adsense links

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Powermonger


Another game by non other than Bullfrog. They made a lot of good games before they were bought out.
This is a real time strategy game for multiple systems with several releases from 1990-1994.



The player starts out on each map with a small number of soldiers, and maybe a few towns already under control. To win the map, the balance of power needs to be tipped completely to the player's side (represented by a scale below the mini-map), by conquering all (or at least most) of the towns on the map, and killing any opposing captains. Once a town is under the player's control, locals can be drafted into the player's army and bigger towns or enemy armies can be taken on. Some of the bigger towns also have neutral captains and if these survive the battle they come under the player's command as well.
Those dots are soldiers.

The player can only control as many armies as captains, so it is important to keep them alive. If a captain is killed, his army is disbanded and his surviving soldiers go back to their town of origin. Unlike the player's main army - which the main character commands - the subordinate captains have a "lag" time (indicated by a tiny homing pigeon animation next to their command icon) before their commands are executed. The further away from the player's main character they are, the longer it takes for orders to reach them.
Food is the single most important resource in the game. Aside from friendly towns the player can also slaughter wandering sheep, barter food from neutral towns, or kill an enemy captain and pillage his food supply.
The world map.

Aside from manpower and food towns can also provide equipment. Townspeople will occasionally make items, but to speed things up the player can order an army to "invent" at a friendly town. Depending on nearby resources and what posture the army is set to (passive, neutral or aggressive), men will then go to work collecting resources and make items. As the more useful items can usually only be made in one or two towns on any given map these have great strategic importance.
 And yes I am back for a while anyway.

8 comments:

  1. Sounds like an awesome game.

    I'll be checking it out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. +1 on the above comment, you've sold it to me. Nice review.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I remember reading a review of this in Hyper back in 1994.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I played this before , freaking great game! dam they dont make em like this no more

    ReplyDelete
  5. The game doesn't look too shabby.

    ReplyDelete
  6. aww man, this makes me feel so old now. hahaha great post, keep em coming

    ReplyDelete