The Deluxe versions of the early to mid 1990s were a strange trend. Essentially, those games were remakes with very light extensions of the originals' gameplay. Deluxe M.U.L.E. never made it to completion, but among others, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates! and Warlords II got such a treatement. And, of course, Empire. For this game, it was hardly the first remake. Best known for the 1987 version subtitled Wargame of the Century, its history actually reaches back to the mainframes of the 70s, obviously fully character based at the time, before being ported to the then current home computers of the 80s, with a graphical facelift in order to enable commercial exploitation of the by then fully matured game.
The first strategy game I seriously played and loved was Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. Before that, I was absolutely not interested in this genre. I never found it particularly exciting to virtually push some combat units around on a map. But Dune 2 nevertheless cast its spell on me and has not let go of many of us to this day. A whole bunch of successors poured over the audience in the years that followed. However, these clones soon lost the appeal of the new. Perhaps I would have found these fresh ideas in other – less well-known – representatives of the genre back then. In search of such pearls, I enter the famous hexa fields of The Perfect General II.