1UP has posted the first online preview of Empire At War, the new Star Wars strategy game from LucasArts and Petroglyph (ex-Westwood guys). Set after the events of Episode 3, the game is all about a large battle for the galaxy, fought on more than 20 planets.

You start with a few planets under your control and work to expand your sphere of influence. It sounds simple enough, like stuff that's been done in strategy games countless times before, but instead of a rudimentary, linear campaign in which you wage one battle at a time to progress the story, Empire at War's campaign is much more dynamic, with everything you do impacting the next battle. That's why we're excited. Most of what we saw in a demo of the pre-alpha code focused on how the combat sequence works. So, the best way to dive into this is to take a quick walk through the chain of events that make up the flow of combat. On a large galaxy map, you see all the planets that you'll be fighting over. Besides the obvious additional income (which we'll get to later), there are specific secondary incentives to own a planet [...]