The Skeptic Tank

Making the game digital has allowed the authors to automate much of the more cumbersome tasks related to resource management. In games such as Axis & Allies, there is a practical cap on how complex, and thus how realistic, the game can be because of limitations related to the number of elements a human player can feasibly keep track of in a given turn. These limitations don't exist with computer-based games, so they are better able to simulate real-world, complex scenarios.

GAME PLAY

On each turn, each player can alter how each of his territories produce - developing resources (farms or culture), raising armies, levying taxes, or building defensive castles.

TURNS

Games traditionally have been turn-based because that was the only way to handle logistics in board games. Turn-based games tend to be slower while allowing more contemplation on the part of each player.

Real-time strategy games allow a much faster game at the expense of deliberated planning. Conqueror! has come up with a good compromise, having players each place orders over the course of a few minutes, the orders are then processed simultaneously by the system. This allows for more contemplation and planning while keeping the game faster than its offline brethren.

EDUCATIONAL VALUE

Realism has little, if anything, necessarily to do with how fun a game is, but in this case the realism is important (to me anyway). I found this game to be educational, in a limited way, in how I was unable to not learn some geography from playing. The geography was not part of the instructions, and never explicitly forced onto the players, but was just a natural consequence of playing the game. This type of education is the model I hope to use in educational games I develop, where no memorization - or even conscious thought - is required to absorb the information available.
MULTIPLAY VS AI

The developers have clearly done a lot of work in developing the various artificial intelligences assigned to nations not controlled by human players. Some are unpredictably aggressive, and some (according to the developers' notes) even have built in 'revenge' algorithms so that they are more likely to attack players that have attacked them.

However, playing versus humans is very different than playing against AIs. Even discounting the common trend of 12-year-old boys (or adults regressing in anonymity to being 12 years old again) being obnoxious, human opponent are so much better at anticipating other players' moves that they require a much more defensive strategy to defeat.

Human players also add the optional element of alliances - which typically seem to consist of working together to beat the AIs, then fighting each other (perhaps a representation of what the War of the Robots will look like).

ADDICTION

The central fun of this game comes from what I call the 'lawnmower principle', the premise of which is that it is inherently pleasurable to see the effects of one's labor - to 'wipe the slate clean'. Conqueror! is more than mowing the lawn, however, because of the complexities involved in doing so; on any given turn there are between 5 and 10 decisions that have to be made; decisions that affect both this turn and future ones.
These decisions are typical of many games of this type - whether to build resources or attack.

But what makes the game addictive is what I will call 'scaling depth' - the fact that a new player can pay attention to only the more coarse details (whether one is being attacked or not, for example) and still take some ground (although likely lose eventually) while more experienced players know which of the more subtle details (which of one's territories are most suited to raising armies versus building farms, or how large of a front one wants to maintain, for example) can lead to victory.

This scaling depth is what keeps players coming back. A game such as Tetris is addictive because every game ends with the player thinking about how he would do a little better next time, and Conqueror! has the same quality.

SECOND-GUESSING

I’m making this its own section since second-guessing is so critical to multiplayer strategy games. The second-guessing in Conqueror! is quite good, and perhaps the dominant quality of the game, at least when playing human opponents. When playing AIs, it’s much easier to figure out what their driving algorithm is, and act accordingly.

USER INVOLVEMENT IN GAME DESIGN PROCESS

Conqueror! is a game-in-progress, having gone through perhaps 200 iterative builds (to date, the build number is 86, but the developers typically release a, b, and c sub-builds) in the past couple of years.

They have an active forum (http://conquerorgame.com/forum/index.php?f=6) where players can report bugs, plan games, and request features. For armchair game developers such as myself (I'm currently lifting myself out of the La-Z-Boy) this is a valuable window into the process of creating games.

After playing a few times, I started flooding the list under different names, with concerns over the same issue: that the end-game is too easy. The positive feedback is so strong (as it is with most War games) that once a player has conquered about a quarter of the board, he's unstoppable. My suggestion was that a better simulation of Empire would be to have more rebellions in territories far removed from the capital, that boarding soldiers should be more expensive when far from the capital, and a few other related ideas.

I was surprised and excited when I saw all of my ideas implemented in the next build, although in some ways, the game was better before my ‘fixes’ were added.

Still, it is the only environment I know where players can affect the conditions of the game so directly - even democratically, since my forum posts received numerous follow-ups with both supporting and refuting arguments.

IMPROVEMENTS OVER SIMILAR GAMES

There are many, but two interesting ones are devotion level within a territory and influence over adjacent ones. Having a variable for how happy citizens are is not new, perhaps first introduced in the Civilization series, but in Conqueror! the value is tied to resource production and likelihood of rebellion in a compelling way.

A territory’s influence is based on the citizen’s devotion to the player, the number of armies in the territory, the level of culture that has been achieved, and the amount of money in the coffer. A territory is influenced by all adjacent ones and at times of invasion or rebellion, the influence can determine how much the soldiers resist being invaded, and the differences in influence are great enough, can even lead to secession to another player without having to attack.

Overall, Conqueror! is an enjoyable game that you can have 30 or more hours of fun with before getting bored. Considering that it's free (as long as it's still in development) that's a bargain.
KRAMER SCALE:

Based on Wolfgang Kramer's list of issues to consider in evaluating games, I'm rating Conqueror! on a series of 5-point scales. Kramer's list is imperfect, but good as a starting point when evaluating any game.

ORIGINALITY **** Good
War simulations are thousands of years old, but all game genres are well-established so I can't criticize this game for producing yet another "improvement on Risk".
The originality in Conqueror! is in how the developers took lessons from previous games such as Axis & Allies and those by Avalon Hill and combined them with some fresh approaches, specifically regarding how to exploit the advantages that computer games have over board games in terms of allowing lots of behind-the-scenes calculations.

FRESHNESS AND REPLAYABILITY *** Fair
Conqueror! has a replayability value of about 30 games, which is pretty good, but doesn't compare with truly addictive games such as Tetris. There are more problems in this regard when playing just AIs than there are when playing human opponents because the second-guessing is so much easier with AIs.

But, either way, there are a small number of overall strategies: build then attack vs. attack while building, protect your base vs. extending out in order to flank other territories, etc.
Also, regardless of the type of opponent, there is still a significant wait in between turns and lots of required clicking in order to maintain production of resources, both of which lead to boredom once you've figured out all the intricacies of the game.

SURPRISE ** Poor
The AIs in Conqueror! are sometimes quite good, acting in ways that mimic the best human players. In fact, human players, though more challenging overall than the AIs, are often more predictable than the AIs, which clearly have some randomness built into their algorithms. But, reacting to randomness is much less satisfying than reacting to a brilliant but unexpected move, as is often found in other strategy games.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY **** Good
Creating true equality in games in games (as in life) is very difficult, particularly for turn-based ones. But Conqueror! does a good job in evening out the usual bias that favors the first turn.

The real-world map is what creates the most inequality in this game. Countries that begin with few borders (Morocco borders only Tangiers) have an early advantage in that they can invest less in defense. However, these same countries have a disadvantage in the later game when they need to expand to the opposite side of the board. Countries that begin in the middle have a more difficult time early on, with attackers on all sides, but then have it easier later as they have equal distances to cross to reach the edge of the playing area in any direction.

WINNING CHANCES * Bad (but doesn't matter)
This rule is different for board games compared to computer games. Risk-style war simulations require that nations can be obliterated during the course of the game. Most computer games allow players to quit and start over when they're killed. Conqueror! allows player to sign in as another country when killed. This itself can be a problem for other players when a defeated player returns.

NO "KINGMAKER EFFECT" **** Good
Heavy positive feedback ensures that losing countries dwindle in strength before they're crushed, so there is no kingmaker effect in that regard. However, a 'feature' of Conqueror! is that when a player quits, his nation is taken over by an AI, which can be frustrating for the remaining players.

I typically quit a game once I've reached 'Emperor' level, at which point I usually control about a quarter of the board. The AI that takes over for me usually acts in erratic ways, which are magnified because the resource base I left with it is so strong.

NO EARLY ELIMINATION ** Poor
Again, war games require that some players can be eliminated, but Conqueror! does have a flaw in that some games begin with such unfair disadvantages (multiple strong, aggressive, adjacent opponents) that survival is impossible. You can simply quit and start over, but that's no fun.

REASONABLE WAITING TIMES *** Fair
When setting up a game, you can choose how long to set the timer (15-second increments between 15 seconds and an hour) which is very useful, but some turns require little decision-making while others require a lot, and being locked into the time can be frustrating, especially when trying to realize a particular aggressive strategy. Turn-based games have to include some wait-time, but when playing Conqueror! I yearned for the dynamically flexible wait time in Chess, with periods of contemplation punctuated by rapid turns of aggression. ‘Rush-games’, with only 15 or 30 seconds per turn can be quite challenging, and give the AIs a strong advantage.

CREATIVE CONTROL **** Good
There is some randomness in the determination of losses during combat, but overall Conqueror! offers good creative control. The only drawback is occasional, when the erratic behavior of some AIs effectively punishes a player for no reason.

UNIFORMITY and QUALITY OF COMPONENTS ***** Excellent
Verisimilitude is not necessary for a game, but I really enjoyed the quality of the map and graphics in general - making the game far more enjoyable than if I were to 'play' an Excel spreadsheet with all the algorithms as embedded equations in different cells.

TARGET GROUPS AND CONSISTENCY OF RULES *** Fair
This is one of Kramer's most debatable rules, and Conqueror! is clearly an exception. It is a strategy game that relies on randomness to some degree. However, the randomness is well-enough contained that the luck factor enhances rather than detracts from the game. I'd be curious to play this game without any chance factor, though.

TENSION **** Good
This varies greatly between games against AIs and those against human opponents.
Overall, though, there is a good mix of paranoid building phases, sudden reactionary defense phases, and planned aggressive phases.

LEARNING AND MASTERING A GAME *** Fair
The initial learning curve is steep (assuming time on the Y axis and learning on the X axis) to the effect that simply understanding all the rules requires playing about 3 games.
Unfortunately, mastering the subtleties takes only several games more, without a broad, pleasant band of discovery in between those two moments. Beyond that, the game is still enjoyable as players can experiment with different strategies.

COMPLEXITY AND INFLUENCE *** Fair
Similar to Csikszentmihalyi's (phew!) 'flow channel', Kramer’s graph of complexity and influence shows how a game should scale along with the players' abilities.
Conqueror! is fairly rigid in this regard, being a little too difficult for new players and too simple for experienced ones.