From: jennifer@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Jennifer Schlickbernd)
Subject: Review of Global Conquest for PC
Reply-To: jennifer@jato.jpl.nasa.gov
Organization: Jet Propulsion Lab - Pasadena, CA
Distribution: "na"
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 21:13:41 GMT


[I'm posting this to rec.games.empire because Global Conquest is
an Empire type game, and I'm posting this to rec.games.board
because Global Conquest is a computer game that acts like a board
game]

Global Conquest (GC) is a computer strategy game, currently
available for MS DOS computers.  The game is designed by the
famous Dan Bunten, known for M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold,
Modem Wars, and Command H.Q..  The game is distributed by
Microplay, a division of Microprose.

GC is played on a random board, filled with mountains, swamps,
oceans, plans, and forest.  There are also cities/towns/villages
(generically known as "burbs"), docks, oil sites and mineral
sites.  Depending on the setting, you can have no visibility,
where your units all have to actually "see" a part of the map for
it to be declared something other than ocean, you can have half
visibility where if a player on the board sees something, you see
it, or you can have full visibility, where everyone can see
everything, including all non-hidden units.

There are always four active players, and the "natives".  The
four active players can be human or computer or a combination. 
If they are human, they can be connected together via modem, null
modem serial cable, or share the same computer or any
combination.  In other words if you wanted to, you could have two
people at one computer, a second computer with the third player
hooked in via serial cable, and call up a fourth player on your
modem.  Very flexible, and hopefully the game will do a lot to
advance modem-to-modem play.

There are the usual units to be found in most wargames; infantry,
armor, carriers, battleships, subs, and planes, along with a 
couple of special types-- the Comcen and the spy.  If you lose
your Comcen you are out of the game.  The Spy can sabotage
production, along with exposing all units of the opposing
Comcen's side.  Only another spy can see a spy, so it can be a
nasty piece.  The Comcen moves and sees like a carrier, but on
land.  It also supports a single plane.  The other units act as
expected, although the planes can do airstrikes and paradrops,
and the land units transform themselves into transports if they
are to go across water.  They of course are quite vulnerable
without an escort.

All turns are simultaneous.  There is first an orders phase,
where everyone gives their units orders, and then an execution
phase, where everyone sits back and watches how their orders
worked out.  Depending on the setting (and depending on if all
opponents are human or not) you can have turns last a set amount
of time, an unlimited amount if time, or (and this is the
interesting setting) a certain amount of time in excess of the
quickest player for the turn.  To explain that last, you can have
the game set where you get let's say 5 seconds more than the
quickest player to input orders.  If  a player has assigned all
units orders in previous turns and therefore doesn't have much to
do in a given turn, your turn could be something like 10 seconds
or so!  I call this the "Fire Brigade" option, because all you
are doing is putting out fires, it's very hard to get any long
term strategy going.  There can be from 5 to 60 extra seconds of
time.

You can designate paths for all units and change them at any time
during the Orders phase.  You can also designate patrols and
pursuits.  Units can blitz, moving faster but taking damage. 
They can also sneak, where they can then be seen only at close
range.  Planes can transfer from one burb to the other, making it
easier to bring them to the front of the action.

The economics of the game are pretty basic.  Each burb generates
income depending on if it's a village, town, city, or metroplex. 
Each burb must pay maintenance for all units it supports.  It can
then build units with the monies left over from income minus
maintenance.  You have a variety of ways to transfer money and
unit support.  

There are treaties in the game.  You can be at war, cease fire,
allied, or teammates with any player in the game including
computer, although the computer players don't seem anxious to
make treaties with humans.

As mentioned, if you lose your Comcen, the game is over for you. 
If you are the last player alive, you win.  You also win if you
take over all the other players' Metroplexes and the natives'
Capitol.  There are three different scoring options in the game.
The first is traditional--you get points depending on the number
of burbs you own.  If you get the native Capitol, you get a ton
of points.  The second is income based.  You get points for any
damage you give the playing opponents (not the native opponents). 
You lose points for any damage the natives give you, although
your score cannot negative.

There are several already designed scenarios that come with the
game, but the strength of the game lies in the ability to create
your own scenarios and gaming environment.  First, you can create
your own icon to be shown/sent to any other human player.  The
game comes with a nice library, and also an editor to create your
own.  You can give yourself or the other players bonus cash and
burbs to start.

When you build your own scenario, you can choose which types of
units you'd like, the number of starting burbs (from 1 to 5), and
the amount of starting cash ($10 to $40).  You can also determine
if most burbs will be villages, towns, or cities.  As mentioned
above, there are resources along with burbs in the game, and you
can determine how much resources mean to the game.  You can also
set the way the game is scored, along with turn endings and game
length (30, 60, 90 turns, or infinite).  Lastly you can set the
existence and type of Random Events.

Random Events are a new game item for computer gamers,
particularly war/strategy gamers.  Board gamers are quite
familiar with random events, since games from popular companies
such as Avalon Hill and Victory Games use them frequently.  There
are tame events, such as drought (which stops unit attrition in
swamps for five turns) and economic upturn (which turns villages
into towns, and towns into cities permanently) and wild events,
such as amphibious ships and time warp (where the game is set
back to where it was five turns previously).  They _do_ have an
effect on the game.  Depending on where you are in the scoring
rank, you will see two of the next (at most) 5 events each turn,
so you can have some idea of what's coming.  

I really like the game, in fact the more I play it the more I
like it.  It is NOT meant to be a simulation of anything we know
of, so fans of realistic games should look elsewhere (or at least
turn off the Random Events).  The manual style is obnoxious,
you'd think you were reading something written by a comedian
wanna-be, but it does contain most of the necessary info to play
the game.  It helps to have played Command H.Q. before, or Empire
the commercial PC version.  The computer AI is decent, it makes
reasonably intelligent plays, but if you give yourself a bonus to
start, it won't be much of a challenge (at least not in 30
turns).  The interface is wonderful, as are the graphics.  The
graphics are hi-res EGA, perfect for strategy games with the
ability to display text and icons reasonably clearly.  The
concept is not original, it's not even an original
implementation, but it is at least an excellent implementation of
Empire, the best I've seen so far on a PC.  (Lost Admiral is
still one of my favorites, but that's because the computer play
is so strong in that game).

Playing with other humans is fun, although I've only played it
modem to modem, not human side-by-side, and would think it would
suffer as a side-by-side since one player would have to look away
while the other player is inputting their orders.  With modem to
modem play, you can have simultaneous input, and that keeps the
game going faster.  It's a good introductory game for modem to
modem too.  Other modem play games that I've played have been
real time, like  Populous and Command H.Q., but with real time
modem games, you spend much of your time reacting instead of
implementing a long term strategy.  GC get around this by having
two phases, and allowing you to plan what you want to do instead
of just reacting to what others are doing.  All in all, a leap in
the right direction.

Copyright 1992 Jennifer Schlickbernd.  All rights reserved. 
Permission to reproduce obtainable by contacting me via email.
-- 
Jennifer Schlickbernd                     Jet Propulsion Laboratory
jennifer@jato.jpl.nasa.gov or elroy!jato!jennifer@csvax.caltech.edu
72466.3413@compuserve.com  Voice:(818) 354-1167
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc