First Impressions

Conquest! Medieval Realms, developed by Illustrious Software, is a turn-based game that combines the pure strategic gameplay of Chess and the key principles of military strategy in a historical setting. The objective is to conquer up to 7 opposing AI or human players by defeating their armies and capturing their lands. To gain supremacy, players will need to unite their spread out lands, build a roaring economy, and raise powerful armies to divide and conquer their enemies. Boost your income via markets and mines, upgrade your armies with stables and archery fields, or amass a large force, but sound strategy and careful thought will help you more than brute force.
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Adam Parker
Posts: 1848
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2002 8:05 am
Location: Melbourne Australia

First Impressions

Post by Adam Parker »

Download
Digital download piece of cake.

Install
Be sure to select Direct X9 no matter whether one has it loaded.

Game Objective
The objective of this game is fairly simple. Take the enemy's territory to hold a certain percentage of the map. In campaign scenarios, occupation of specific hexes and the elimination of certain troops may consistute victory goals too.

Game Play
Turn based, click to select a unit, drop to move or attack. Zone of control plays havoc with plans. Units fight based on a rock/paper/scissors formula of their worth. This formula is essential in breaking the ZOC lock as whilst some units can merge (and thereby upgrade), they can't stack for odds.

The key to this game is keeping an eye on a unit's maintenance. Units cost money to build. Units cost money to maintan. Each hex contiguous to a player's town provides income for that upkeep. The larger the territory the larger the income. Mob riots are important in this regard. Go into deficit and all of a players units belonging to that town are removed from the map! The game doesn't end however even if a player only has one town on the map, a player just starts again from scratch. Units are built at castles and various upgradable facilities giving a multiplier effect to the R/P/S formula.

Situational Awareness
There is no rules manual for this game! Instead a faily sparce reference sheet is given as a "tutorial". The action takes place very quickly too. Within a blink of an eye, the enemy attacks, a player's forces are anihilated and towns disappear leaving the player wondering why?

So then, how does one play? Trial and error and a reference from the designer today in this forum to an old quasi-users manual which mentions the danger of mob riots, which led me to pay attention to unit upkeep, which led me to understand how to field my forces economically, which finally led to the spark "oh yeah"!

Not optimal but I haven't lost a game since...

Summary
At $20 USD I in the end got what I wanted - a nice, cheap, intellectual diversion whilst I get over a bad cold and look forward to playing some nice board games. There is definitely enough in this little package to provide repeated game play for a week or two as the urge desires.

But Matrix, how can you provide a game with no rulebook? [:(]
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