Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

It was because of this particular game that James fell hard into the world of command, where he could control every facet of his nation, even engagement of it's armies.

Deciding who to ally with and when to break those alliances in the name of conquest.

In the beginning James would play the historic nations, reliving history as it were.

Or even correcting the mistakes of the past by ensuring his nations did not fall to corruption, decadence and nepotism.

But as the years wore on, and countless play throughs were performed his choice of commanding nation slowly changed.

Rather than ruling over the great nations remembered for their great deed throughout history, he instead started playing for the greater challenge of playing the more minor nations and standing in opposition of these great powers, before once more seeking an even greater challenge as he began choosing the forgotten nations those who typically were quick to fall to the conquests of their aggressive neighbors.

And so it was that across the countless instances of the game, and it's later to be released versions that James became known in the multiplayer circles as a force to be reckoned with, one who if you found competing against needed to be eliminated quickly at the start of the game lest you allowed him to build up his nation to the point it became a near unstoppable war machine.

His method of play through was quite mechanical, having learned the systems that comprised the game, and in doing to allowing him to effectively create nations that were very different from any nations that truly existed in reality.

The people were content to have regular lives but never indulging greatly in the luxuries that could be found in conquest, instead these luxury goods while somewhat shared to the people, were mostly traded off to their at the time allies.

The nations always had a high conscription rate, while also having the military be a true meritocracy, if it was found one of his commanders had a significant fault they were removed from command, removed from the chain to further train the nations army.

And in some cases should their revealed traits be disastrous enough the use of spy's to assassinate these men was performed.

The efficiency at which his armies fought battles against the other nations of the world was truly something to behold, if the game had, had a system of morale amonst his people, such as a counter for war-support.

His method of playstyle would need to be heavily adapted, making the people become religious fanatics or political extremists hell-bent on fulfilling their god-kings wishes.

The years passed, and James himself fulfilled his grandmothers request, he'd found his own place to live, but while dating had been something he performed finding the one as many people referred to their significant other were not found.

This was a fault of James himself, he had become too addicted to the grand strategy games that the social part of himself had almost all but died away.

Finding anyone who he could date quickly revealed that to his mind that sought challenge, and tactical maneuvering were not up to the imaginary standards he'd created for his partner.

Therefore James had lovers but never really a girlfriend or one he would consider becoming his wife.

His life remained enraptured by the fantasy worlds he lived most of his life within.

It was at this time he found Imperrator the game was not the first of its creation as the company that designed the game was known for creating many grand-strategy games beforehand.

This newest game was like a bolt of lightning out of the blue.

The game was the most complex that had ever been released, to the point that for the common players who laid down their money to purchase the game, were quick to complain that the game was near impossible to play.

Which resulted in the game-makers having to release a patch which would remove certain elements of the game from the players control allowing them to play a stripped back version.

But if you were to test fate and select to play at a harder difficulty, you would get to experience the game in all its original fury.

This made things so close to real life that for the few fervent players who took on this challenge, one could say that if the world operated under the same system and commands, the world could've been a far better place if left to these few players.

But the world instead continued to descend into madness under the guise of 'freedom' and liberalism, a world that James had escaped from and into a world of his own choosing, a world not yet tainted by the ideals and insanity of the modern age.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Julius awoke to the sounds of morning duties happening outside of his tent, the dream he had during the night was one he had not thought of for quite a long time now.

But at the same time, as he rose from his bed, and got dressed there was a sense of foreboding deep within his heart.

Quick to call in a runner, Julius quickly summonder his Commander and Cohorts to get an assessment of what happened through the night.

But even after getting the reports, and learning of the Greecians failure to assassinate him or his leaders through the night, or his own men's successes in the same endeavour but against them, and a few other reports mixed in as well as they fast riding scouts who'd slipped away under the cover of night had also returned.

The news was uplifting to say the least the worry he'd woken with in his heart mostly disappeared, but not completely so even after waking he knew deep down that something had happened but couldn't tell just what it was.

The night raids was something Julius expected, and while he took the words of the cohort in charge of the raids to heart, his response was something they did not expect.