Conquest of the New World

It's difficult to write a review about Conquest of the New World Deluxe (CoNW) that doesn't come off as sounding like an advertising piece. That's because this game does so much right for a turn-based 4x strategy game. The premise is simple: You play as one of five European colonial powers (England, Spain, France, Holland, Portugal) or the Native American in an attempt to, well, conquer the New World. For those who have played 4x games before, the methodology will be familiar. The player starts with a small amount of resources at their disposal (a couple of ships, some explorers, and a handful of military units) and from there begins the process of founding and expanding colonies, discovering and exploiting resources, and engaging in military action against the opponents. What really makes the game shine is the striking balance of these elements of gameplay. Neglect the economic, diplomatic, or military aspect and the chances are that you will pay for it in one way or another. As simple as the premise is, and as familiar as the method may be, the game does possess a steep learning curve. The AI doesn't "cheat", but it is cunning and will pounce on precieved weakness. However, a few hours spent learning the ins and outs of the game will pay off handsomely. This is because the replayability of this game is near limitless thanks to the level of customization that the player can employ. Want to play against a single AI opponent or five? It's your choice. Want to play a mini-game of fifty turns or a marathon of 300? It's yours to decide. Want to play a game of limitless turns with no victory conditions? Well, you get the idea. The world maps are also randomized to ensure that you will never play the same exact game twice, even if you play on a standard template. With challenging AI, robust replayability, and the ever important "just one more turn" factor going for it, CoNW makes a worthy addition to any 4x player's collection.

Conquest was the first game I bought for my Mac PowerBook 1400 back in '97. It's engaging at first -- you start out having reached the shore of an unknown continent and with your two small ships you found your first settlement and start expanding into the blackness of unexplored terrain. It's fun racing your rivals to be the first to discover and name the highest mountain and longest river. However, the level of suspense is pretty low in this game. The other colonial powers are never consistently aggressive enough to threaten the survival of your colonial empire, and the combat model is such that it's almost impossible to eliminate your opponents. The game ends when an arbitrary number of turns expire and the winner is determined by an almost equally arbitrary points system. I generally found myself losing interest later in the game and getting bogged down in micromanaging my cities. Compared to the other 4x turn-based strategy games available for Mac at the time (Imperialism, Master of Orion 2, Civilization 2), Conquest of the New World comes in a distant fourth. I find those other games more satisfying because the threat of annihilation by your rivals is very real if you fall too far behind. Those games also end more conclusively with either a last man standing or with one player accomplishing some feat so great that the others have no choice but to acknowlege his/her supremacy.

Unlike a lot of other commenters, I never played this game in it's heyday... too young back then. And, honestly, I've been wanting to try this game for a few months, and only joined this site because of this product. I love Sid Meier's Civilization (except for the latest Civ 5 incarnation!). I couldn't get much into Colonization, however. To me, this game is better than Colonization. In Colonization, I found myself spending the entire game just trying to prepare myself to ultimately fight the motherland. In this game, while this is still feasible, it's more open-ended. And, while gamers of my generation are used to high-end graphics, the simpler 2D graphics like this are a nice change. Too often, it seems new games are nothing more than eye-candy, with less depth to them.

I didn't expect to ever get the opportunity to play Conquest again after I upgraded from Windows 98! If you like Civilization or other historical turn based games, or even strategy games, you'll love Conquest of the New World. You're one of the many European countries that colonized America in the 1700s, fighting the Indians and other players to strengthen your empire in the new world. The combat system is great, really, everything about this game is a blast.

Conquest of the New World is, though unoriginal, one of the best management games that ever existed. The perfect balance among the differents elements of the economy, with a bit of diplomacy for the sake of it, and the inclusion with a little chess-like combat game whenever you enter in combat against an enemy power, and also its soft learning curvature makes for an enjoyable, gamer-friendlier brother of CIVILIZATION. A must have!