I received Conquest as a Christmas present in 1997 when the deluxe edition came out. I remember needing to upgrade my computer from a 386 to a 486 just to get it to load battles in less than 15 minutes. Conquest is the first game that I can remember enjoying so much (I was 15 at the time) that I literally played it through the night without sleeping (Fallout and Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far would later add themselves to this list). The next day I had a raging fever, slept from noon until 6pm, and woke up fully recovered. Conquest draws you in like very few games I have ever played in a long career of PC gaming (which began right around CD-ROM was invented... if you ever played a game called Astronomica, we should be friends). It combined for me all the essential elements - strategy, age-of-muskets combat, city-building, and good old-fashioned butt-kickery. You absolutely must play this game.
