modding platform after all.

The PC and Mac versions of the game are built to be very moddable. We look forward to see what the players will create!

Will you be running a closed beta along the lines of mainline PDS games that Modders will be able to feedback into?
We’re looking into it right now! We hope to have more info on this shortly.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
Turns out this is Brenda Romero's dream game and led by her: https://kotaku.com/empire-of-sin-is-the-gangster-game-brenda-romero-always-1835488177

Empire Of Sin Is The Gangster Game Brenda Romero Always Wanted To Make

Empire of Sin, a complex tactics game about running a mob empire in Prohibition-era Chicago, is the game Brenda Romero always wanted to make.

When you talk to John Romero, the renowned creator of Doom and now part of the husband-and-wife team Romero Games, he gushes about Empire of Sin. It’s a complex web of social interactions and turn-based combat that he calls “mechanic soup.” That, he said, is the reason that Brenda was the perfect person to make it.

“I mean, in interviews, the question of ‘where does this come from?’ comes up,” he said. “I tell them, this is Brenda’s design, she is lead game designer, she’s wanted to make this game for 20 years. All her experience on Wizardry 8 and working on Jagged Alliance, playing Civ for decades, playing X-Com—she wanted to put all of that into her favorite time period, which is Prohibition-era Chicago.”

In the short demo that members of Empire of Sin’s development team (including John, but not Brenda) showed me at E3 yesterday, we took Al Capone fresh from Brooklyn straight into gunning down men at a Chicago speakeasy. From there, he was able to recruit other people to his gang. Romero called these “Recruitable Player Characters.” They’re not quite non-playable characters, because you do control their actions in combat. But they are lesser in importance than the boss.

These members of your gang can come with you to rumbles with other gangs, but also have defined personalities and relationships. One member of our gang, Maria, had a lover and a couple of friends. Romero told me that if we ended up having to face her lover in combat, Maria might try not to hurt him, or even refuse the order and not come.

It was at that point that I first understood the scale of Empire of Sin. It seems like an enormous game with a lot of moving parts. Not only are you recruiting and promoting members of your gang, you have to take over territory that belongs to other mob bosses. Some of these mob bosses are fictional, while others are drawn from history. All of them have special abilities related to their area of expertise.

We played as Al Capone during the demo, who has a special ability for his tommy gun allowing him to lay down a spray of bullets. Eoin O’Niell, associate developer at Romero Games, also told me about Daniel McKee Jackson, a real-life black mob boss who will be playable in the game. Jackson was also an undertaker, and ran gambling dens in the basement of his funeral home. His special ability is called “Funeral Director.” They didn’t tell me what that does.

You also have to supply your speakeasies with alcohol, which you brew yourself, given that Prohibition is still in effect. You can just brew swill, spring for something higher-quality, or even make poisoned alcohol to trade to rival gangs. Your activities can get you in trouble with those rivals, though. Sometimes you’ll need to sit down for meetings with a rival, selecting dialogue choices to either smooth things over or make them worse. If those turn sour, well, get your guns out because it’s time to waste some fools.

The level of depth in play makes Romero Games’ partnership with Paradox very understandable. Empire of Sin has a real danger of becoming too much game—too many pieces to juggle, too many resources to keep track of, too many characters to remember the names of. In the demo that I saw, it all seems to coalesce, and I have faith in Paradox’s track record with strategy games like Stellaris and Crusader Kings II. Still, I have the tiniest bit of apprehension. Even a very good team like this one can make missteps.

The core of Empire of Sin, though, is Brenda Romero. She has a personal fascination with Prohibition-era gangsters, and the resume to back up what she wants to develop, her husband said. John pointed to her work on board games like Train or Sȋochân Leat as examples of how smartly she turns aspects of life into meaningful game mechanics. These are both games that take real-life events and break them down into their component parts, revealing the systems of our history and everyday life. That’s the approach she took to turning the history Prohibition into game mechanics, he said.

“You basically look at, well, what did they do? It seems like they killed a lot of rivals, so that seems like some combat stuff. They became powerful through money, and that was through illegal gambling rackets and all these different places. So it’s like, we need to be able to have that in the game somehow, and turn that into a game where the other people are doing the exact same thing,” John said. “As long as all those things make sense and work together, you can take real-world stuff and turn it into systems.”

Even though it’s Brenda’s dream project, many people see the name “Romero Games” and immediately think of John. He said that Brenda doesn’t mind for now that people are assuming that her dream game is primarily being developed by her husband. “With Brenda, she’s like, ‘Don’t tweet this isn’t John Romero’s,’ or whatever,” he said. “She’s like—this is great, we’re getting press, they’ll find out she’s lead game designer, it’s not going to be a problem.” Given that Brenda wasn’t there at E3, I’ll have to take his word for it.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamesn.com/empire-of-sin/serial-killer

You can be an XCOM-style serial killer in John Romero’s Empire of Sin
empire-of-sin-3-580x334.jpg



When you really think about it, there are lots of games that force you into becoming serial killers, but very few that really judge you for it. In Empire of Sin, the newly-announced game from Doom co-creator John Romero, however, you’ll get to choose just how sadistic you want to be – and have to deal with the consequences.

During a demo at E3, associate game designer Ian O’Neill told us about the game’s “execution moves.” When you down an enemy in the XCOM-style strategy game (set in Prohibition-era Chicago), you can decide whether to put them out of their misery, or finish them off in a more upsetting way.

“Execution moves are designed to be brutal, visceral attacks that give a nod to the 1920s gangster fantasy,” says O’Neill. “They factor into dynamic behaviours, so if a character executes quite a few enemies, they gain a trait called Cruel, which will affect their attributes and skills. Over time, if a Cruel character were to keep executing enemies, they could turn into a serial killer.”

While that might sound like something you’d want as a 1920s crime boss, brutally dispatching too many enemies will have consequences. “Some of your crew members might not want to work with a serial killer, and it’s also pretty dangerous to leave your crew alone with a serial killer, so it’s something else you might want to manage.

Thankfully, if you’re not feeling overly callous, you can simply see people off in a less violent fashion. They’ll still be dead, of course, but you won’t get quite the same violent reputation if you just put a bullet in their head.

You can check out a trailer for Empires of Sin in the video above. The game is set for release on PC, Mac, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch in Spring 2020.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamesn.com/empire-of-sin/alcohol

Empire of Sin runs on alcohol and you can use it to poison rival businesses
empire-of-sin-speakeasy-580x334.jpg


Empire of Sin is the collaboration between leading strategy studio Paradox and veteran game designers Brenda and John Romero. It’s set in Chicago during prohibition, and accordingly, “Money and alcohol are the two most important resources”, says Romero Games developer Ian O’Neill.

He’s talking about 1920s organised crime, but the sentiment could easily apply to, say, 2000s student life in the UK. Or 2010s game journalism. Or almost any other period in human history, come to think of it. Anyway, your criminal empire (of sin) will depend on alcohol – it supplies your speakeasies and other rackets – and you can produce it in varying quality depending on your strategy.

“You can produce a low-level swill that’s pretty terrible, but it’ll get the job done and keep your rackets running”, O’Neill tells us in a demo at E3. “Or you can produce a really good, premium alcohol, and you can use it in your rackets to get a quick cash boost if you’re running short.”

Your rivals need alcohol too – it was a hugely precious commodity during prohibition, and every mobster wanted a piece of the trade. Therefore, you can also trade alcohol via diplomacy. “If you know a faction is low on alcohol, you can trade what you have in excess, in exchange for something they might have that you want – a powerful weapon, or maybe a powerful building.”

Of course, mobsters are hardly known for peacefully embracing the positive sum benefits of trade. You can also “produce a poisoned alcohol, which you can disguise as another type of alcohol, and trade it to your rivals to sabotage their rackets. Or”, adds O’Neill, a thought occuring, “you could trade it to your allies and try to sabotage their rackets, depending on how you want to play.” The victims of such sabotage would presumably include civilians who just fancied a drink but happened to choose one of your rivals’ speakeasies as a venue, but hey, prohibition-era gangsters aren’t known for being nice.

Alcohol is produced in small quantities at your safehouse, which is your headquarters in Empire of Sin. But if you want a good supply – and you do – you’ll need to set up breweries throughout the city, or take them from other gangs.

“If you’re really stuck, you can buy alcohol through the black market, or try to get a shipment of Canadian whisky over the border”, says O’Neill. “But it’s risky and expensive, and you may not always get what you pay for.”

As a fan of Paradox and the Romeros, I’ve been excited to learn about their collaboration since it was teased, and it’s looking like they’re making the most of their setting in some really cool ways. We also heard that your gang members will develop behavioural traits over time, which will affect their stats and their relationships with the rest of your crew – just don’t let them make too many brutal executions unless you’re comfortable working with a serial killer. Seriously. Empire of Sin is due for release in spring next year.
 
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As much as I want it to be a JA2 with mobsters, realistically I can hope the quality will be somewhat close to NuXcom, as apparently those are the new gold standard for isometric turn-based tactical games... Still, looks interesting enough to keep an eye on.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/06/18/empire-of-sin-preview-e3-2019/

Empire Of Sin is full of serial killers and drunks who need a good mobster manager

90


Ronnie O’Neill is a scumbag. But that’s okay. In about 20 minutes he’ll be dead, slumped on the tarmac next to a black truck. That’s what happens when you mess with Al Capone, you filthy mutt. At least, this is one way things can go in upcoming mob strategy game Empire Of Sin. It’s part mobster management, part turn-based tactics, with a splash of the personality-driven pettiness of Crusader Kings 2. Which probably explains why Paradox are publishing it for Romero Games.

We are playing as Al Capone on the streets of Chicago. I say “we” but it’s really Ian O’Neill, a designer at Romero Games, who is running through a hands-off demonstration of mobster violence. He is also the person who first points out Ronnie O’Neill (no relation) a “violent little shit”. There will be other bosses, I’m told, faithful to the historical mobs of 1920s America, who will have different skills depending on their character. Capone, for instance, loves to hose down bars with a tommy gun, which I am soon shown.



This makes it sound action-heavy, but there seems to be a decent amount of strategy layered over the gunfire. Zoom out from the street-level maps and you’re faced with a model town of marble white buildings. The only colourful buildings are those rackets controlled by your gang or a rival faction. Throughout the demo I’ll see plenty of menus and some dialogue pop-ups. Stats listed next to character portraits. Upgrade buttons. Resource tickers (alcohol and money). It’s only when fights break out that the blood starts flowing.

Lead designer Brenda Romero has been wanting to make the game for over a decade, I’m told, because she wanted to put her years of working on things like Jagged Alliance and the Wizardry series into something new. So she came up with the design and pitched it to Paradox.

“This was basically her dream game to make for a long time,” says John Romero, who is sitting in on the demo too. “And Paradox is the perfect company to work with because [they do] deep strategy…. and ‘system soup’ games. This is exactly what Paradox does.”

The historical setting helps, he says, because everybody already knows who Al Capone is.

“Everyone knows 1920s prohibition-era gangsters,” he says. “It’s not like: ‘I need to learn a new sci-fi universe’… We learned a whole lot of crazy stuff about what happened back then, so we’re putting it in the game so people can check it out and they might decide to Google it and say ‘no way, that was real?'”

The game is a little stylised, of course. For starters the mobsters have to politely take turns. I’m talking about the tactical top-down battles in which different characters have set abilities, like Capone’s sweeping tommy gun. It’s a familiar-looking process of clicking your characters to order them behind the cover of brick walls or old Fords. Then selecting an attack or skill from a bar, and trying to out-flank and out-murder the red-tinted bad guys.



But there are also character traits, which might have an effect during the battle. One character, a hired gun called Maria, has the “hair trigger” trait, which means if she gets hit in the middle of a fight, she might become furious, berserker style, and perform her next move without waiting for your clicky orders. A “cruel” character, meanwhile, will have a bonus to their critical hit chance. And that cruelty is something you can foster by ordering characters to perform a lot of executions against downed enemies. These are brutal and bloody finishing moves, like stooping to cut the throat of your victim with a flick knife.

Since the studio wants this to be a game of gangster personalities and not just a predictable tile-hopping tactics showdown, Romero Games are making sure to add negative consequences to such grisly traits. If a “cruel” person performs too many of these grisly executions, for instance, they may become a “serial killer”. Which means they may end up murdering one of their own gang mates, given the chance, which permanently kills off one of your characters.

“You just don’t really want to leave them in a room alone with anybody else,” says O’Neill of the serial killers. “They’ll get up to their old tricks and devices.”

Characters with certain traits might also influence others, says Romero. Someone marked as an “alcoholic” might rub off on another one of your squad of “recruitable playable characters” and turn them into an alcoholic as well. Which, uh, might play a bit fast ‘n’ loose with the psychology of co-dependency, but hey, videogames.



Between those battles you’ll move your boss around the city, taking fast travel automobiles or slumming it on public transport, but there is also administrative clicking to do. You run breweries, speakeasies, protection rackets, gambling halls, and a few other illegal activities, which you can manage through the world map. And there are the inevitable upgrades. You can put more guards on an illegal brewery to protect against raids from rivals, for instance, or improve the decor at your speakeasies to attract more customers.

There is also a hierarchy screen, where you can shift crew members around. For example, you can make one of your nasty scumbags an “underboss”. Let’s call him Billy Malone. But the guys and dolls of your gang may not like Billy, and that will have “a negative effect on the rest of your crew”. No worries, I’m sure someone else can do the job. There will be 60 of these recruitable characters in the finished game, I’m told. And they will also have relationships with one another. Some might be friends and others may be lovers, which could complicate things further, because those “lover” characters might be working for a rival mob. Angry Maria’s boyfriend might show up on the other side of a street battle, for instance, and she “might refuse to attack them”.

“Relations change,” says Romero, “so somebody might cheat on somebody else, they might kill the person they’re cheating with when they find out, so it’s a whole bunch of complex stuff on top of a strategy game.”



There’s something very pleasing about the recent spread of Crusader Kings style bickering in strategy games. Total War: Three Kingdoms recently did a similar thing with its generals and advisers, forcing you to place people who get along in the same army, and avoid pairing up warriors with petty squabbles or personality clashes. I’m always glad when strategy games remember to give their pawns a bit of humanity. Although I’m not yet sure how deep the personalities go in Empire Of Sin, or how many distinct problems will arise when Hair Trigger Maria and Billy the Bastard go on a mission with, I don’t know, Farty Sal.

The Romero Gang show me a bunch of other details. If you lose your safehouse (your big HQ) or if your boss dies, it’s game over. Whereas if your other characters take too many little lead friends in the belly, they’ll simply stay dead, XCOM style. There is also one sequence where our chief lad, old Caponey Baloney, has a sit-down with his rival, Ronnie “Will Die For Demo Purposes” O’Neill. This is basically a small conversation tree that can hurt or bolster your relationship with another faction. And there may be knock-on effects, with other gangs taking note of your shady deals or veiled threats.

“It can really shake up the faction matrix of the game,” says O’Neill the demo-runner. “You can have these large swings in faction ratings and how factions relate to one another.”



In our case, Rowdy Ronnie is upset with our chat, and starts a fight. A battle breaks out in an alley, where our three crime-doers take cover against walls and cars. They spit bullets, punch stomachs, and have a big old turn-based brawl. At one point, Maria gets blasted and falls, but we have three turns to revive her before she bleeds to death (or before she gets brutally executed by a nearby enemy). We fix Maria up and turn our attention to Ronnie, the last enemy. He’s bleeding on the tarmac next to a truck, but still alive. The Romero Gang click their nearest gangster closer to him, eager to demonstrate the blood-spattering execution animation one last time.

Sorry Ron, but this is what happens when you mess with Big Al.

Empire Of Sin is due out sometime in Spring 2020
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamesn.com/empire-of-sin/gameplay

Empire of Sin’s XCOM combat is only a small part of a rich strategy game
Romero Games' Prohibition-era strategy game promises a lot more than XCOM with a mobster coat of paint

empire-of-sin-gameplay-preview-900x506.jpg



The new strategy game from Romero Games is garnering a lot of attention due to its XCOM-like combat, but after seeing Empire of Sin at E3 2019, it’s clear there’s a lot more going on under the hood to excite strategy gamers of all types.

Your goal is to dominate Prohibition-era Chicago. Starting as a lone mobster with no assets, you’ll grow your faction into a criminal corporation running everything from breweries to brothels. This involves both tactical and strategic decisions – commanding your units and managing your empire – and what makes Empire of Sin special is that there’s no schism between the two. You get to manage every aspect, from the abilities and weapons used by your crew, all the way up to your faction’s alliances and rackets.

From the off, you control your chosen mob boss – a certain Alphonse Capone, in our case – having recently arrived with the intention of taking over the town. Your first move is to take a look at the world map, which offers a 3D overview of Chicago, highlighting enemy factions and rackets you can attempt to seize. We select a low-level speakeasy run by rival boss Ronnie O’Neill, which is just a short stroll down the street – when we become more notorious, walking around in public will carry a lot of risk, but for now it’s fine.

Inside the speakeasy we can spot three guards, as well as a few chattering patrons and a jazz band in the corner. The interior is warm and lively, with gorgeous detailing wherever you look, but we’re here to shoot the place up, see, and as Al Capone there’s only one tool to get the job done: the Tommy Gun. Upon entering combat the UI transforms: the floor is covered with a grid, the turn order unfurls across the top of the screen, and bar furniture is highlighted with its usefulness as cover.



Each of Empire of Sin’s 14 mob bosses has unique combat abilities, and ours – the Tommy Gun sweep – is very Capone. Right off the bat two of the guards are mown down, leaving only one to deal with, but it’s their turn and they manage to wing us with a couple of shots. We put them down with an accurate burst-fire attack, leaving them bleeding out, and us with the option to finish them off with a bloody execution. It’s not all style though; if you execute all your enemies you’ll acquire the Serial Killer trait, which makes you more dangerous in combat, but comes with some significant disadvantages. Not many people want to be friends with a serial killer, and you definitely shouldn’t leave one in a room unsupervised.

With the speakeasy seized, it’s time to start managing it. First off, we hire some guards to protect the bar, then we upgrade the decor. This will attract a higher class of clientele, ultimately making us more money. Right now, however, we’re not making any money from this racket, as we don’t have a distillery to provide the booze – remember, this is prohibition, so we have to make or source alcohol ourselves. As a first step we can set up a distillery at our headquarters, which also contains an armory for kitting out our crew, an office from which to conduct diplomacy, and plenty of spare rooms for illegal operations like making moonshine.

Refreshingly, making booze isn’t a simple case of supply and demand in Empire of Sin, and you can choose to flood your speakeasies with a variety of different spirits, each with its own quirks and uses. You can rush out a batch of cheap swill if you only need to keep things running for a bit, or you can craft premium spirits that will bring in wealthy customers for a short-term cash injection. If you’re mean-spirited – which you should be if you’re playing as Scarface – then you can also produce poisoned alcohol, which you can trade to other factions in order to sabotage their own rackets.



Alcohol and money are the two most valuable resources in Empire of Sin, and as a result, liquor is a crucial part of the game’s trading and diplomacy system. If you produce a lot of booze you can trade the excess to other factions in exchange for not just money, but also powerful weapons and abilities. If you’re short, you can buy your alcohol from the black market or try and smuggle some Canadian whiskey in from over the border. However, we’re told that both options will come with plenty of risks – the black market exposes you to sabotage by your rivals, for instance.

Losing your headquarters means game over, and the same is true if your chosen mob boss dies, which prompts us to hire some soldiers. Fortunately, our actions at the speakeasy have caught the attention of two recruitable characters, Bruno and Maria. There’s a hierarchy in your crew, with your character at the pinnacle and plenty of positions to fill beneath, including underbosses and basic soldiers. Picking an underboss is not a simple decision, as the appointment will open up new abilities, traits, and potentially upset the rest of your crew depending on who you favour for the job. We pick Maria, which unlocks the Bodyguard trait, allowing her to always make the first move in combat. She also has Hair Trigger, which grants a free action when downed. The problem is she’s also Short-Tempered, so that free action may be spent shooting one of her own squadmates.



A deeper dive into Maria’s character sheet reveals a lot more variables at play, from primary and secondary weapons, item slots, utility slots, thrown weapon slots, an ability slot, relationships, and traits. The relationships feature is particularly interesting, although we don’t get to see its effects in the demo. Effectively, Maria has two friends and a lover, who we may stumble across at some point in a campaign, and depending on the scenario and the relationship, a huge number of outcomes are possible. We may find that Maria’s lover is fighting for the enemy and that she turns on us mid-battle, or that the pair abandon the fight altogether. It’s also possible that Maria’s lover will cheat on her, that Maria will discover this, and that she will kill them, which is a very bad outcome if they’re on our crew. With a roster of 60 ‘RPCs’ (recruitable player characters) in the game, you can expect these relationships to get very messy.

The demo ends with a shootout between our posse of three and Ronnie O’Neill in a discreet alleyway, in which our entire team is wiped out. Unlike XCOM, we won’t be whisked back to some strategy section and given a squad of fresh-faced mobsters with which to continue our bid for victory – this really is game over, within 20 minutes of starting a new empire.

The sheer density of variables and mechanics in Empire of Sin has certainly captured my imagination, and I’m excited to see all these systems colliding with each other out in the wild. But what impresses the most is just how thoroughly detailed this strategy sandbox is, from the turn-based tactical combat that’s complex enough to invite comparisons with XCOM, to its diplomatic and interpersonal squabbles that call to mind grander strategy games like Civilization and Crusader Kings. If anything is going to disassociate the Romero name from the FPS genre in your mind, then Empire of Sin is probably it.
 
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Nutria

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Imagine thinking that wop organized crime in the 1920s was empowering for women.

This this sounds a lot like Vigilantes except that they make you play as some kind of trashy pimp, which doesn't really appeal to me. Also, I doubt they'll spend as much time tuning the gameplay when they're so busy hitting up their media contacts.
 

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