Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!usc!ucsd!ogccse!blake!rowen
From: rowen@blake.acs.washington.edu (Russell Owen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac GAMES info wanted
Message-ID: <3763@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 89 19:14:52 GMT
References: <1989Sep22.161107.18968@mentor.com>
Reply-To: rowen@blake.acs.washington.edu (Russell Owen)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 32

As per a posted request, here is a review of Strategic Conquest
(an older version, I'm not going to upgrade to the latest):

Play:
The world consists of a series of islands with cities (and no other features).
You know nothing about a square of territory until you've moved next to it,
even on your starting island, so it takes awhile to explore and find the enemy.

You start in one city, and have it build stuff for you (armies, ships of
various types, planes) then use that stuff to go exploring, take over other
cities, and attack the enemy (who is busy doing the same thing). You win when
the enemy resigns, or lose when you get wiped out or resign.

Comments:
The game takes far too long for my taste, though it may be typical for
board-based war games. At a challenging level of play, a full game takes
at least 8 hours, probably a lot longer. Even at the lowest level, which
is hard to lose, a game will take several hours. This is partly due to
inadequate methods for automatically moving your pieces, partly intrinsic.
I wish they had a fast-game option in which you knew the world layout
and owned all the cities on your island from the beginning.

The enemy is pretty stupid. The higher levels are harder only because
it "cheats" by building hardware faster than you can, not because it
becomes a better tactician. Still, it's an effective method--the highest
levels are quite difficult.

The game is copy--protected, and the version I own comes on two 400k floppies,
so it's very obnoxious. I hope they latest one is on one 800k floppy.

-- Russell Owen
internet: owen@phast.phys.washington.edu
bitnet: owen@uwaphast