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Truly Obscure Medieval-Themed DOS games
castleQuerent
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have checked Home of the Underdogs, I have checked Abandonia.
I can't seem to find one ( or two ) truly obscure strategy game(s) for DOS.
One had multimedia clips from black-and-white movies about medieval kings, so it probably qualifies as multimedia. I believe that same one didn't require CDROM, though -- these are from the 1990's at latest, possibly from the 1980's.
The main map was a task-based interface that would seem ridiculously simple nowadays but was cutting edge about twenty years ago.
You saw borders on a map, dividing provinces. You had to cut enough wood to prepare an army before invading another province to take its resources. While you were cutting wood, there was a progress bar, and the button-graphic flipped around.
There were probably three resources, of which wood was only one.
The manual described it as a "task-based game" and the FAQ at the end of the manual actually chided players who might complain that the game was too hard by saying, "Go ahead, blame the game, don't blame yourself," or something like that.
Thanks in advance for any leads.
I can't seem to find one ( or two ) truly obscure strategy game(s) for DOS.
One had multimedia clips from black-and-white movies about medieval kings, so it probably qualifies as multimedia. I believe that same one didn't require CDROM, though -- these are from the 1990's at latest, possibly from the 1980's.
The main map was a task-based interface that would seem ridiculously simple nowadays but was cutting edge about twenty years ago.
You saw borders on a map, dividing provinces. You had to cut enough wood to prepare an army before invading another province to take its resources. While you were cutting wood, there was a progress bar, and the button-graphic flipped around.
There were probably three resources, of which wood was only one.
The manual described it as a "task-based game" and the FAQ at the end of the manual actually chided players who might complain that the game was too hard by saying, "Go ahead, blame the game, don't blame yourself," or something like that.
Thanks in advance for any leads.
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It's set in a fictionalized France.
I think that's the one. Great game. One of my favourite time-wasters as a young(er) man.
"One had multimedia clips from black-and-white movies about medieval kings, so it probably qualifies as multimedia. I believe that same one didn't require CDROM, though -- these are from the 1990's at latest, possibly from the 1980's."
I had no doubt it was Casltes 2: Siege and Conquest, as Grimmy said. I just got it again recently. You can get it from abandonia:
http://www.abandonia.com/games/190/download/Castles2SiegeConquest.htm
Dont forget to get the Codes too, which the game asks for after about 2 minutes of playing.
I had downloaded Castles, and I remembered it, but I thought the one with the "Aleksandr Nyevsky" clips had to be a totally different series, because the strategic map is so very different.
Yeah, I had been thinking of Castles II. And man, it really *is* hard. I had thought that maybe I was just a lousy gamer back in 1992, but no, the game is genuinely hard. Even on the Easy setting. What they need is a Whining Sissy Boy setting so that I can learn it, because hex-editing the save files takes too much experimentation. Apparently the Mac port added cheat codes, and I can see why there would be a major market for that.
The attitude of the development team is just as snarky as I recall. I was searching the WWW for data on how to survive longer than a few minutes. I found:
CASTLES II was exhaustively playtested for six months. Every aspect of the gameplay was critiqued and fine-tuned. This was an especially complex task for the artificial intelligence routines. Many of the AI algorithms were rewritten several times until they became satisfyingly realistic. Fortunately, the computer players use the same tasks as the humans. The tuning factors were based on empirical adjustments derived from actual human playtesters. The result is a series of opponents who play at a level equivalent to that of an expert human player. The Easy and Impossible difficulty levels in the game were created by adjusting delicately more than a dozen factors in the playing style of each opponent.
...
Note the attention to detail. I admit that the team that made this game were old-school sticklers for quality, but unfortunately they didn't know their audience. ... Or their intended audience was used to diplomacy-intensive wargames set in medieval France.
I think the guy who wrote the guide I found was the same one who wrote the manual -- The following seems just as snarky as the manual:
Ten Sure Ways to Lose at Castles II
* Attack two or three other players at once. Yeah, the more, the merrier. It's fun to send troops in every direction, grabbing territory as quickly as possible. It's fun to lose troops faster than you can Recruit them. It's fun to beat back counterattacks every two weeks. It's fun to restart the game every ten minutes!
* Ignore the Pope: attack Blessed players: get Excommunicated. So what if they are the Pope's friends? So what if eventually this gets you Excommunicated? You're too tough to expect your people to be happy. Besides, no iron-fisted ruler worth his garde-robe worries about those Holy Rollers. And don't worry about the precipitous drop in your army's morale because your people are unhappy. Your army is three times bigger than any other in Bretagne -- at least, it was the last time you checked. Besides, you don't need to send no stinkin' Merchants.
* Never send Diplomats. Diplomats are pansies. You kill them when they come to you. Why send yours when Relations are always so bad anyway? You don't need no stinkin' friends (see Merchants above). Scorched earth --that's your style. Take no prisoners. Just build an army and kill everyone at once. No problem. They'll never have time to mount a counterattack. What if everybody hates you? Huh?. What if? Are you talkin' to me?
* Trade inefficiently: Rely on the Black Market for scarce goods. Trade with people who hate you. Everyone is out to get you. You have no friends, so why would you expect them to trade advantageously with you? What's so bad about an occasional 2 :1 or 3:1 swap for something you really need? Losing one or two units per trade doesn't really add up to much over thirty or forty trades, anyway. Besides, how could you possibly have planned ahead for your needs?
* Let your army starve or go without paychecks. Why, when you were in the military you went six, seven years without eating. Yeah, and when you ate all you had to eat were rocks. Yeah, and when you got paid you got paid in sticks. Yeah, and they were wet too! After all, you only lose one military unit on the first delay. Why should you care if it's your best unit? You have more Knights than you can use, don't you? And don't worry about the fact that you lose double the units after every further delay. You have more important concerns than maintaining an army.
* Ignore a commodity because it's not important. Who needs Food, except to feed the army, recruit Knights, and make people happy? Who needs Timber, except to build castles, recruit Archers, and make people happy? Who needs Iron, except to build castles and recruit Infantry? Nobody needs Gold, right? Right? ... Well, gold maybe ...
* Don't build castles. The name of the game is CASTLES II. But that has nothing to do with it. You're too busy conquering neighboring territories to worry about those pesky revolts. And who needs double commodities anyway? (see above) And you can always reconquer the territories you lose. Your neighbors would never even think about trying to capture a neutral territory that was once yours. And how much protection can you really get from a pile of stone? Ten archers posted on the walls can't possibly be very useful. Why would you ever imagine that they might be safer up there, or might be able to shoot arrows further? And what possible advantage could there be to protecting all of your Infantry and Knights from enemy Archers?
* Never, ever Claim the throne. Why try to win, when you can have lots of fun getting beaten to a bloody pulp year after year? Masochism builds character. No, even better. Claim early. Just as soon as your score creeps up to 7001. Yeah, that'll show everyone just what you think of them. Those sniveling, wimps.
* Change strategies every year or so. Yeah, keep duckin' and weavin'. Bobbin' and dopin'. Move slowly and in different directions all the time. Those computer players won't know what to do. Who needs to focus on a consistent strategy? Planning never worked for Wile E. Coyote.
* Never send Scouts and Spies. Never call a Council. Why bother looking at your neighbors? They aren't planning any hostile actions. You're perfectly happy with two or three territories on the wrong side of the river. You never worry when a new neighbor shows up. He couldn't possibly have fifteen military units poised on your border, a Happiness of 9, and a serious need for elbow room. So what if Aragon just marched all the way to Albion's part of the map? He can't possibly be winning the game. In fact, nobody else could possibly be doing better than you. Just ignore them. You always win on Impossible level, anyway.
The guy who wrote that is probably the same one who wrote the nasty little tag line at the back of the manual, "If you can't win, blame the game, not your stupid self" or something like that.
Yeah, I was up until 3 a.m. last night with this little bundle of addictiveness. It smacks me around and tells me that I am a bitch.
I got a "Knight" rating on the "Easy" level.
In the credits I noted the notorious names of Feargus Urquhart and Jon Tweet.
Difficulty notes (which would have helped me when I started):
Early disadvantages are fatal. If you screw up a game early on, try to learn from it and restart the same map so at least you have additional info.
Impatience is similarly fatal. If you click "buzz off" on all your diplomacy screens, you're signing your own suicide note.
Forgetting the names of your rivals is fatal. You have to know which color Albion is on the map, and which color Aragon is, because when they demand a yes-or-no answer on a diplomacy ultimatum, there's no way to check their colors. This is just bad interface design -- the names should have been in color, or there should have been a way to check before deciding.
Diplomacy is central, and gold runs diplomacy, so players who start out near gold provinces have an insane advantage, and those who start out elsewhere have a major disadvantage.
The three point pools start out around 4, 3, and 3. They can max out at 9, 9, and 9. An army of 20 units (infantry, archers, knights) is considered large, but it's possibly to have 27 or so. Armies will require one third of their number in gold or food. It seems to be possible to get a single ballista, a single catapult, and a single siege tower, but they don't seem to require upkeep. It's hard to say how much of an advantage they give, because once I got them, I had the resources to sustain a huge army.
"Police the realm" sacrifices one point of happiness for a chance at catching saboteurs.
DOSbox seems to crash oddly by freezing on a black screen. This usually happens when visiting a province with a damaged castle. Save often.
On the "Easy" level, if you start out near some gold provinces, you can continually bribe the Pope. If possible, try to get "blessed" status (meaning you have bribed the Pope) because then folks who attack you lose popularity. Likewise, before starting a war of choice, try to make sure that the Pope isn't currently blessing the target.
That's about all I can think of. If I had known it a day or two ago, I wouldn't have even considered trying to hex-edit save files.