I played a (partial) demo game of this with the authors and Flavio Mortarino in Lucca, last year (I think?). 

I remember it as pretty clever in its mechanical construction, but terrible in the information layout/design: too many symbols (far, far too many… like 40+) mean that yes, you don’t have to translate the board or cards, but you end up referring to the cheat sheets constantly. One of the symbols is two crossed swords, another is a cannon: now you tell me which is “advance military technology” and which is “wage war”.

Pity, because as said the game wasn’t half bad.