Conquest!

How to play

Capture cities, build armies, fleets and aircraft, and wipe out the computer's forces on a map you can seed and share. Mouse, touch and keyboard. Saves as you go and works offline.

You and the computer each start with one coastal city on an island map you cannot see all of. Cities build units. Armies capture cities, ships and aircraft help them get there, and the side left with no cities loses. Anything outside the sight of your units and cities is hidden, and places you have seen but left show only as last remembered. Moving into a cell holding an enemy attacks it. Fights are resolved at once, in rounds that each go to the attacker with a 50% chance and otherwise to the defender, until one unit is destroyed. An army that moves into a neutral or enemy city has a 50% chance to capture it, and is used up either way. A ship or aircraft inside a city never protects it from armies. If the computer is left with 10% or fewer of your cities and no transports, it offers to surrender.

Units

The bomber's build time grows: 20 turns, plus 5 for every full 50 turns of the game gone by.

On Hard the computer's cities build faster: once every 7 rounds each of them makes an extra round of progress.

A city builds one kind of unit at a time and starts the same one again when it is done. Changing what a city builds throws away its progress, and a city that is not on the coast cannot build ships. A damaged army or ship moves more slowly, and a ship repairs 1 hit a turn in one of your cities. Aircraft are never slowed.

Stacking, attacks and shelling

Any number of your armies and aircraft can share a cell, and a city holds any number of your units. The cell shows one unit with a small number for how many are there; tap it again to step through them. A ship cannot share open sea with another ship. Each unit can start only so many attacks a turn, shown in the table: a fight, a bomb and a shell each use one, and a unit with none left can still move. A battleship can also shell an enemy ship or land unit that you can see up to 3 cells away. Press the Shell button or B, then pick a target. A shell hits 50% of the time for 1 hit of damage and the target cannot shoot back. The bomber's blast grows: it destroys only the cell it hits if built before turn 50, everything within 1 cell of it if built from turn 50, and within 2 cells from turn 100. Your own units in the blast are destroyed as well.

City-Days

City-Days is the score in the status bar. At the end of every round each city you hold adds a City-Day, so holding more cities for longer scores more.

Controls

• Select a unit: click or tap it, or press Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle through the units that need orders. N sets the selected unit aside for this turn and selects the next.
• Move one cell: click or tap a neighboring cell, or use the arrow keys, the numpad 1 to 9, or Q W E, A D and Z X C.
• Go to: press G (or the Go to button), choose a far cell by click or tap, or by keyboard move the marker with the arrow keys and press Enter. Tapping a far cell with a unit selected does the same.
• Sentry is S, Skip is Space, Patrol is P, Unload is U, Shell is B, and Backspace cancels a standing order. The order bar has a button for each.
• City production: click or tap one of your cities, or press Enter while a unit stands in one.
• Undo is Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z, for the last move only. It is offered only when the last move revealed nothing new and involved no chance.
• End turn: the End turn button, or Shift+Enter. The computer then moves and a turn report lists what was built and lost, cities gained and lost, and enemies sighted. Each line jumps the map to its cell.
• Zoom: mouse wheel, pinch, or the + and - keys and buttons. Pan: drag, or Shift with the arrow keys. Menu: the Menu button, or Escape.

Your game is saved in this browser after every move and when the page is hidden, and sound settings are saved too. Nothing is sent anywhere. Conquest! is a game on a canvas map, so it cannot be played with a screen reader.