LORDS OF THE REALM II
This sequel to the immensely popular Lords of the Realm propels players into epic conflicts and the intrepid life of thirteenth century England. Life was harsh then, peace was rare and combat was brutal.
On your way to becoming King you'll build weapons, construct castles, and raise armies to conquer they neighboring realms before they conquer you. Defeat them all and the throne of England is yours!
Lords of the Realm II start off with a very cool opening animation that reminds you of something that you would expect to see in the Movie theater. It contains a really well done and thought opening sequence. And from there the game just gets better and better.
The whole idea of the game is to build enough population and acquire enough resources (Stone, wood, iron) so that you can build large and powerful armies to squish your foes like the little bugs that they are. This sounds like a some what easy task well it sounds easier than it actually is, and that is where the fun of the game comes in.
It is your job
to manage the resources, and your payoff for
correctly managing your resources is victory in
battle and ultimately the Crown. The designers
have given you the ability to either manage your
resources the easy way of the hard way. Which is
nice 
because it gives all of the
hard-core strategists out there enough control to
truly run there towns. But it also gives you the
ability to manage in a more simplistic point of
view with approximately the same result. The two
choices are you can allocate your workforce by
workforce groups, or you can move a slider the
computer will automatically allocate your
resource into the industry and farming
categories. You select your valid industries by
turning them on and the computer would divide
your industry workforce among the available
industries.
As a ruler it is your responsibility to keep your peasants happy. You do this by keeping them well fed and safe. You do not conscript (draft) them into armies, this makes them unhappy. This is one of the fine lines that you must walk in Lords of the Realm, it is one of the things that makes the game very interesting and enjoyable.
Once you have built and equipped an army, you must go out and conquer your neighbors so that you may control the most counties and become king. In order to conquer your neighbors you must fight, and this is where the game changes it is almost as if you are playing a new game. Up until this point you have been playing a game that looks like Civilization (your basic overhead view, with tokens to represent your holdings), when you go into battle the interface changes into something more like Warcraft (direct troop manipulation). Once again you have the option to actually fight it out or for the computer to calculate the result...Nice Touch!
If you choose to not fight you can use diplomatic means to create alliances with the other players (computer players included). By doing this you can become stronger without having to risk and lose some your troops.
Lords of the Realm is a turn based gaming system, and they have broken there turns down into seasons, 4 seasons per year. The reason that they have done this is that one of the most important parts of the game is keeping the peasants happy. In order to do that you must feed them, meaning that you must grow grains and also keep the cattle healthy and producing.
Lords of the Realm II, is a really cool game, it becomes very addicting. The game play is very fast until you have the last one or two foes waiting for you, then it take a little bit longer. If you like Civilization II and Warcraft II then Lords of the Realm II is a must buy!
Downloads: