Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries

D/L'd 7K:AA months ago, but couldn't get it to work on my Win 7 Professional set up. Color was either washed out or too dark to see anything.. no matter how hard I pushed the gamma and brightness factors. Finally, I found the fix and now it works great! Search for 'Win XP Mode' app on Microsoft official download pages. (Does not work with Win 8 or Win7 Home).

It's free on Desura. So, it's really your choice. Do you want to buy it (and it's easily worth the asking price), or get it for free? Either way, you should definately play it. One of my favorite RTS games from it's era.

This unique RTS comes from Trevor Chan of the Capitalism games, and it shows in the thougtful way the economic system is constructed. Most RTS games (particularly of this era) have you collecting "stuff" (gold, lumber, &c) with peasants and then turning that stuff into units - 100 wood to make a trebuchet, that kind of thing. This game takes a very different approach. The primary resource of your kingdom are your loyal people - the key word being "loyal", because if you do things to upset them too often, they stop being loyal and they stop being valuable to you. So when you build a copper mine, for example, it's partly in order to make money from selling the copper products you can make in your factories, but partly in order to make your people happy by filling your marketplaces with copper goods that your people can buy. This way of thinking about what a "kingdom" is comes across in the whole design and philosophy of the game. It does mean a longer learning curve because many of the mechanics are unfamiliar, but there's something very satisfying about the way the whole thing fits together once you understand the way it's meant to work. All that said, this is not a perfect game. There are some questions about balance, the limitedness of the resources can lead to a situation where someone is a runaway leader and there's not much anyone else can do about it, and the computer opponents can be a bit of a nuisance with the way that they constantly seem to change their minds about whether they want to ally with you or demand your money. Nonetheless, I recommend this game to anyone who's interested in the RTS genre for a couple of reasons. First, it really is a unique take on the way RTS games can work; in these days when it seems every RTS is just a clone of something else but with marginally different graphics, it's exciting to play something with not just a unique design but a design that is based on an innovative philosophy. And the second reason is, so long as you can get over a bit of a hump in the learning curve, and don't mind some fairly rudimentary graphics, this game is an awful lot of fun!

I found this in a bargain bin years and years ago and bought it on a whim. Other reviews have already said it better, but this game (and its sequel) take your average RTS mechanics and tie it into a fairly complex ecosystem and economy. Cities will slowly grow in population, from which you can recruit troops and people to man various structures. Those structures in turn create the backbone of an economy and a military. Need to build up some cash? Build a factory for a town. Just know that each person working in that factory is one less sword for your army. Soldiers and cities grow over time in experience and usefulness and each has its own loyalty to your cause. Do things to increase that loyalty and they will be more effective to your empire. Break the loyalty of an enemy's troops or towns and watch them be torn apart by their own men. I love these games (they're easily my favorite real-time strategy games from back in the genre's heyday). The screenshots aren't really a strong sell, but each time you play is a layered, unique experience, and you can do far worse than pick these up and give them a try. As a ancillary note, I haven't tried playing any of GoG's games multiplayer (so I don't know if it's possible here), but me and my brother used to have so much fun playing these games together. Having the unpredictability of other human players to ally with (and double-cross) makes for some very interesting scenarios.

Loved this as a kid. Nice trip down memory lane.