Pros: Excellent real world diplomacy with real world players, balanced tech tree, massive real world map
Cons: Wallet warriors can take an early lead too easily, very similar to Bytro's other games which dilutes the population of all three titles
Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 7
Performance: 8
Overall: 7.5
Dorado Games in cooperation with developers Bytro Labs (Supremacy 1914 and Call of War 1942) recently brought out their new free to play browser based real time strategy Conflict of Nations: Modern War, a current day World War setting based on our own real world nations and using Google Maps for a fully comprehensive breakdown of countries and territories to try and conquer. Players compete against each other in winnable matches trying to take control of different cities that will grant them Victory Points, with each city being worth a certain number; the aim of the game is to reach the set goal number of Victory Points either as a solo player or collective Alliance to claim victory and prompting the end of that particular game. The route to victory using aggression, trade, diplomacy and espionage is what makes the game so enticing.
One of the key elements about Conflict of Nations is the pace of the game, everything takes hours to do as is part of the design process; it's not a game you can typically sit down for hours and play unlike other MMO, it is one where you choose your actions and return later to do something new when they are complete. Due to this reviewing these types of games is particularly difficult without putting in the real man hours to get a full sense of what the game is about, so most of this review is first impressions as well as some thoughts on the direction of the game as opposed to being able to give any experience on how a full game would play out.
So jumping into the game for the first time we were greeted by a list of servers that we could join or had the option of creating our own. The pre-existing games showed us how many players were currently active (max 26 to a game), unfortunately it is only by joining a game that you can see which of the playable nations are still available and if there aren't any that you like it seems like by joining you have taken up a slot that someone else could have used even if you don't choose a nation. Not all nations start equally, whether location in the world, vicinity to other players starting locations (which can bring with it an early alliance or equally an early war), the size of your country and the number of territories/cities that you control mean that choosing a starting nation in itself plays into whatever strategy you want to focus on and already on the forums there is a lot of theory-crafting as to the best nations to start as.
The rest of the world is filled up by AI nations, and it is huge, encompassing every continent (bar Antarctica) there are hundreds of territories to battle over, but with 26 players it is surprising how quickly that world feels a lot smaller when you see your neighbours building up a military. PVP is the name of the game, outside of taking over AI territories there is always going to be a player wanting to take you out, or a player that looks like a lucrative target for yourself to envelop into your own expanding empire. To expand players need to balance their city management, building structures to gain access to new features such as spies, trade, training military infantry and constructing various military vehicles.
All these actions take hours to complete, researching technologies to gain access to battleships, to the act of actually constructing one, to moving that battleship around the world, which in itself can take literal real world days depending on how far they are travelling. One of the more interesting aspects of the game is "Days" particularly when it comes to research; this marks the actual passage of real world days and is a prerequisite for all the different technologies that only become available after a set number of real world days have passed. Not only does this system help to ensure no player just focuses on heading straight for a single end-game tech/unit and creating some balancing issues, but also it is a way to slightly mitigate advancement through paid currency.
Players can purchase premium Gold currency using real cash, whilst it offers a number of benefits and options one of the key things it can be used for is rushing building construction, unit training and research development. With the "Days" pre-requisite players could effectively just spend their way through the tech tree and have a ridiculous advantage over free players (albeit it would cost a ton as the Gold isn't cheap). As combat is automated and there's no actual tactics in terms of maneuvering units in combat, it means that army composition (the units that make up a force) as well as their strength and morale all factor into the game determining who would win in a battle, so whoever can spend the most and if they could get later units, it would be a real one sided ass kicking.
Empire management and combat, whilst playing a big part of the game, are probably the least interesting and the beauty of Conflict of Nations comes with the real world diplomacy that players will have to engage in with each other. Using the News channel to see what global events have taken place, what alliances have been formed, wars declared or cities captured gives a general overview of the state of the world (as well as using the score and current Victory Points ranks as an indicator of who is steaming ahead). However, players can also put their time and resources into Espionage and planting spies in their rivals cities to gather intel on their deals with other players, the size of their forces, available defenses, tech advancement as well as a number of aggressive actions such as sabotaging a cities infrastructure or damaging units.
With all this information at hand it means that players are armed with what they need to begin negotiations with each other, discuss forming temporary or permanent alliances, weighing up what each player brings to the table, how much more you can demand if in a position of power or how much a player may ask you to sacrifice if they re the stronger force. Will your starting position have you surrounded by like minded players who want to form a coalition, or will you find yourself amongst a bunch of warmongerers out to take whatever they can? Will the pact of friendship you made with another player hold up when you find yourself weak and vulnerable to betrayal? Welcome to the possibilities of Conflict of Nations.
As far as strategy games go the game has a lot to offer and it is easy to see where Bytro Labs cooperation has been a major influencing factor, Supremacy 1914 covered WW1, Call of War 1942 covered WW2, it is easy to take Conflict of Nations as being the next step and bringing us into a modern day WW3 and the game offers a lot of the same systems and mechanics. We have to say that we do prefer the modern day setting, seeing the world map as we know it, engaging in real diplomacy with players and having to deal with their different personalities and attitudes, it's about as close to the real thing as we're like (and happy) to get to! The game is long, but it is winnable instead of being an endless battle. Our biggest issue is how much you can do with Gold and the snowball effect an early lead can grant a player, which is hard to combat without spending yourself (though with Days and the cost of Gold the people that constantly spend are few and far between and hopefully there will be the option for servers without Gold spending).
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