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STORY

Conqueror: Empires Rises is an expansion to Conqueror: Final Conquest, using components from the base game. It overhauls many of the mechanics, adding in faction abilities, elite units, and differing combat mechanisms. We have not played the base game, so are reviewing this expansion as our first encounter with the Conqueror system. We played Empires Rises twice, once at 4 players, and once at 5 players.

Not all of the components are finalized, like the featured player aids and rulebook were printed outside of the normal manufacturer here.

Also, we refer to Conqueror: Empire Rises as just “Conqueror” sometimes throughout the review, to save time.

Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!

Component/Learning Pros

• Awesome 4 wooden pieces for each faction

• Infantry, cavalry, archers, and unique elite unit

• Higher tier through Gamefound has nice elite unit minis

  • Cards are great quality

• Art

  • 4 different heroes for each faction have awesome art

  • Chronicle card art is nice

• Simple to setup and get going for an area control

Gameplay Pros - Thematic Asymmetry of 6 Factions

• Each faction has 1 base special ability

  • e.g., Carthigians have +1 power in Naval Combat

  • e.g., Gauls have +1 power when defending any green territory in Europe

  • e.g., Egyptians get a re-roll of 1 of their archers

• Every faction has special elite unit, buyable once

  • Stronger units that DON’T count towards supply cap, sometimes special ability

  • e.g., Carthaginian War ELEPHANT is 4 strength cavalry (but loses 2 str when fighting in water)

  • e.g., Persian Immortal is 2 strength infantry that also is an archer

  • Once elite unit dies, lose forever, need to protect them too

• 4 Heroes of each faction

  • Unique abilities and additional strength can use during combat twice

  • e.g., Darius the 1st is a simple +1 to combat, but gets 4 money if you win

  • e.g., Cyrus the Great is +4 strength, buffs all your cavalry, converts 1 enemy units into yours if you win

  • e.g., Cleopatra can seduce enemy unit to prevent them from fighting

  • e.g., Alexander the Great can let your army attack AGAIN if victorious (can make a single army attack 3 times in 1 turn because heroes can be used twice a game)

• Starting positions are very fitting

  • Carthage and Rome fight over the Mediterranean, which hits much of the map

  • Rome needs the Mediterranean to leave Italy, or has to fight through the strongly defended alps to the north

  • Egyptians and Greeks fight through Asia Minor to use it as a land bridge to get into each other’s homes if they don’t want to invest into navy

• Slightly different maximum troop counts for each faction

• Replayability is good once add up everything up for each faction

  • e.g., Greeks struggle the most with money, as no heroes give them income, and Alexander the Great, their trump, is 14 currency

Gameplay Pros - Geography

• Really good job of keeping players interconnected despite only 1 base movement

• Water connecting so many regions

  • If own Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea in the 4 player map, you can touch all but 5 regions of map

• Islands within the water are more fighting points

• Danube flows from Northern Europe and Greece, and vice-versa to open up new fronts

  • Gauls can easily attack Greeks

  • Romans take Danube to Black Sea and launch a campaign

Gameplay Pros - Supporting System & Negotiation

• Easy to ask for adjacent help because of how interconnected the map is

• Multiple players can support each side for lots of interaction, can have everyone involved in combats

• Can trade money freely at any time, use it to sweeten any deal, like to have someone help support or attack

• Supporting units must be exhausted (cannot move next turn), and can even die if the battle goes badly, so supporting is tricky decision

• Supporting players get tactic card regardless of outcome, so sometimes can pay someone to let you support them

• Light negotiation with trade mechanic, where use your agent to trade with another player at the start of rounds

  • “I trade with you, you hopefully trade with me”

  • Cannot attack person you trade with that round

Gameplay Pros - Army Management

• Moving wooden pieces across the map is easy

• Have to factor in army composition with current supply, while posturing around opponent’s forts/supply

• Can specialize with army upgrades

  • Infantry can become 2x strength

  • Cavalry can move AND attack twice in 1 turn (Thoroughbred)

  • Archers can get more re-rolls, they are always good against cavalry with their pre-fire

  • Invest in navy for +4 Amphibious Assaults to attacking land

• D6 handled well: two 4’s, one 3, one 2, 2 1’s.

  • Archers having 1/3 chance of hitting is reasonable when don’t contribute any strength

  • Combat roll being capped at 4 is nice because that equals the base strength of the strongest heroes

  • Fights determined by army composition, cards played, rather than lucky rolls

  • Close fights are won by careful margins of dice rolls

  Gameplay Pros - Progression

• Owning 1 more region opens up so many adjacencies to change round feelings

• Getting forts means spawning more units

• Chronicle (event) deck heats up

  • Tier 1 cards about giving more units/combat cards, one forced march for extra attack

  • Tier 3 cards prevent snowballing but “Strong Winds” also gives +1 action to every Naval troop to have swingy late game turns

• Thoroughbred, Strong Winds, and Alexander the Great make mid-late game turns be filled with multiple attacks from the same army

  • Thoroughbred + Alexander the Great is 4 attacks in 1 turn

• Common for late game fights to have many people supporting single siege

• Tactic cards accumulating in player’s hands makes later fights more uncertain

  • Lots of casualties (from tactic cards) can wipe the board

Gameplay Pros - Forgiving Systems

• Losing units not a big deal, because spawn for free every turn

• If knocked off map, set up temporary capital with remaining units which is a Great fort

• Mid-late game can change your dynasty, which gives 2 units, 2 supply, and 4 money

  • Stragglers don’t get swallowed up late game

  • Keeps pace of game

• Come late game, feels like multiple players can win

Final Pro- Theme meets Gameplay

• Heroes, faction passive, geography make each faction feel somewhat real

• Hannibal can take the Carthaginian Elephants through the alps to push down into Rome

• Probably some historical event you can be re-creating to some degree

Rulebook/Learning Cons

• No component list or Table of contents

• Explanation of casualties, supporting combat, and drawing tactic cards

• Thoroughbred needs to say you can attack twice

• What an “action” is on Strong Winds needs to be better defined

• Player Aid says “Play around” (instead of play a round)

Visibility Cons

• Misprinting on the map on 4 player side with not sealed off regions

• Mediterranean reaches all the around to Northern Europe

• 5-6 Player side map has Supply symbol on Britannia hard to see

• Money is really hard to see, with red text next to a “1” number in the currency

  • Just put multiples of currency, or take out number in the currency and make text white

  • Make it all bigger!

• 2 wooden elite units tricky to see

  • Greek elite units can look like a infantry and cavalry (so 2 units) behind other units

  • Carthaginian Elephant does not look like an elephant because the legs of elephant aren’t there

• Supply markers are hard to see in being tiny chit, terrible to move

  • No good area to put them

    • Time tracker is the same small chit

• Battle Tracker is fiddly to use

• Unit upgrade board not having spot for the stacks of cards gets messy fast

• Heroes not having the cost on the front of card is annoying

Gameplay Cons - Buildings

• Bazaar is a never buy

  • Gets you 1 income a turn for costing 4 money, don’t get benefit the turn you buy it

  • Buy it on Round 1, have to wait until Round 5, 4 taxations later, to break even

  • Money is important early game to get upgrades or hero abilities, so wouldn’’t buy bazaar

  • Only worth 1 VP so not getting it for points

• Forts is incredibly cheap at 3, which is victory goal AND spawns you a troop every turn

• Cost for Bazaar and forts should be swapped

Gameplay Cons - Hidden Agendas

• Requests and payouts all over the place

  • e.g., Carthaginians holding Sicily for 3 rounds is fine for 6 coins

  • e.g., Egyptians have to take ALL of North Africa is so hard, for only 10 coins!?

  • e.g., Romans have to take out Persian capital which is on the other side of the map for only 8 currency?!

• Chronicle event to let players discard and draw a new hidden agenda luckily relieves players of impossible agendas

• After tweaking their requests, we would want 2nd hidden agenda accomplished win you the game

  • 2nd hidden agenda would be dealt publicly after accomplishing 1st one

  • Would keep with the mantra of the variable round time

  • After doing 2nd agenda probably so far ahead anyways in the current iteration of the game

Gameplay Cons - Player Count

• Uncertain Con, because game is so negotiation heavy, only played game twice

• 5 Player mode seems to have some weird issues

  • 4 players are busy with their 1v1’s, 5th guy able to be unscathed

  • Absence of 6th player on 5-6p map means one player just grabs those regions to snowball around the map

  • 4 player mode seems to handle power vacuums better

• Policy agent placing cemented this in cons, where blocking off others with agent is much smoother in 4p

  • In 5P, not much tension there because there’s 2 slots for each agent area, meaning can’t really block someone from critical upgrades

    • Technically could convince others to place their agents there though

Gameplay Nitpick - Preparation Phase

• Phase where you spawn troops, buy hero, and buy elite unit is told to be done simultaneously

• Keeps game running smoothly but some buys counter other people’s

• Can run into issue of 1 guy waiting for everyone else to do their turn stuff before they do their turn

• Write in the option to do this preparation phase in turn order

  Gameplay Nitpick - Archer Upgrades

• Deadly Aim Archer upgrade unlocks the 3 as hit for rolls is underpowered

  • Only increases rolling by 1/6, because only one 3 on the die, while other upgrade, Rapid Aim, gives entire re-roll

• Not many situations can think of that a player would get both of these, always with Rapid aim first

• With agent blocking in 4 and 6 players, can see more of a case to grab Deadly Aim

Time Nitpick

• Runs a bit long, but high negotiation game so doesn’t matter too much

• Variable time length of game potentially ending before round 10

• Designer told us that there have been games that went to 3 hours, but not over

• Our first game that ended on round 4 went over 3 hours with 5 people

• 2nd game ended at round 10 with 4 people, at just about 3 hours