I was re-organizing my Steam library and I had waaaaay too many games in the Empire/Conquest category for it to be manageable, so I broke it up into Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and “Realistic” (which also includes things like The Banner Saga & Age of Mythology … unless I change my mind). While doing so, I noticed the relative paucity of games in the newly minted Conquest/Fantasy category. I left games like King’s Bounty & Heroes of M&M out of it because they’re more streamlined RPG’s with singular armies. Anyway, I have the following:
Age of Wonders III
Divinity: Dragon Commander
Eador: Masters of the Broken World
Elven Legacy series
Endless Legend
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes
Guardians of Graxia
King Arthur: Role Playing Wargame (and King Arthur 2)
Kingdom Wars
Majesty 2 Collection
Warlock - Master of the Arcane (and Warlock 2)
Some of these are great, others good, and some need serious help before I play again. That said, I have this feeling that I’m missing something awesome out there that simply escaped my notice, or that perhaps I truly already have the pinnacle of the genre and therefore such a search is pointless.
Never went for it. The game seems primed for MP, and I’m pretty much SP only on these things. Would that be incorrect?
DOH! That’s sitting in my “favorites” category. I’ll update above (I added it there back before Steam allowed multiple categories for one game).
Kohan / Kohan II.
I have Kohan through Impulse/Gamestop, and while it seemed nice it never quite clicked for me. Hmm. Maybe worth another shot.
Legend of Eisenwald (should be coming out of early access soon I think)
I’ll check this out. I’m not much for early access, but I’ll tag it to follow.
Interesting looking - has something of a Darklands feel to the game, it seems, and then with an added strategic layer
Also sitting in Impulse/Gamestop, but the aging … well, I think that one may be best left as a memory. What do you think?
I suppose you’re right on that account. I haven’t touched it since I previewed it a while ago. I was thinking about taking over castles. It is definitely more akin to HOMM than any other type of game.
Age of Wonders 3 is excellent, but you will want to hold off until the next DLC comes out. It has Frostlings as a race and the necromancer class and a slew of other improvements, so might as well go the whole hog when it hits.
Dominions 4 is excellent even in single player and it unleashes the inner storyteller, if you have one. Multiplayer is not required, though it is very nice. The game shines especially in multiplayer, but with the hectic pace of one turn every two or three days after the initial speed rush pace of one turn per day, it is not that much of a time sink as long as you limit yourself to two or at most three games simultaneously (preferably staggered starts, so that they don’t all start at the same time).
OP gave catagory broad scope by naming it Conquest/Fantasy, I’d argue Kohan fits the bill if King Arthur:RPWG and Divinity:DC do. Kohan 2 was a great RTS with some unique and good mechanics. I’d definitely recommend it for anyone who has not tried it. Its a RTS that plays at a pace I like, slower rather than faster.
I agree with Edirr, Dominions is great in SP if you an imagination.
Endless Legend is awesome. It is a serious contender for number one game in the category you are interested in.
Dominions 4 is unique and amazing, by far the best very deep strategy game in MP that exists today. It’ is quite hardcore though and an order of magnitude deeper then anything else, so your millage may very.
Elven Legacy games are good - but they are pure wargames in fantasy settings, no empire building/conquest at all.
Guardians of Graxia - also doesn’t belong to this category - it’s fun little boardgame/wargame hybrid.
I hope we do get a cool fantasy empire/conquest game one day - because I honestly think there basically is none.
Games like AoW or EL are more like 4x games, and that can be cool, but is to me something else entirely and it usually has none of the feel (or personality) of managing an actual fantasy empire. Master of Magic was still best at this, imo, but even it fell pathetically short of the goal.
Then there’s the entire HoMM crop of games which includes games like Disciples and Eador, which play differently and usually have a great emphasis on playing out combats and leveling up heroes. That can also be cool, but doesn’t match the pic on the wanted poster.
Dominions is fantastic in it’s own way, but it requires you to make up all the “story” of the fantasy world yourself, in your head. There are imaginative ideas in there, with the way the factions are designed and aspects of several other mechanics, but none of it is spelled out for you … and - as mentioned - the game doesn’t exactly shine in single player. To me, it’s a tad like Dwarf Fortress in that regard.
In my mind, what comes closest these days is mods to other games, especially the fantasy mods for CK2, like the Game of Thrones mod, but since that was never really meant to depict fantasy elements, there are shortcomings.
I really hope someone makes a truly epic CK2-like game in a fantasy world one day. That’d be way cool.
Or maybe I’m the only person who’d like that, who knows…
Mount & Blade with a few mods are fantasy empire sims - especially in how it depicts a living world that never is static, nor ever the same. Its of course biased towards its battles, but there’s plenty of empire management in it as well.
The fantasy strategy genre isn’t that big, so yeah you aren’t missing a lot. The Warlords series (which I never played, how is it?) is one of the missing ones. The famous ones has always been Master of Magic and the HoMM series, Age of Wonders series a step behind, and little else apart from the mentioned.
