Have you ever switched on the national news and watched the reports? You know, not the reports about the Royal Family and famous celebs, but the reports on wars, death, destruction, refugees, hostages, famine and so on. Have you then thought to yourself that the whole world must be going completely mad, because I know I have.

After more than 40 years of global confrontation between East and West, the Cold War ends. The Iron Curtain is now suffering from terminal rust, the Eastern Bloc has crumbled, the Berlin Wall has been torn down and East and West Germany has re-united.

In countries such as Poland, Hungary, Bulgeria, East Germany and Romania, the communist regimes have lost their grip on power. With the Cold War now over things should be getting better, but they're not. Nationalism begins to assert itself again throughout Eastern Europe and beyond.

Civil war breaks out in Yugoslavia, as Slovenia and then Croatia declare independence and defy the attempts of the Serban-dominated federal army to force them back into the fold.

In the CIS there is more conflict - this time it's between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Plus in Nargony-Karabakh there is more fighting. There is even more fighting in Yugoslavia as ethnic conflict breaks out between the Serb, Croat and Muslim communities of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

More and more innocent people are made homeless and helpless by the constant barrage of war, so they take to the roads of Europe as refugees. Probably the most worrying thing is that nobody actually knows who should control the nuclear weapons of the old USSR. All the time, civil unrest and ethnic tension continues to rise.

What we really need is someone to come and bring peace to the world. Sounds pretty impossible, doesn't it? Well, here comes Ashes of Empire by Mirage and even though peace will probably never be worldwide you can at least play out the fantasy in the game.

In Ashes of Empire, you play a major part in the peace process. All you have to do is bring peace and harmony to the entire CSR, a vast, multi-national, nuclear armed superstate where central authority no longer exists and where the danger or ethnic conflict and civil war looms large.

The creator of the game is a geezer who goes by the name of Mike Singleton who was responsible for both the Midwinter games.
To achieve peace in the CSR, you have to pacify each of the five republics contained in the CSR - Ossia, Ruzakhstan, Belokraine, Modenia and Servonia. Each republic has one capital province and up to eight other provinces within its borders. There are two ways to pacify a republic - either pacify the capital province and at least two other provinces in the republic, or pacify all the provinces in the republic except the capital.

Pacifying a province is not an easy task - you must successfully complete four different United Community programmes in the province.

The programmes are the UC Building, Demolition, Pacification and Ethnic Harmony, and the tasks vary from province to province.
What this basically means is that in each province you have to construct buildings to meet the urgent needs of the population (hospitals and so on), demolish buildings that are a threat, eliminate a certain number of CSR military units (tanks and so on) and get the support of different ethnic groups.

Right, before I get any further with this review, let me explain something. Ashes of Empire is a very big game with loads and loads of features.

In fact it's got far too many to put in this review, and to be completely honest at first it looks very complicated, but - and this is a very nice but - it's got a lovely easy to read manual and video on how to play the game.
After reading the manual and watching the video you'll know everything you need to know, thus making it a lot easier on the old brain cells.

As well as being big (as in packed with loads of features) it's also big as in playing area. You can travel all over the CSR. There are, in fact, 2.8 million square miles to travel in.
Now that's a lot of land and you're not going to get very far if you use your legs, so at your disposal there is a whole plethora of vehicles to use.

You can travel in either air, sea (under and over water) or land. Vehicles range from cargo planes to bombers to barges to mini-subs to snowmobiles to motorcycles to tanks to rocket launchers to tricycles. Well all right, maybe not tricycles, but there are plenty more vehicles than those I've just mentioned.

Each vehicle is packed with missiles and a nice big cannon or gun, so that should please some of our more violent readers. Oh and you can also walk and run about, but you don't tend to do that very often.

During your mission you will meet numerous people, both ordinary citizens and professional personnel. There are in fact over 6,000 characters in the game, so you'll meet one sooner rather than later.

Every single building and installation in the CSR has an ordinary citizen in charge of it. What you've got to do is try and recruit the citizen and if you manage to do so you will gain control of the building and its additional resources.

As well as ordinary citizens, there are 665 professional personnel who you can recruit. Unlike the ordinary citizens, the professional move from town to town and are a lot harder to track down. Recruits can, err, be recruited either by bartering or by persuading them to contribute to your cause. Bartering will cost you resources, but loses you no time, whereas conversation loses you time, but doesn't cost you any resources.

Remember, every citizen has his/her own distinct personality, so every time you meet someone new you have to think about what you're going to do. Deciding to do the wrong thing could be disastrous!

Of course, the game just doesn't involve flying around and chatting to people - there's much more to it than that - but there just isn't the space in Gamer to explain it all.

If you liked Mike Singleton's Midwinter games then you are guaranteed to fall head over heels in love with Ashes of Empire. The surprising thing is that it actually feels as if you are trying to bring peace to a whole nation and if you don't succeed then you feel really guilty.

You start walking around babbling thing like "Oh no all those refugees and I've condemned them to a life of starvation and misery and it's all my fault" and then when the news comes on the television and you see pictures of civil wars you start crying buckets.

All this emotion is due to the fact that the game is so damn realistic, especially when you consider the status of places like Yugoslavia and how close its situation is to the scenario in Ashes of Empire.

I can't really think of a major bad point, but this type of game might not appeal toa lot of gamesplayers and it might be worth seeing a friend's copy before you decide to buy, especially as it's more expensive than a normal game.

Graphically Ashes is quite impressive, especially the map and the people's faces. The action bit is very similar to the graphics used in Midwinter, but that's a good point and not a bad one.

There is a good soundtrack which plays constantly in the background, but after a few hours it could get on your nerves and you might have to reach for the volume switch.

The game will take you ages and ages to complete simply because it is so huge. It's had a lot of effort put into it and it shows. Even though I'm not really a fan of this type of game I would heartily recommend this to anyone.
Peace. I'm outta here.

The General, sighing, threw himself into his pilot chair and rested his feet on the console of the flying sub. He cursed under his breath. What had made him accept the UC mission this hellhole of a continent? A moribund empire in its last throes, its nationalities on the brink of war. Strikes and social unrest in so many of the 40 provinces - and only a fortnight left to pacify the region. If he failed, nuclear missiles would be let loose setting the earth on fire. Suppressing a shudder, the General pointed his craft towards Liman, were supporters would be waiting...

Lethal Pursuit
Have you solved all the puzzles? Saved dozens of worlds? Done it all? Try Ashes of Empire! Mike Singleton's latest strategy-cum-3D-action piece asks no less of you than to single-handedly managed the resources and defuse the explosive ethnic mixture of a vast empire torn apart by social strife.

You have to work your way from a border province to the heartland, visiting strategically important places to gather a band of supporters. With sufficient stocks and resources, and the backing of five nationalities and a strong team of engineers, administrators, the military and medics, your goal is to try to pacify a continent. A handful of weeks stand between you and the spark that will ignite nuclear holocaust. Are you up to the challenge?

Do not be daunted by the prospect of deploying endless streams of troops. You operate in a meticulously-designed scenario (aptly underlined by different movements of Stravinsky's dramatic Firebird Suite). You are welcomed to the region by a fine layout of icons on a set of fractal maps, which are divided into six stages. Location backdrops provide specific information and hundreds of individual character portraits. Once you are familiar with the choices, the interface might be too straightforward for some players.

For convenience use the mouse to click your way through decisions via icons (each action takes a certain amount of time) and steer vehicles with your keyboard or joystick. The 3D movement and battle scenes, refined since their appearance in the two Midwinters (Midwinter I and II), add an element of immediacy to the predominantly static-screened game - a fine alternation.

Movements are fluid, with that uncanny realism typical of Mike and his team (by all means, do some diving just for the fun of it!). Maps, on the other hand, do need time to load, favouring owners of RAM expansions. Still, Ashes is playable on small Amigas.

Woo, trick or pacify people into helping you. Each character you wish to recruit needs specific treatment; these are represented by a choice of eight behaviour icons. People come and go as they follow their daily routine, so be prepared to have missed the constructor general at the works by just an hour.

The Confederation of Syndicalist Republics (CSR) comprises five republics with about eight provinces each. Overlying this geopolitical grid is a finely-structured social one. Geographically scattered all over the empire, five nations with a president each vie for supremacy. Every nation is split into four ethnic factions, and has an acknowledged leader, the governor. Four professional classes with various internal ranks belong to each faction. As a General and special envoy of the world organisation the United Community, plan your steps well to juggle with the delicate situations within a narrow time limit.

You must liaise with representatives of the groups on as high a level as possible. You can befriend them by supplying vital resources specific to their situation and locations; they will eventually pledge support and gain you votes. They will help you with transport, ammunition, information on various locations (which will be displayed on your maps in increasing detail) or even help you sabotage military installations to force peace, if necessary. Occasionally, you will even gain yourself an extra day or two.

United Nations of Singleton
Ashes impresses with the sheer multitude of individual characters, landscapes and possible encounters. Unlike action orientated predecessor Flames of Freedom, cross-country chases and 3D battle scenes can be reduced to less than a third of the entire game - if the player so wishes. Of course, a large number of vehicles are available, ranging from a flying sub to a cargo plane. The General can romp around to his heart's content above or below sea, on the ground or in the air in a host or craft.

However, the attractive presentation and comfortable interface cannot disguise the lack of depth in the gameplay itself. While the background is vastly expanded on the excellent manual, the actual in-game options seem to remain limited to talking to the right people in the right places at the right time and (al)locating resources upon demand. Encounters remain abstract and somewhat superficial. The subtleties of higher diplomacy will be missed by veteran strategists spoilt by the Koei range or by Balance of Power.

It is a challenging mix nevertheless, and it comes highly recommended to all those deterred by dry tables and endless menus, but with the mettle to solve problems under pressure. For players with a keen political interest, it is a must!

Okay. So what are we all here for? A quick flick through Ashes' manual reveals a message from the United Communities Special Directive. 'The purpose of your highly sensitive and difficult commission is to bring peace, economic stability, ethnic harmony and democratic freedom to the troubles provinces and republics of the Confederation of Syndicalist Republics (CSR)'. Oh, and I thought I was going to play a computer game.

Leaving the issue of whether or not Ashes of Empire really is a game to one side, there are several other questions that need to be answered, such as "how do we go about this seemingly impossible task?"

Generations of Soviet politicians haven't managed to do it in 80 years, so what hope have we got using an Amiga and a few floppy disks? A lengthy flick through the rest of the manual reveals the answer. Ashes of Empire hinges around a complex web of character interaction and strategy.

You start the game in a coastal province, and gradually move inland making friends with absolutely everyone you meet, and gathering the resources that will enable you to continue the fight for peace.

If you succeed, the entire CSR will be pacified in one enormous hallucinogenic trance. If your peace-keeping mission fails, the CSR's republics will be doomed to nuke each other to bits in a series of futile disputes over borders and any other trifles that dominate the television news.

Despite the monstrous putting-the-world-to-rights--in-one-feel-swoop scenario, Ashes of Empire is remarkably easy to play. The game essentially falls into two sections. The action part involves moving from place to place across a Midwinter-style fractally generated landscape, and, more often than not, getting involved in a fight along the way.

And, when you reach your destination, the strategy side is based around what has to be done to achieve the goals for pacifying a particular province.

The strategy aspects of the game are the most challenging and enjoyable. To pacify a republic, a certain number of provinces in the republic also have to be pacified within a set time limit. To do this, you have to satisfy four United Communities criteria, which are as follows - to provide a set number of special buildings, to demolish buildings that threaten the province's harmony (night clubs, water-pistol factories and Ruby Wax's house probably fall into this category), to eliminate CSR military units, and to secure the support of the different ethnic groups in the province.

Sounds like a piece of cake, doesn't it? Taken en bloc, the game's objective sound daunting, but any fears are soon allayed by the way the plot develops. From an early meeting, for example with a nurse in a hospital, it's easy to build up a network of contacts that can lead you to important provincial politicians.

And at the same time, you can collect resources that can be used to achieve each of the objectives. To a certain extent, several goals can be achieved simultaneously, simply through the single-minded pursuit of one of the game's main characters.

The path you take through the game largely depends on the people who are persuaded to join your cause, and the buildings they are in charge of. Different buildings supply different resources, so if the politician in Shinky demands huge amounts of gold in return for his co-operation, you'd better find a vault.

But if it's food and wine he's after, a farm house will have to be commandeered in the name of peace. The strategy side of the game soon becomes very absorbing and it's hard not to get totally obsessed with providing what the province really needs.

But the intensity of the strategy is broken by the unavoidable 3D travelling. Your operation can't be controlled from one place, because to recruit people, you have to meet them face to face. The strong presence o CSR troops invariably leads to some form of 3D combat, which means it just takes longer to get around.

The combat is fun at first, but the polygon landscape isn't entirely convincing, and even though a wide variety of craft is available, they all seem to have the same handling characteristics. If the screen border didn't change, it would be hard to tell whether you were on a motorbike or in an armoured car. The vehicles also all have the unnervingly unrealistic ability to spin around on the spot.

For a game which is based so much on realism in the strategy side, if's a real let down to have to slog through a flimsy gung-ho simulation just to travel around.

An optional 3D section would have kept the action addicts happy, and would have let the rest of us get on with the serious business of saving the CSR. Mike Singleton, the game's designer seems to have learnt from criticisms of his Midwinter games, which provided huge worlds, but they were filled with very little detail.

Ashes is positively brimming with towns, people and enemies, but the 3D system is still unsatisfactory.

It all sounds terribly complicated, that's because it is. As game scenarios go, this must be one of the most wide-ranging sagas ever to grace a computer's memory chips.

If you thought War and Peace was a long book, just wait until you see the background material supplied with Ashes of Empire.
Every single province, of which there are more than 40, is described in mind-boggling detail. Mike Singleton suggests that the player read each and every one of these diatribes, but while you're poring over the details of 42 semi-fictional states, there's a strange feeling at the back of your mind that once upon a time, you used to know what daylight looked like and that you also used have a life.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for realism, atmosphere and background detail, but with its pie charts and socio-economic, politico-ethnic breakdowns, Ashes takes it all far too seriously. Hell, this is supposed to be a game, not an ACME Universal Political Simulator of the break-down of the Soviet union.

GOING THROUGH IT IN STEPPES
But wait a minute. Perhaps that's what it is all about. Mike Singleton makes no secret of the fact that the game's CSR is the USSR, and that Ossia is Russia, so perhaps it's not a game after all.

The 3D action elements are definitely game-like, but the underlying themes and strategies are inescapably based on real life, which inevitably leads to the conclusion that in Ashes of Empire, Mike Singleton is trying to do more than entertain the game-playing masses.

He's trying to educate us, to let us know that not everything is going swimmingly in the CIS. That we should be aware of what's going on in a potentially disastrous situation on the other side of the world. I'm sure people will argue that a computer game isn't the place to broach such ideas. But the interactive, involving environment that a computer game provides is a far better way to learn than vegetating in front of the News at Ten.

Ashes of Empire is enjoyable to play, but it's obviously not the same sort of fun you'll get from half an hour with Lemmings or Parasol Stars. Ashes provides a unusual cerebral challenge, combined with the sort of detective work that even Sherlock Holmes would be proud of.

If you're after some fast action and a quick laugh, don't even think about buying Ashes of Empire. But if you want a game that will keep you going long into the night, a game that will test your brains as much as your stamina, then Ashes is definitely the one for you.