P O W E R M O N G E R (Electronic Arts) IN THE BEGINNING You don't have to conquer all 195 territories to win the game. You just have to go from the top left of the big map down to the bottom right. Picking a route going approximately diagonally down the map is obviously the shortest way to go. If you meet a particulary tough land, you would be wise to consider going around it and trying to locate a somewhat easier territory. Your army is poorly equipped, you are low on food and everyone else on the game map is already in the position of owning all the villages. To initiate a move, you first select a Captain from your ranks then send him off with his men. At the start of any game you have only one such Captain, but you can accumulate more as you progress. The best initial strategy is to play the map once and watch what the other armies do at the beginning. Sometimes they stay in their respective villages and farm or build weapons; sometimes they fight with each other (meaning that they have been set up in a state of war), or they build up a huge posse and charge after you! Watch the paths that the armies walk as you can easily avoid them. Try and kill a few sheep - NOT all of them - as this is an easily obtained source of food. With this basic sustenance, you can wander around and pick the smallest, nearest village. FOOD Pick your 'side' with care and make an alliance with the best side (click on the 'hands' icon on the left-hand side then select one of the villages). This action allows you to use all of their resources such as food and equipment. Remember that food is quite possibly the most important factor to bear in mind in order to keep an army together - without it your army will drift apart and your Captain will be left all alone. Farming for food will take far too long and rarely, if indeed ever, provides sufficient quantities for your needs. Whilst on the subject of food, never trade weapons for food unless this is absolutely necessary, and even then only trade pots. Think of the consequences of taking on an army that YOU have helped equip, leaving your own armies at a great disadvantage! Enemy commanders always carry food (look carefully at the 'sprite' on screen as the enemy commander is wearing a cloak); when killed, they drop a sack of grain. These sacks can be found after battles between the computer-controlled armies because they NEVER pick them up! This is also a good method of obtaining more free weaponry. FIGHTING Always SAVE the game before going into battle. Try to rest your army BEFORE going into a large battle as a healthy soldier can easily defeat an unhealthy opponent. Obviously, the most important factor to bear in mind during a fight is the safety of your Captain. Once your prime Captain has 'expired' the whole game is over for you! If you manage to kill an enemy Captain then his subordinates will flee from the battle. Another important aspect to consider is that if your Captain is NOT currently engaged in a fight, then your army can effectively break off from a fight and run away. This shouldn't be viewed as cowardice on your part - simply another form of the overall strategy. Weapons are important; a soldier with a sword can see off up to three soldiers who are themselves without weapons. A pike can deal with up to two unarmed opponents. Bowmen are ideal for attacking over distances. A large army with swords can kill off up to half of the attacking opposition before the first blow is exchanged, hopefully taking the enemy Captain with them! Note that if you have ALL Bowmen then they tend to 'line up' to fight, thus leaving a clear route through the centre of your ranks to the Captain, so always try to have at least 5 - 10 men WITHOUT bows. To attack an opposing army, fire a volley of arrows and then run away; this will seriously weaken the enemy after two or three attacks of this nature. To safely proceed past a large army, walk straight towards them on aggression level 1 and keep using the 'MOVE' icon then clicking on the mouse pointer past the enemy army. Your soldiers will walk straight through the opposition and not stop to fight! However, the enemy army will turn around to fight you, but your army will then be too far away for them to catch you so they will always give up. To obtain a catapult at the outset, put your soldiers on 'INVENT' and, as soon as they leave the village, click on 'INVENT' once more. They will then stop, turn around, and carry on with their inventing activities and produce a catapult in double-quick time! Consider also using captured Captains as spies. Also they can be given small numbers of troops and sent around the rear of a large army so that when you attack, the troops under the command of the captured Captain attack this army from the rear, thus taking out the enemy Captain relatively easily as there will be nobody left there to defend him! This tactic doesn't ALWAYS work but is certainly well worth the effort in some cases. Don't waste time building your own boats; capture them from dead enemy bodies after battles or fight an army which has boats and kill all their soldiers. When attacking a village, always use aggression level 1 so that there will be men remaining in the village which you can then use as soldiers. When attacking an army which is roaming around the countryside, attack with the aggression level set at 3 and wipe them all out. If you start to lose a fight against a village, switch to aggression level 2 which will effetively kill off half of the people in the village. Try not to use your catapults against villages that you wish to capture intact because these devices will almost certainly destroy the stocks of food, weapons and such like. SUMMARY In the more advanced games you can have as many as four computer opponents all competing for prime positions on the available territory. They often develop weapons very skillfully and then attack with extreme accuracy. You do not 'win' this game by being particularly nasty, but by caring for your people's needs. So you must keep them supplied with food and be sure to attempt alliances and trade instead of simply attacking and killing everyone and destroying all in your path. ADDITIONAL POINTS To get maximum benefit from inventing, recruit all of the soldiers from a village and invent. Attack trees to prevent your enemy from having the resources to build more weapons. If a village has weapons, try to ambush the people when they are far from the village. This tactic prevents them from bearing arms. NEVER, NEVER allow your 'King' to wander around with less than 4 men as he will be picked on and killed by unfriendly villages. You can equip fishermen's boats but the fishermen will then NOT produce any food for the village. Do not starve a village of food if winter is approaching as the folks will get dissatisfied with your rule and subsequently rebel against you. You can kill the little stork which brings in the new children with a bow and arrow. This is the only method of birth control in the game! If your army is equipped with boats, then attack villages from the sea; especially if your men have bows at their disposal. Beware when attacking villages that have been inventing weapons as the people will try and pick up weapons from the workshop before engaging you in battle. Dealing with larger villages requires a much more concerted effort It is a good idea to try and obtain at least one town with a Workshop in it early on in the game. ** CHEAT 1 ** If you PAUSE the game after you have instructed your Captain to invent something, increase the speed to 'FULL' and wait for a minute or two. Then, when you UNPAUSE the game, the Captain will have kept on inventing during that time! ** CHEAT 2 ** (Winning an island whilst playing someone else via a modem) On the multiplay screen, choose either Blue, Red or Yellow as your colour and do not assign one to the ST. Once you have 'linked', retire and then continue the conquest. You stay the same colour as you originally chose and, if you go to an unconquered island populated by your colour, you automatically win it! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *