Conquest - author Ralph Effemy
    A STOS game (ST only) available from SynTax on Disk 489

              Reviewed by James Judge on an STe

Ahhh, what it would be to be a king. Food, relaxation, endless fun,
riches, wealth and all the other things associated with kings (or
queens).  Well, if that's your idea of a king's life, especially in
Conquest, think again! You get barely a moment's rest from battling
internal and external problems (droughts, invading armies and a
most bothersome inventor).

Conquest is a STOS game that looks nothing like one, if you get my
meaning. It is, unlike most STOS games, a strategy wargame with you
playing the part of a king who has got to survive a year in his
land.  You start off by naming your king and then selecting a level
to play on - either the first level if you lack any level codes or
you can type in the name of a higher land and then start the game
from there.

Once you have selected your level you are presented with a very
nice 3D map of the land which shows all the settlements you own and
can conquer as well as the terrain - mountainous, desert, grass or
woodland.

As I said, you must survive a whole year in this land using tactics
and a great deal of skill (and luck for most of us). You start off
in Spring and, ten minutes into the game, you will be wishing it
was Spring next year.

The game is controlled by a whole host of icons to the top of the
screen ranging from the latest inventions to the birth and death
rates from last month. To access the icons you need the obligatory
mouse (squeak).

The first thing you will notice about the game is how hard it is.
During my first two or three goes I was always presented with the
message that my citizens were starving and there was a deadly
plague running riot around the land - cue end of game message.

This can be stopped by buying in more food or slaughtering the
livestock but remember you only have a limited number of the cows
so use them sparingly. You can also plant crops but you can't
harvest them till later in the game.

Other aspects of the game involve, as the title suggests, the
conquering of other lands. You can send out skirmishers or launch a
full blown attack using your army (which, by the way, you need to
train). It is best though to get some inside info about the place
you will attack so you should send off your spies (which,
incidentally, you must have also trained (aaagh)).

Once you've attacked an enemy, and won, you should now have access
to bigger sources of food, timber (for building boats and defences
around your towns) as well as foolhardy men to join your army. But
extra settlements also mean more mouths to feed and keep happy -
nothing's ever easy, is it?  This goes on and on until you either
lose all your subjects (sniff) or you last a full year and then you
can go onto the next level which is more of the same but harder.

This may sound A-okay but it isn't.  It gets quite monotonous doing
really the same old thing time and time again and, when seeing your
imminent demise, you can't save yourself - food you buy or cows you
slaughter never seem to be added to your food stocks fast enough.

About the only good thing is the graphics which are of a very high
standard with the odd animated sequences - birds flying across the
screen and smoke belching from chimneys.

Overall not a good game. The author (Ralph Effemy) is asking a
fiver for it which I think is quite over the top - give me Caesar
any day.  But, if you do like this game you can choose another one
of Ralph's programs either a paint package, a spirograph thing or
four STOS starter packages all programmed in STOS.

A worthy effort but not quite up to the mark. Sorry Ralph.



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