14 DAY TRIAL // I rarely see the Artificial Intelligence of a video game beat me as completely and, sometimes, as quickly as that of Conquest and that's high praise in a world where huge releases like Napoleon: Total War from The Creative Assembly and Civilization V from Firaxis are routinely criticized when they are released for their lack of intelligence, something that even repeated patching has failed to fix to the gamers' desired level.
Conquest is the type of experience that seems easy to pick up and play, with a short four-screen tutorial and a series of limited hints appearing later on, but hard to play well even against the A.I. because of the way it is built.
The whole thing is built around the idea of simultaneous turns, with gamers issuing order to three types of units and then watching to see how they play out in an effort to control cities which deliver more troops to feed the war effort.
A rock, paper, scissors system is in full effect, with tanks taking out infantry and bombers the killers of tanks and alongside the three types of units there are also three support powers that players can call upon, including a nuclear weapon and drop pods.
It's all deceptively simple at first sight and has the potential of becoming mighty frustrating as the AI seems supernaturally able to guess one's moves and always drops the nukes on just the right troop concentrations and moves bombers and tanks just right to take the lead going into the last possible turn.
The game becomes even more interesting when multiple enemy computers are added to a scenario.
The game received the 1.20 update early this year and another one at the beginning of the week, making it easier to engage with for newcomers and allowing players to experience fully offline single player matches.
Full information, a demo and purchases are available at the official Conquest site.