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Conquests


Conquests is an open source cross-platform turn based 3D 4X strategy game for Windows and Linux, where you can build an empire from the stone age to the future. Features:

Screenshots ~ Conquests Blog ~ Discussion Forums

Windows download

For Windows, download the installer.

Linux download

For Ubuntu/Debian, download the relevant binary installation from the packages page (for 32-bit Linux, pick one that ends "_i386.deb", for 64-bit Linux, pick one that ends "_amd64.deb). For other Linux distributions, you have to compile from the source (see below). For Ubuntu, you need to be running at least version 12.04 (Precise), though it should work on older versions if you compile from source.

Source code download

The source code is available, released under the GPL v2 or later. For more details, please see the file conquests_source.txt (in the source archive).

Full download list

A full list of download files, including older versions, is at https://launchpad.net/conquests/+download.

Contents:

Requirements

Conquests should work on any Windows or Linux PC with any DirectX 9 (for Windows) or OpenGL 3.2 (for Linux) or later graphics card. Conquests needs about 27MB of free space on Windows, and at least 7MB on Linux (as of version 1.0).

Conquests is tested on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit, and with Intel HD 4000, Baytrail and NVIDIA 675M graphics. Older versions ran okay on Windows XP, 7, 8, and with Intel GMA 3100, ATI Radeon HD 6570 and NVIDIA (6100, 8600GT) graphics.

If the game fails to run, or has graphical problems, please try the following:

Known issues

Preferences

The game defaults to using Direct3D 9, running in windowed mode at 800x600 (although on Linux, OpenGL is always used). This can be changed by running the "Conquests Preferences" program:

Note that all the other options are not relevant for this game.

Quickstart

Select New Game. You will be asked for various choices:

You start with a "Settlers" unit, which can be used to build cities. Click "Build City", or press 'B', to build your first city at the current location. The City Window will then open, giving details on your first city. By default, the city will produce Peasants. You can change this by selecting in the "Change Build?" list, and then clicking "Change Build". Initially the only options are Peasants and Fort. You can obtain information about what can be build by clicking "Info." Click "Okay", or press Return, to return to the game.

Next you have a "Peasants" unit to use. You can choose between:

When all units have moved, the turn will automatically end. If you've built your first city, you'll be asked what Technology you want to start researching. Note that you can end the turn at any time with the "End Turn" button. If no units need to be moved in a given turn, you'll have to click this, or press Return, to move to the next year.

After a while, your city will grow in population (to 12,500). At this point, you are able to build new Settler units, which can be used to explore and build more cities. Note that cities can only be built if they are at least a certain distance from other cities, so if the option to build a city is not available, move the Settler unit further away.

Note that you can move around the world map either by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen (or outside the window, in windowed mode), or by clicking and dragging on the terrain.

Loading and saving games

You can save the current game, or load a previous one, by clicking on the appropriate buttons. The existing and previous turns are automatically saved, under "auto.sav" and "auto2.sav" respectively.

Keyboard shortcuts

Mouse shortcuts

Terrain

The world is made up of different types of terrain:

Note that building a city on a Forest square will convert it to a Grassland square.

Some squares also contain a bonus resource, which will provide a bonus for a city if within the city's radius. This is identified by a coloured sphere in the square:

Note that building a city will remove any bonuses at that square - you should build on a nearby square to make use of the bonus.

Roads and railways, when built on grasslands, artic and desert, also increase the science output of a city.

Each civilization has territory, which surrounds the cities. The borders of a civilization's territory are drawn on the map in the civilization's colour. It is an act of war to enter another civilization's territory, unless you have a Right Of Passage Agreement. This can only be obtained when both of you have discovered Writing. This can be done from the Civilizations window (press F3).

Cities

Your civilization is made up of one or more cities, which can be built with Settler units. You can display and control details for one of your cities by clicking on it. This opens the city window:

Each unit or improvement has a basic "cost"; the city's production contributes to this cost each turn. E.g., a unit with cost 20, for a city with production output 2, will take 10 turns to build. However, many units and improvements also require a certain amount of elements in order to build. The following types of elements exist:

Each city can hold a maximum stock of 200 of each element. Once you have discovered Steam Power, the cities will automatically distribute excess stock to other cities with less stock.

For details on the cost and element requirements of each unit and improvement, either click "Info." from the city window, or use the Reference.

Units

Units are grouped into land units, sea units and air units. Units can have the following statistics:

Units can also have the following special properties:

Until you discover Satellites, enemy units can only be seen if they are within your territory, or nearby your units. This is known as the fog of war.

Combat

Land units can attack enemy units by attempting to move into the square containing the enemy unit. As a result of the combat, either you or the enemy unit will be destroyed. To attack enemy cities, similarly attempt to move to the enemy city square. Once all enemy units there have been defeated, you will capture the city. For cities of population greater than 10,000, they will experience "resistance" for the first few turns after capture, which reduces their productivity (this does not apply if you are recapturing a city that was recently captured by an enemy). For cities of population less than 75,000, you are given the choice of using your troops to crush the resistance. If you do, this will reduce the city's population, but also reduce the resistance.

Travel, sea combat

Units may travel by sea from cities that have a Harbour or Port improvement. Press the Travel button, and then select one of the highlighted squares to move to.

Foot soldiers have the ability to "invade" - they may attack an enemy unit or city directly by sea.

Later on, sea units become available. Sea units can defend against enemies landing or invading within that civilization's territory, to squares within range of where the sea unit is located:

Therefore, it is risky in later stages of the game to invade by sea to enemy territory, without a sea unit to protect your unit.

Sea units can themselves travel, but only to other cities that also have a harbour or port.

Units may travel by air from cities that have an Airport improvement. Units can only travel by air to other cities within range, that also have an Airport.

Air units

Air units be used for bombing enemy cities, and/or to defend against incoming air attacks. Fighters located at a city will try to defend against any incoming air attack automatically.

Air units can also perform reconnaissance, to reveal the fog of war within a region.

Power

Your Power is a measure of the size and success of your civilization. It is dependent on your total population, and grows over time; in addition some improvements also produce additional Power every turn. You will receive a random bonus everytime your Power increases beyond a power of 10. Power is also used to determine the winner of the game, after the specified number of turns (unless you wipe out all other civilizations - or are defeated yourself before that time).

Civilizations

There are 10 civilizations to choose from, each of which has a specific starting technology. Each civilization can also build a Great Project - this is an improvement which only that civilization can build, and which offers greater benefits than most other improvements:

Reference

For complete reference details on all Technologies, Units and City Improvements, see the reference.html file (on Windows, run Conquests Reference from the Start Menu; on Linux, this is installed to /usr/share/doc/conquests/ ). When playing the game, you can also access in-game help by pressing the "?" button.

Modding

You can create your own world maps, using Tiled Map Editor. See conquests/data/maps/creating_maps_readme.txt in the program folder for details.

For more advanced modding, Conquests uses scripts written in Lua for various parts of the game, which can be edited to modify the game. The scripts are located in the conquests/data/scripts/ folder. The following scripts are currently available:

See the script files themselves for more help. Note that any additions should be consistent between files - e.g., if a new improvement, unit or bonus resources requires a new technology, then you should make sure that new technology has been added.

Currently Conquests doesn't support loading in different "mods", but you are free to distribute your own modded version of Conquests (see Licences, below). (Also, I don't guarantee at the moment that future versions will maintain compatibility, so distributing as a separate archive is recommended for this reason also.) Or if you prefer, feel free to just distribute your scripts on their own, and let users manually copy the scripts in (but it's probably best to state which version(s) of Conquests you know the script to work with).

Please let me know if you are interested in modding - I'm unlikely to add functionality to this area if no one seems to want it...

Contacting me (bugs etc)

Please contact me at mark DOT harman DOT apps AT gmail DOT com .

If you are reporting a bug, please send me:

Help wanted!

If you would like to contribute to Conquests, there are various ways you can help:

Frequently Asked Questions

History

Licences

Conquests is released under the GPL v2 or later, except where noted below. Conquests makes use of: GLEW (see GLEW_LICENCE.txt in binary archive, or the relevant source code files in the source archive, for the licence), GLM (see GLM_LICENCE.txt in binary archive, for the licence), and TinyXML (released under the zlib licence, see relevant source code files in the source archive).

The following items are used under licence:

In short, this means you are free to distribute the archive as a whole, including commercial redistribution. If distributing the binary archive on another website, you should make the source archive available for download too. If distributing the binary archive on a physical medium (CD etc), it's sufficient to distribute the source archive too on the same medium (see the GPL for other possible ways to satisfy the licence). If you wish to modify or create derivative works, please pay attention to the individual licences.


If you are viewing the readme that came with Conquests, see here for the online version.

Conquests on Launchpad.

Conquests on Sourceforge.

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