Conquest of the New World

Conquest of the New World is a game that carries many fond memories for me. I first remember playing a demo version of it on my folks old computer...it was slow and took forever to load things, but it played this, for which I was immensely happy. The demo whetted my appetite for more, and eventually I managed to track down a copy of this gem. CotNW strikes an excellent balance between resource gathering and combat. You'll stay up "just one more hour" so that you can build a city by that oak forest or upgrade your cannons to level four and break free of the mother country, gaining your independence (and significantly better trade prices, as well as no taxes). Perhaps your war for indepences will not be entirely successful, but you'll win enough battles for the mother country to relax it's hold and lower your taxes. With lots of interesting things waiting for you to discover, from the fountain of youth to gold mines to teak forests, this is a game well worth playing. It will certainly remain a prominent part of my game collection.

Obtaining the game via GOG.com was in fact my first contact with it, and though away goes a happy memories factor, I'm still gladly stamping 5 shiny staries on this one. It is reassuring to find out there's been an approach to the subject already so gloriously explored, with Seven Cities of Gold, Colonization, yet amusing enough to pay attention. It seems to benefit from both titles - a turn-based "static" approach, with the colony development as a main theme, at the same time having some "adventure value" added, making an exploration another key subject, instead of just going around looking for treasures and tracking down where the heck they teach the tobacco planter profession. Still, the game is original and distinguishable enough not to be mistaken with any of these, adding loads of its own value, many interesting concepts, making it highly worth checking out even despite one of the clunkiest interfaces I've encountered so far.

Back in the days when I was still playing Doom and Commander Keen on my pentium 120. A friend of mine showed me a game, it wasnt a shooter or a side scroller, but this strange game about colonising the new world. My English was barely enough to make any sence of the gameplay and different aspects of the economy and diplomacy. But Boy howdy was I blown away. The graphics were supreme, sure it cant hold a candle anymore today, but for those days the "3D" landscape was damn impressive. If you zoomed in on your town, you could see the buildings come alive, and showed you what was happening, sometimes you could even see something funny, like a bear attack. When I was used to sound effects sounding like "Bleep Bleep pew pew" the orchestrated score of Conquest was again, mindblowing. Not to mention the deathcries of your fallen foes. One thing though, The computer must be cheating. When I could build a reasonable force after a while, the CPU would bombard me with army after army after army. Building an empire hasnt been this much fun since this game.

The previous poster seems to think that graphics are all-important in a game (perhaps being confused between game and simulation). It's like saying chess sucks because you don't like the appearance of the pieces. A game's graphics are eye candy, nothing more or less — and this game's graphics are more than adequate anyway. CNW is perhaps the best game in its genre, avoiding the tiresome micromanagement of other civilisation type games, while still offering a totally immersing gameplay. There's a few laughs in there as well. As it is turn-based you can take as much or little time as you need for your turn which gives you all the control you need. Like many previous posters I remember it playing for days on end when I first had it, and it's brilliant to be able to play it again. Bravo. (PS: I'd very much like to know what benefits one gets from those "Ancient Ruins" — surely someone should be able to reveal that by now!)

I played this game back when the original came out, the deluxe version fixed some bugs (though sadly in combat a "charge-through" bug remains where enemy cavalry in their first attack can sometimes move into an occupied square, deleting the units there and delivering a devastating attack to your back lines) and added some great features. The AI, unsurprisingly, is not great. It is horrible at colony planning and places buildings without regard for bonuses. It inflates its populations by thousands above what it can usefully employ. It will build a single dock in each colony, meaning trade number and size are capped at a low level. However, it is very aggressive, and when you have three or four civilizations sending multiple armies your way every turn you can easily get swamped. Do not trust the other civilizations. They will stab you in the back just as soon as they feel they can get away with it. Destroy them all.