Saturday Night - Game Night

Had a few friends over last night and we played a game of Eagle Games' Conquest of the Empire. The end was a very close finish with three of us being separated by no more than 20 points. I ended up winning. Here's a pic of the game at the end.
The game is pretty simple. The pieces are pretty high quality: nice big coins, huge colourful board, really nice cards and solid plastic pieces. The main down side to the game was the territories that surround the core of the Empire are generally worthless and can only serve to block an opponents movement, but no one really wanted to waste a general/Ceasar to fill those territories up with pieces (to move any units, a general/Ceasar must be present). I might have to come up with a house rule or something for this. The overall opinion of it was pretty high by everyone, so we'll be playing this one again sometime.