Powermonger

Another one from the coding powerhouse that was Bullfrog.  I recently read an interview with Peter Molyneaux where he critiqued the game with the benefit of hindsight.I have to say that many of his points were valid but it still has not stopped Powermonger from being one of the greatest wargames ever.

You begin with your general and a few men.  Attack a town, set swords to stun and recruit the surviving villagers into your army. Swell the ranks in this way in the outlying towns and then hit the better guarded cities.

Some of the towns had workshops and depending on the surrounding geology you could build different things.  Bows and arrows, pikes, swords, ballistae and cannons.

But keep an eye on your food, otherwise your men will leave your army and wander back to their home towns.

If you reach the water, simply steal some boats from a fishing village and use them to get your men across.  One man to a canoe though, the rest will have to stay.

As usual in Bullfrog games, you had opponent generals, trying to achieve the same goals.  Sometimes, if you fought another army and won, you could capture one of the generals and recruit him into your army.  He would then appear above the map and you had control of him.  Assign him some men and send him off as a strike force, perhaps assign him to spy on another city or army, so that you could track their movements.

One of the most brilliant things about this game was that to give another general commands you had to send the instruction via carrier pigeon which both took time and could be shot down by enemy archers.  How cool is that?

Multiple front attacks had to be staggered to allow generals to receive their messages.

Seasons came and went, movement in a blizzard was difficult, even rain slowed you down.

When you killed someone a little angel went up to the sky and you could hold your mouse pointer over the angel and find out where they came from and what they did for a living.  “Doug Ralis – farmer from Little Hamlet.”  When you hit a clump of enemies with the cannon, a cloud of angels would go floating up the screen.

Powermonger has only really been superseded by Myth, but that is only in the graphics and weapon physics department, there is no resource management.

Imagine a cross between Mega-Lo-Mania, Populous, Myth and all in glorious Amiga 3D.  You could even rotate and zoom the map!