Conqueror's Stage

Conqueror's Stage is a real-time grand strategy game. You start from a single town and grow it into an empire across five ages, against up to seven AI rivals. Pause whenever you need to think, or speed the clock up to 8x when nothing is happening.

Forts

Build a fort on one of your villages and the other settlements inside its ring can't be besieged or captured while it stands. The village under the fort can still be attacked, and if it falls, the fort falls with it.

A garrisoned fort fires on enemy soldiers for as long as they stay inside its ring, and it loses nothing in return. Forts can't be moved, and tearing one down costs you its garrison and the gold you paid. Rival powers build forts too, and they come for yours rather than the settlements behind them.

Forts open in the Ancient Age with Writing. Your war doctrines decide how many you can hold and how far their protection reaches.

Vassals and diplomacy

Win a war with the right goal and your enemy pays you tribute instead of disappearing. A vassal is pulled into your wars and can't make peace on its own. Let it grow too strong and it may rebel. Once you tower over it, you can absorb it.

Gold works at the negotiating table too. You can send it to any power, even one you're at war with, and buy your way out of a war you're losing. A peace offer is weighed against how badly the war is going for the other side and how it feels about you.

Army banners

Research Banner Muster in the Ancient Age and your army gets its first flags. Plant a flag and your whole field army rallies to it, then follows wherever you move it. To lay siege, plant the flag right beside an enemy settlement you're at war with, and your army forms up against its walls.

Battle lines

From Early Firearms in the Renaissance Age, each flag becomes a battle line. Hold the right mouse button and draw the line you want to hold. Your soldiers spread out evenly along it and stay where you drew it until you draw a new one.

Conquest

Settlements bind together as a realm advances. Once a realm has researched Writing, the villages bound to its towns can't be taken one by one, and they can fall with the town instead. Feudalism does the same for towns bound to a city.

Create Your Map

Before you paint, you choose the map size and the factions, the same as for a normal game. You paint land onto an empty ocean and raise it from coastal plains to mountain peaks. Forests and each faction's starting ground have brushes of their own. Save the map as a template and start as many campaigns on it as you like.

Generated worlds

If you'd rather not paint, the game generates the world for you. Small maps are mostly a single landmass, and larger ones usually split into several continents divided by open sea. Type a map seed in the lobby to play the same world again.

Fog of war is your choice as well. Turn it off in the lobby and the whole map is visible from the first day.

Conqueror's Stage is single-player and runs on Windows. A guided tutorial takes you through the basics.

See you on the map.