Review of Conquest of the Empire Classic

Conquest of the Empire is the newest huge wargame by Eagle Games. It's based on the original by Larry Harris, with additional design by Glenn Drover. However there's also a whole second set of rules included with the game, this one based on the Struggle of Empires by Martin Wallace, again with additional design by Glenn Drover.

Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 3-5 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

Since Conquest of the Empire really does contain two different games, I've decided it deserves two different reviews (though they'll overlap a fair amount in the Components section). This is a review of Conquest of the Empire Classic, the original Larry Harris games. If you're a casual gamer, this is the review to read. If you're looking for more serious, European style wargames, look for my upcoming review of Conquest of the Empire II (which'll be a few weeks, as I still need to play that version).

The Components

Conquest of the Empire contains, quite literally, 9 pounds of gaming goodness. I know because I weighed it before I tossed it into my shoulder bag and dragged it to my local gaming spot. Here's what you get that's of relevance to the Classic game:

• 1 gameboard
• 396 miniatures
• 120 control markers
• 75 coins
• 12 dice
• 1 rulebook

Game Board: The gameboard is, quite simply, massive. It's printed on very thick cardboard in three pieces, each of which has three panels. The front is a beautiful full-color representation of the areas controlled by the Roman Empire, centering on the Mediterranean. Each territory on the board is marked with an easy-to-distinguish gold or silver coin, to show its value, as well as with a few numbers which are entirely meaningless in this version of the game. There's a tribute track at the bottom of a board which is very helpful for keeping track of how much money each player earns, and is also clearly marked to show when inflation occurs. Overall, the map is well done.

To a certain extent, though it looks very nice, a gameboard this size can be troublesome. If I set it up on my regular gaming table there wouldn't be any space at the table for the rest of the pieces. However I instead brought it up to my local game score and was able to hijack one of the miniatures tables for my use. This was a good thing, and there was happily plenty of space all around. I also learned that the board size wasn't entirely flash. Some of the spaces got entirely filled with plastic miniatures during the game, and a smaller board would have been pretty troublesome. So, if you've got the space to play it, this huge board is a good thing.

A number of miniatures wargamers came and gawked at the board for a while while we set it up, then board gamers wandered in and out for the first hour, all making it clear how striking the board is.

Miniatures: Each player gets: 1 Caesar, 4 generals, 20 infantry, 20 cavalry, 6 catapults, and 8 galleys in his color (red, blue, green, yellow, black, or a beautiful purple). In addition there are 3 ivory colored types of pieces, marking terrain upgrades: 16 cities, 16 fortifications, and 20 roads.

The pieces are all well-molded amd attractive. The catapults are particularly neat because they come in two pieces and because they were molded in such a way to act as if they're spring-loaded. If you pull the catapult arm back, it springs up. Very cool. Beyond that the ships in particular were one piece that was quite stunning.

It's also worth noting that these pieces all come neatly bagged when you receive them: no cutting pieces off of sprues!

I have troubles distinguishing between different pieces in some miniatures games like these. These ones were pretty good, with each of the pieces being very distinctive. The one exception was the generals and the infantry, which were distinct, but slightly similar. I swapped one for the other by mistake at some point, but no one else did.

Control Markers: Heavy cardboard markers in the six player colors, each with a unique icon for that player as well. One goes on the tribute track and the rest are used to mark territories that you control but have left ungarrisoned.

Coins: 50 silver coins and 25 gold coins. Each of these is a huge plastic disc with beautiful, embossed artwork on the front and back. They're usefully marked "V" (for the silver) and "X" (for the gold). I suppose you could say that they're overproduced, but they're just so darned cool and keeping with the general production values of the game that I'm happy with them. These are the nicest pieces in the game, with the possible exception of those bouncy catapults.

Dice: The rulebook says the game comes with 8 dice. I got 12. I wished for about 14 since a lot of combats seemed to use 13 dice between the two players. Ah well.

They're all dense orange dice with symbols for the different army units inlaid into them. They're sturdy, attractive, and easy to read (and will be familiar to fans of Eagle Games as Attack! uses very similar dice).

Rulebook: A 12-page full-color rulebook. The rules are well-organized and illustrated and easy to learn the game from. I had some troubles with in-game reference because some info was scattered in weird places, but it wasn't terrible. There's some helpful information summarized on the back, including sequence of play and unit purchase costs (though I wish the latter was on the board too, since it was frequently referenced at the start of the game).

Overall, the components for Conquest of the Empire Classic are entirely stunning. In addition, they're amazing for the price, which is $60 retail. The pieces are far more than I'd expect for that cost.

(The game also comes with a few additional components that I haven't listed here: a deck of cards and a number of other cardboard chits. They aren't used in the Classic version of the game.)

The Gameplay

Conquest of the Empire Classic is an old-school wargame. The object is symbol: wipe all the other players off the map.

Setup: Each player is randomly assigned a territory, all of which are spread out around the Mediterranean. Each player puts his Caesar and generals in that territory, along with a fortified city and some starting infantry.

The rest of a players pieces, including more infantry, cavalry, catapults, and galleys are all placed to the side of the board.

Order of Play: Each player takes the following actions over his turn:

1. Movement
2. Combat
3. Collect Tribute
4. Destroy Cities
5. Purchase New Pieces
6. Place New Pieces

Movement: In order to move lands troops in the game, you must have a Caesar or a general. Most of the pieces can move two spaces a turn, except catapults and infantry can only move one. If you enter an enemy (or empty) space you have to end that legion's movement.

One civilization advance affects movement: you can move along any length chain of road at a cost of just one movement.

Boats work slightly differently. They can move without a leader, and they can move through enemies. You can also load troops onto boats or off of boats, but that's the only thing those troops can do on a turn.

Combat: If land troops end up in the same space, there's a combat.

Each player creates a "combat legion", who's size various depending on the number of leaders you have in the space. This is a sort of front line: the people that can actually fight. Then each player rolls a number of combat dice equal to his number of combat legionnaires. Each of these dice has faces that show the different troop types: infantry (x2), catapult, cavalry, boat, or blank. For every die you roll that you can match to one of your own combat legionnaires, you score a hit. In addition catapults can hit even if they weren't on the front line.

After each player has cleared away his dead (equal to the number of hits, but selected by him), either player can retreat, else a new round of combat begins.

When someone does retreat the other player gets a final chance to run him down with cavalry. (He rolls dice equal to all his remaining troops, but only cavalry can actually hit.) Generals & Caesars always get away from a battle unless all their troops were eliminated before a retreat. (If they don't get away they're captured, and if you capture a Caesar, you defeat that player.)

One other slight modifier for land combat: if you're the defender and you have a fortified city, you get 1 or 2 extra dice.

Ship combat is similar except there are always three rounds of combat, everyone is in the fight, and (clearly) only the ship symbols hit. If you sink a ship with troops on it, they're lost.

Collect Tribute: Each territory is worth either 5 (a silver) or 10 (a gold). When you build a city, the value goes up by +5. You keep track of this as you take territories or build cities with the tribute track. Even when you abandon a territory, you mark it with a marker and still gets its a value until another player takes it.

In this phase of the game you collect the total currently shown on the tribute track.

If a player ever collects 105+ or 205+ this triggers inflation: on later rounds everything is 2x or 3x the cost in the Purchase New Pieces phase.

Destroy Cities: In this phase poor losers can destroy their own cities which they think opponents are about to take.

Purchase New Pieces: You may now purchase new pieces with your coins. These can be troops: infantry (10); cavalry (20); galleys (20); or catapults (30). Not only are the more expensive pieces slightly better (because they have some better movement or special powers), but the combat system also encourages troop diversification, since you're trying to match your troops to what comes up on the dice.

You may also build up your civilization. Cities cost 30 and increase the tribute you gain from a space. Fortifications cost 20 more and increase the defense of a space. Roads can be built between two of your cities for 10 and allow you to move more rapidly along them.

As noted, all costs can be 2x or 3x if inflation has occurred.

During this phase you may also negotiate the return of your captured generals from other players.

Place New Pieces: Cities, fortifications, and roads can go in any appropriate spaces that you control. Combat units must be placed in your original home territory, which means that if you lose it, you're in very bad shape.

Winning the Game: You can take another player out of the game by capturing their Caesar. You get all their territory, money, and troops. When there's only one player left in the game, they win.

Relationships to Other Games

Conquest of the Empire was originally released as VI Caesars in 1982, then rereleased in 1984 as a member of Milton Bradley's Game Master line (which also included Axis & Allies, as well as a few other board-based war games that are now out of print).

This genre of board-based war games first reached the mass market with Risk (1959), followed by Milton Bradley's Command Decision games in the 1960s. Their Game Master line in the 1980s marked a second wave of American board-based war games, and many would probably say that the third wave of these war games has been put out by Eagle Games in the 2000s. Thus it shouldn't be that much of a suprise that Eagle is now reprinting some of Milton Bradley's offerings.

Conquest of the Empire Classic follows the standard design for this sort of game. There's a world map and people push plastic pieces around it until one person has conquered everything. As with others in the Game Master line, various pieces can be bought for various costs, forming one of the strategic axes of the game. Also like most of the games in this genre, there's a heap-load of luck, represented by dice in combat.

People had a lot of complaints in the original version of the game about the combat system, particularly the strength of the catapult units. This new edition of the Classic game thus includes a whole new combat system. It's actually a combat system very similar to that found in Glenn Drover's Attack! (2003), where you likewise set up a limited subset of your units for combat, then roll dice and try and match their types.

Weightwise I find Conquest of the Empire Classic very similar to classic Risk; there's not a lot of deep strategy here and luck is heavily weighted. But more on that in the Game Design section.

The Game Design

It's been 20+ years since Conquest of the Empire Classic was first released, and I think that shows, to the game's detriment. Not to say that it's not still fun, because it can be, but other more recent board-based wargames, including Eagle's own Attack! really show off twenty years of additional game design.

The biggest problem with the Classic Conquest of the Empire is, undoubtedly, that it's an elimination game. You play until there's only one player left. This means that the game can potentially go on forever, players can be out of the game hours before it's over, and there are possibilities for other degenerate play possibilities.

In particular, I think some degenerate play does show up in CotEC because attacking just isn't sufficiently encouraged. It's too easy to lose lots of troops and the board is fairly centralized, and as a result if you go after an enemy there's a really large chance you're going to be severely weakened when the next player comes after you.

To a certain extent, however, I think these "problems" all show some the changing attitude toward games in the United States and Europe. The Gamemaster series when it was originally released was probably aimed mainly at kids and families. I was 12 when it came out, and I probably would have loved it at the time. Twenty years later there are a lot more games aimed toward an older, more serious, and more strategic demographic. Where 12-year-old me would have had a roaring good time smashing his armies around the board, 33-year-old me can't help but build up my armies waiting for the other players to go for each others throats, and trying to encourage that along the way.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that Conquest of the Empire Classic is geared toward a more casual, and perhaps a younger demographic, and should be measured by that yardstick. It's interesting to note that the other set of rules is, by my reading, aimed for the exact older, more serious demographic that the Classic game may turn off. To have included two such different rulesets in this game is, I think, a stroke of genius on Eagle's part because I could use this same game to play serious games with my normal gaming groups, but also kick-ass fun games with my (younger) brothers.

As a casual board-based wargame, Classic Conquest of the Empire does have some interesting innovations. The use of generals and Caesars to control movement nicely reduces turn time and limits the breadth of decision trees. The inclusion of a few different technological developments (cities, fortifications, and roads) adds a whole new element of strategy that's missing from most games of this sort; I'm not sure that they make that big of a deal strategywise, but I loved the feeling of building up my civilization. The different unit types also add a little bit to the game, and Drover's dice-driven system does a good job of encouraging the purchase of the more expensive units. Together I think these innovations do represent a step up from the all-time classic, Risk.

On the downside, even when playing with casual players, I think there's just not enough incentive for attacking. The gains (more tribute) often don't offset the losses (troops). As long as you're playing with a casual group who's not analyzing everything, however, this won't be too big a deal (and, in fact, once you get a few aggressive players, everything else will fall into place).

On the whole, Conquest of the Empire Classic is a fair design for a casual, board-based wargame. I do think there are better, more recent designs, but this does well as a good, simple design, with just enough complexity to raise it up above an entry-level game. By this criteria I'd mark it as slightly above average: a high "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Conquest of the Empire Classic is a typical 1980s board-based wargame. It requires casual play, and at least a few aggressive players to work, but if you have that it'll be fun and allow a bit of strategy.

Classic is also just one of two rulesets in the new Conquest of the Empire box, and I think the other will actually be of interest to a totally different demographic of players, making the game a very interesting gateway between American & German play. I'll be reviewing Conquest of the Empire II, the other set of rules, in a few weeks.