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Lords of the Realm 2 is (in my opinion) one of the better strategy games available. The basic premise is simple, the King has just died and you returned from a meeting with the other lords and ladies who all want the throne. On returning home, you begin your preparations of war.
It is a well balanced game that combines a great resource management system with a real-time combat system. You begin play with one province, as do each of your opponents. |
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| Your people can be assigned automatically by a slider, or (as I prefer), you can double-click on your town center to organize the labor to your liking. As your people are well-fed, protected, and no recent armies or taxes have been raised, (Or you buy them ale) your popularity rises. If you build armies, your enemy lays waste to your villages, there isn't enough food to go around, or you tax your people too much, your people become angry and eventually you will see rebellions that you will be forced to put down. |
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 The resource management part of the game is run on simultaneous turns. Every player takes their turn at the same time (even over the network), and when all players have finished a new turn begins. Each turn represents one season. Cows however are always the same, and the dairy products can feed many people before you even eat any cows. Money is gained by taxes, or by selling things you don't want. From traveling merchants you can buy or sell goods such as grain, cows, weapons, stone, iron ore, and wood. Ale is only available to buy.
In order to build an army you have to spend happiness. The more troops you take from the population (and it actually lowers your population, so be careful about taking troops away before the harvest) the further the happiness falls. If your happiness ever goes below ten, your people will start to become rebellious, but it takes several turns of low happiness before an actual rebellion starts. You will also need weapons to equip your armies (unless you want an army of peasants, or you are buying mercenaries). Each unit that isn't a peasant requires a weapon from your stores. You also can't just build an army and forget about them, armies need food too. Whatever province an army resides in is the province that must feed them (even enemy provinces); however, with the exception of mercenaries, armies won't drain your gold reserves. Also note that when disbanding an army, the troops join the province they are currently in rather than going to their home province.
The real fun is in the combat system, and especially in castle combat. There are 5 castles available: Wooden Fort, Wooden Palisade, Norman Keep, Stone Castle, and Royal Castle. Each castle is equipped with a number of boiling pots of oil in addition to any troops you send. The Fort and Palisade each have 2, and the Norman Keep and Stone Castle have 3, while the Royal has 4. My favorite defensive strategy is to fill a royal castle (which takes the longest to build but provides the best defense) with 600 archers (600 is the maximum for a Royal Castle) and send the boiling pots to decimate the enemy before even bringing my archers forward. This is especially useful if the enemy has a battering ram instead of just catapults or siege towers.
When combat starts, the number of units (groups of the same type of soldier) is roughly similar no matter the size of the army (1500 troops is the total maximum for any army, and the minimum is 50 troops when building an army). Each unit has a number of troops in it based on your total number of troops. For instance, if you have an army of 300 peasants (and your enemy's army is of a similar or weaker size) then you will probably have a couple dozen or so units of 8 and one unit of the remainder (all unit divisions are doubled: 4, 8, 16, 32, etc...) When deciding the number of troops per unit the larger army is more important, as well as how badly outnumbered the enemy is (i.e. an army of 1500 and an army of 250 will probably have units of 128, but the 1500 troops fighting an army of 1000 will probably have units of 64 troops, this helps to keep the number of units down and make the game easier on your machine)
There are 7 different troops in Lords2, the Swordsman: the standard warrior with no significant advantage or disadvantages, the Pikeman: a slow but very tough trooper, especially against mounted knights or archers (don't let swordsmen or pikemen get doused by oil, their armor is metal), the Maceman: a faster troop that isn't particularly strong, but makes up for it by running down archers and crossbowmen, the Mounted Knight: the most expensive unit and the most powerful (Knights require one sword and one suit of armor to make, as opposed to all the other troops requiring one weapon), the Archer: cheap and dependable with the longest range of every unit except the siege catapult (which only attacks walls), the Crossbowman: crossbows sacrifice the range of the archer for deadly power, each shot from a unit of crossbowmen that hits is guaranteed to kill one enemy, even if it is a siege weapon, the Peasant: peasants are the only 'free' unit in the game (they don't cost you any weapons from your supplies), but they are also the weakest unit in the game, they tend to fall in very large numbers. All the troops can dig up moats except the knights who refuse to do anything but cut down enemy soldiers.
Siege weapons can only be constructed when attacking a castle, and don't continue when the battle ends. There are 4 different siege weapons in Lords2, the Catapult: a large wooden structure that flings stones at enemy walls (it can't harm enemies, just walls), the Siege Tower: a large wooden structure that attaches to walls and gives your troops a way to scale them, the Siege Ram: a ram's only purpose is to bash down the enemies' gates and provide entry to your troops (troops can also break gates, but it takes considerably longer), and the Boiling Oil: the only siege weapon available to defenders, boiling pots of oil are extremely effective because they spread their oil over a large area, and the fires last for some time before dying out, boiling oil has an additional benefit of harming armored troops more than unarmored peasants and archers.
Lords 2 allows up to 5 players in a network game. Lords2 supports TCP/IP, IPX, or internet play. Lords2 has a well-build campaign and many single- and multi-player maps. The music is done with .wav files and was beautifully done. Overall, I give Lords of the Realm 2 two thumbs way up! |
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| Reviewer: Abandon5000 |
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| Copyright 2000 - 2008 Abandonware Games 5000 |
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