Playing War of Conquest

Starting Out

Before you begin playing War of Conquest, you'll need to install the game client on your computer, and sign up (for free) as a new user. You can then create your own new nation or join an existing nation.

•To learn more about installing War of Conquest, signing up as a new user, and creating or joining a nation, click here.

Once you've signed up as a new user and created or joined a nation, you can log in to play the game. At the login screen, enter your username and password, and press the "Log In" button.

The Goals

Your nation starts out as a stone age society filling one small area of land in a vast world. Your goal is, through both alliance and conquest, to develop your nation into a powerful technologically advanced civilization capable of siezing the resources that this world has to offer, crushing all enemies who stand in your way, and ultimately of capturing and holding some of the many powerful and mysterious orbs scattered throughout the land. For every minute that you hold one of these orbs, your nation's cash winnings can add up. Eventually you may be able to win hundreds or even thousands of dollars!

•To learn more about winning and collecting cash prizes, click here.

One of many orbs. Capture them to win prizes.

Battle

In War of Conquest, nations develop new and more powerful technologies by gaining levels. A nation's level increases when the nation has earned a certain number of points. And points are earned through combat, both by successfully defeating other nations in battle, and by successfully defending your own nation when it is attacked. You can find out what level your nation is, how many points it has, and how many points are needed to reach the next level, by checking the Nation panel.

In general you'll want to choose enemies to attack whom you have a decent chance of beating (your nation gains far more points for succeeding in an attack than for failing) but who are also at least as powerful, at least as high in level as your own nation. This is because the more powerful the nation you defeat in battle, the more points your nation receives.

•To find out what level another nation is, and what technologies they possess, use the Info action to view your intelligence about that nation in the Nation Info panel.

To attack another nation, choose your weapon from the selected weapon menu. Choose a weapon that exploits your nation's strengths and your enemy's weaknesses. Then select the Attack action and click on the game map in the land area you wish to attack.

•To learn more about attacking, click here.

Resources

An important way of gaining an advantage over your enemies is to conquer some of the many resources that the vast landscape has to offer. These are special objects on the landscape, such as Fresh Water, Hillocks, Deep Forests, and Coal Mines, that grant bonuses to your nation's attributes. Some of the most common resources grant very small bonuses each, but if your nation can capture many of them, the bonuses quickly add up. A special landscape object is only useful to your nation if you've already developed the technologies that are required to take advantage of it. For example, a Uranium Mine would be useless to a bronze age society but very important to a nuclear civilization. Fresh Water, on the other hand, is useful to any nation but makes the biggest difference to the less advanced nations.

You can find out how many of a particular type of resource your nation possesses, by checking the Technology Temporary panel.

•To learn more about attributes, bonuses, and how they affect combat, click here.

•To learn what bonuses are offered by a special object on the landscape, and what technologies are required to take advantage of it, use the Info action.

Holding the Line

Nations that have captured land rich in resources (special landscape objects that grant bonuses to your nation; see above), and especially nations that have succeeded in capturing a prize orb, will want to see to it that other nations cannot easily wrest these valuable land areas away. This can be done by fortifying the land areas in question, and even any strategic land areas around it that could be used to approach it. A single land area may be fortified many times, and each fortification requires that your enemies succeed in one more attack against the land area before it can be captured. In order to fortify any land areas your nation will need to have fortification points, which come from technologies and abilities that can be developed or purchased.

•To learn more about fortification and fortification points click here.

Each fortification will require that your enemies succeed once more in attacking the land before they can take it, but take it they still can if they succeed regularly in attacking your nation. So as well as fortifying your lands, you will want to increase your defensive attributes as much as possible, to make success in attacks against your nation very rare. This can be done by developing and purchasing defensive technologies and abilities.

A well fortified and defended nation can hold on to its strategic land areas for a long time, even when no member is online playing that nation.

Acquiring a Decisive Advantage

A nation will succeed by developing a series of technologies that are focused on a particular set of strengths, by employing good tactics, forming beneficial alliances, and enlisting several members to fight for it. But a nation can attain even greater advantages against its enemies by purchasing special technologies, items, and abilities. These are bought using game credits; one dollar converts into 100 credits. Most special technologies and abilities are very inexpensive, between 50 and 200 game credits each. But the specialized bonuses that they grant your nation, ranging from fortification and defensive bonuses, to powerful weapons and attack bonuses, can give it the decisive edge that will help it develop quickly into a ferocious force capable of seizing prize orbs.

•To learn more about purchasing special technologies and abilities, click here.

Special techs and abilities available to be purchased by a beginning nation.

The Strengths of Many

War of Conquest is a massively multiplayer game, allowing thousands of people to play in the same world at the same time. Part of mastering War of Conquest is learning not just to compete against other players, but also to work with them.

•You can chat with other members of your nation, with allied nations, and with enemies, using War of Conquest's built in real time chat system. See the section on chat to learn how to chat and how to choose who you're chatting with.

•You can ally your nation with other nations in order to combine complementary strengths. The inefficiency intrinsic to an alliance can outweigh the benefits however, if your allies are not chosen carefully. See the section on Alliances for more information.

•A nation can always benefit from having more members willing to team up with you for a strategic assault, or take over defending in shifts the prize orb that you've all worked hard to capture. You can easily send e-mail invitations to several firends at once, inviting them to join your cause (and ultimately to share in your spoils!). See the section on the Recruit panel.

Exploring the Land

The world in War of Conquest is very large, and powerful special items, including many different prize orbs, are scattered far and wide on this landscape. For more information on using the game map to explore this world, click here.

•While spreading your nation out into the game world, be careful not to give it a shape that is very inefficient for your forces to control and defend. See the section on geographic efficiency for more information.