History of Imperium Sine Fine
History of Imperium Sine Fine traces the franchise back to its true beginning — a play-by-email game between brothers, long before "Rising Empires" or any of the titles that followed it existed.
2009 — Fate of a Nation
The very first seed of what would eventually become Imperium Sine Fine wasn't a game on any store at all. In 2009, Peter Norberg and his brother launched Fate of a Nation, a play-by-email (PBEM) game — the kind of slow, correspondence-driven strategy game played entirely through exchanged messages rather than any live app.
It wasn't purely email, though. A dedicated desktop application accompanied the game, giving players a simple map to actually see their nation's situation on, a way to evaluate the results of each turn once it had resolved, and the means to issue new orders for the next round — a genuine, if humble, precursor to the desktop tools the franchise would return to over fifteen years later with Imperium Sine Fine: Eternal Emperor. It's here, in that early combination of email correspondence and a small companion tool, that the earliest lore underpinning the entire franchise first took shape, years before it ever had graphics, mechanics, or a name recognisable to today's players.
2013 — Rising Empires
Rising Empires (RE) launched on the Google Play Store in 2013, the first true game in the lineage and the direct successor to the ideas first explored in Fate of a Nation. Peter's brother, who had co-created Fate of a Nation four years earlier, was also involved in this first release — carrying the collaborative roots of the franchise forward into its first real, playable form.
2019 — Rising Empires 2
Rising Empires 2 (RE2) released in October 2019, replacing the original Rising Empires entirely.
2020–2021 — Fate of an Empire
During 2020, a major overhaul updated RE2's graphics and reworked several of its core game mechanics. This overhaul became Fate of an Empire (FoaE), released in February 2021 — reviving the name first used for the 2009 PBEM game, now attached to a fully realised strategy title.
2022 — Fate of an Empire: Age of War
The next major evolution moved the game from a square grid to a proper hexagonal map, releasing in August 2022 as Fate of an Empire: Age of War (FoaE – AoW). With this release, the original Fate of an Empire was retired from the Google Play Store.
2024–2025 — The Imperium Saga
Development of the Imperium saga began in July 2024, and the franchise's next major title launched on Google Play in August 2025 — carrying forward the accumulated lore, mechanics, and lessons of everything that came before it.
2026 — Imperium Sine Fine: Eternal Emperor
In March 2026, work began on a full desktop version of the Imperium saga — Imperium Sine Fine: Eternal Emperor, the game this wiki documents. Today, Rising Empires 2, Fate of an Empire: Age of War, and the Imperium saga all remain available on the Google Play Store, each a living part of a lineage stretching back to a single play-by-email game between two brothers in 2009.
