Beginners Hints

Basic Conquering

Well, to beginners, Conquer can be a rather daunting game. But, once learned, it can be great fun and more than a little addictive. [Don't say I didn't warn you.]

For those players who are just starting, I would recommend that you get into a campaign with other beginners, or at least start in a world where options are not configured too hard. At least, in such a situation, there will not be too critical a need to learn all of the aspects of the game.

With some beginners, there seems to be a tendency to focus all of your energies into building up armies and sending them against other nations. While this can be great fun, it should be attempted with caution. Most nations can only permanently support armies of around 10% of the size of the civilian population, maybe twice that for short term wars; anything larger will put a great burden on the national economy. Also, make sure that you can keep your troops supplied in some manner, or they will just disappear during the middle of the war. Anyway, the section below entitled "Making War" will give a more comprehensive look into waging war.

Using Display Features

The ability to see all that is going on around your nation is the most important thing to learn. The longer to notice events taking place, the harder it becomes to respond to them.

Because of this, the display and highlighting commands become the most important commands within Conquer, due to all of the information which may be gathered using them.

Probably the most useful aspect of all of the display routines is the ability to combine the detailed highlighting routines together to generate a much more informative display. For example, you can immediately tell if any of your farm sectors are lacking a granary by highlighting the top two slots using "designation: Farms", and the bottom two slots using "minor desg: Granary". Any sector with only the top two slots highlighted needs to have a granary added to the sector. There are many more just as useful combinations such as "metal mines/blacksmith" and "owned/roads". I am sure with a little experimentation, you can build your own sets of highlighting combinations.

Moving Units

Learning how to relocate units around the map quickly and easily is a very important aspect of Conquer, especially during wartime. There are a number of tools within Conquer to make this process much easier.

Taking Land

Once you know how to relocate units around the board, you may use them to claim land for your nation. Only army units may capture a sector, so don't bother even trying it with your navy or caravan units. Also, the only sectors which may be claimed are those which are currently unowned, or those which are owned by a nation you are at war with.

To take land, you leave your army in a sector at the end of the turn, and place the army on "Attack". The attack status is needed because capturing land is an aggressive action and might require military conflict. This also means that you need not take land if you do not wish to. [In prior versions, units moving across the map would leave a trail of captured sectors behind them, whether they wished to or not.]

There must be at least the equivalent of 75 men in the unit to capture a sector. The relative capturing potential of a unit is dependent on the unit type, so be aware of how much the unit is worth. Monster units have a given size per man, which is less than the combat strength of the unit. Leaders are only worth one man when capturing a sector. And, the other army units each have a capturing potential which is multiplied by the number of men in the unit to determine the actual capturing strength.

If there are enemy units within the sector, left over from a prior battle, you will have to have a significant numerical superiority to force your claim. And if there are already civilians in the sector, you will need additional men in the sector in order to subdue the population. So, you should figure around 75 men plus 10% to 30% of the number of civilians in the sector. Finally, if the sector is a supply center, you will need to totally eliminate all fortified troops from the sector before you may claim it.

Top Ten First Steps

Probably the most difficult aspect of Conquer to manage is getting your nation and its economy stabilized in the first few updates. Thus, I will describe the steps I use to get a nation up and running:

         1. Put your national leader (unit 1) on Reserve.
         2. Move minor leaders out in all directions about
            five to ten sectors away from the capital.
         3. Locate lumber, jewel, and metal rich sectors.
         4. Locate high (>= 8) food value sectors.
         5. Move 75+ men Attacking units into desirable sectors.
         6. Enlist five to ten scouts.
         7. Assign proper designations to already owned sectors.
         8. Build minor designations where needed.
         9. Check for any other sectors which might be useful to take.
        10. Reinforce the capital with any extra troops.

The initial focus should be on building up the economy so that your nation will not run out of any resources. Food and talons are usually not too hard to come by, but metals and wood can quickly become scarce. Thus, you should be looking for any metal and wood sectors you can find. Either find one good (5 or more value) or a bunch of smaller ones combined for each of those materials. Jewel mines can also come in handy within a few months. For every metal or jewel mine within your nation, the more likely it will be that other metal or jewel deposits will be discovered elsewhere in the nation, even in sectors which appeared empty before.

By the third turn you should have the following all taken care of: all of the materials should be showing a net production; all of the high food sectors (8 or higher) within range of the capital should be in use; the minor leaders should be back into the nation proper to avoid danger and the scouts should now be out and doing all of the scouting; likely town sectors about 2 to 3 sectors away from the capital should be filling with civilians.

Within a year, a solid economy should be developed, and more than one town should have been built. By the end of the second year, you should have multiple cities along with a good network of caravan routes carrying materials between your cities. If possible, locate your cities near water so that navies can be employed to carry your materials. Roads should be built up in as many sectors as possible.

I believe in the slow expansion of the nation, but after you have played a while, you will be able to determine how quickly you wish your nation to expand. Just make sure that you do not expand so quickly that you strain your resources.

Gathering Magic

In Conquer, the progression of a nation is measured by the number of magical powers that nation possesses. And, the way to obtain the magical powers is through the mining of jewels.

A number of factors are involved in gaining jewels, the most important being the ability of your nation to find the jewel veins in the first place. Generally, your nation will have to progress in its ability to recognize the valuable materials around it. So, from the beginning your nation should be interested in taking ANY sectors containing jewel deposits within your vicinity, and using them to mine jewels until their production level becomes insignificant compared with your better mines. At such time, the civilians in the sector could probably be doing better work if they were elsewhere. All of these ideas can, just as well, be applied to the mining of metals.

As the jewels are mined, they should be brought back to the national capital so that they can be used to purchase new powers using the "magical-info" mode. Be sure to bring talons along with the jewels, since supply centers with large jewel deposits are more likely to distribute talons than other supply centers.

Meeting Others

Sooner or later, you are bound to meet another nation. Whether or not that meeting is friendly is up to you and your neighbor. I have found, though, that if a nation is capable of supporting a war, one will inevitably happen. It is just a matter of who is available to pounce on in such a circumstance.

When first encountering another nation, you will still possess a diplomatic status of "Unmet" towards that nation. You will be unable to enter that nations territory while you are Unmet; this is to prevent players from attacking another nation without any warning.

In order to officially meet a nation, you must own land, or have leaders, within a certain distance (usually two) of land owned by that nation. Once met, the two nations will have their statuses set to neutral and whatever happens from then on is up to the two nations.

Making War

Eventually, your nation will find itself at war with another nation. After all, the name of the game is Conquer.

The most critical aspect of warfare is the ability to supply your armies. If your supplies run out, so do the armies. The easiest way to supply your troops is to keep them within supply range of your supply centers (towns, cities, etc.). If this is not possible, you will have to use navies or caravans to support the troops. One important thing to note, any unit within range of supply sites during the update will receive supplies automatically, but if you wish to supply a unit manually, they can only receive supplies from the current sector, unless they are on land you own.

One big hint concerning warfare: take the war to them. If it is at all possible, be aggressive in your warfare, because the land used as the battleground can get ruined very quickly. If it is your land that becomes damaged, your economy will be the one to suffer.

Some More Hints...

The complexity of Conquer is such that it is not possible to come up with a sure fire method for building a better nation, but I can provide some hints that should help beginners to compete with more experienced players:

== If your navies and caravans are just carrying materials, make sure that they are set to "Carry" so that their cargo is not removed before you wish it to be.
== When sending navies out to explore, be sure to put enough talons and food on the ship so that they can be self-sustaining. Also, the status of "Support" will need to be used.
== Do not take sectors outside of the range of your supply centers, since such sectors would not be usable by you. The highlight of "range" will help you determine just what sectors you can safely take.
== Do not overdraft armies. Having to support too many army units can cripple your economy.
== Try to draft units with specific tasks in mind. For example, faster cavalry or avian units make swift attacking troops, and archers, infantry or siege engines are fine in garrisons.
== When attacking another nation, you should establish a supply center whose range overlaps that nation. If this is not possible, the next best alternative is to capture one of that nations supply centers, which is a much more difficult proposition.
== Be sure to build up the defenses of your nation by fortifying your supply centers. Be careful not to use all of your resources to build up the defenses, though, since they are expensive to build.
== When attacking a nation, you can either go right for the supply centers or you can take the surrounding sectors and starve them out. If you wish to starve them out, though, you will need a much stronger supply network, even though your troops can be smaller.
== Walls can be used to slow approaching land armies.
== Taking over lizard and pirate sectors can be very rewarding. The lizards are rumored to possess great jewel mines and the metal resources of pirate nations are highly prized.
== Mercenaries are very expensive, but are sometimes the only alternative because they supply their own weapons (meaning no metals are needed). Also, since mercenaries are not drawn from the citizens of your nation, their deaths will not mean the lost of any population.
== Granaries may only be built during the spring, summer and early fall months.
== Supply centers take time to build. They can still take in and redistribute supplies, but they are not able to draft troops. So, be sure to time the construction so that it will not hurt your nation.
== Most captured sectors become devastated by the claiming of the land, so you should be sure to "undevastate" them before they may be used.
== Do not let units stray out of support range for too long or the unit will run out of supplies.
== To increase the supplies of a unit, the unit must be on territory owned by your nation.
== The diplomacy statuses of "Allied" and "Jihad" are irrevocable.
== Putting a sector under siege cuts off the supplies to that sector, and if it is a city, it cuts off its access to resources. [That includes the ability to draft mercenary units.]
== It takes a better than a two to one advantage in troops in the area to place a sector under siege.
== Roads increase communication rates and reduce movement costs.
== KEEP YOUR LEADERS OUT OF TROUBLE. Your leader units are your most valuable. Without your leaders to focus your troops, many actions become much more difficult, if not impossible.