Top Secret Magazine Knights and Merchants

Knights and Merchants is a real-time strategy/empire building game that is part civilization and part war game. It takes place in medieval times, where pork was the meat of choice...and all there was to drink was wine. A rough time in our world's history for sure. Knights and Merchants does a wonderful and painstaking job of recreating that era to a fine degree. It combines the importance of a good economy, sound city development-management, and the ability to don the helmet of a general, leading your forces to victory in battle.

The management and building of the city is very important. The detail that the designers of the game went to is astounding. Crabs walk the street if you build near the ocean, fish swim in the sea, and the sounds of nature fill the land. Building your city, and the supply system that will sustain it and the armies you will need, takes hard work and time. In fact, that is the only frustrating thing about the game - the amount of time it takes to develop the city itself.

You command an army of serfs and laborers that automatically take care of moving all the supplies from the various farms, vineyards, mills, and bakeries to where they are needed; like the inn that feeds your workers, smithy for armor, or the castle to arm your trainees. By the time your town is ready to really get to work, it resembles a vast ant farm. The ultimate goal of the game is to pull a country from the brink of destruction by overcoming

2cydonia.jpg (11880 bytes)

A Knight and Merchant Town

On the battlefield

a nearly overwhelming enemy. You are but an ordinary captain of the palace guard, thrust into a situation where you must rally the country and defeat the neighbors. All the effort of rebuilding the cities goes towards recruiting and feeding your army, made up of infantry, militia, bowman, and mounted units to name but a few.

Here is where all the hard work pays off, because battle is awesome. You command troops like a true general, taking advantage of terrain, and maneuvering your troops to take advantage of the enemy.

You can use pikemen to defeat Calvary, place crossbowmen on highground to strafe the opponent, while your mounted units flank the enemy and strike from behind. Of particular note, the battle and control of units in this game is solid, including full control of how to align each army group (how many lines, where they face, etc).

The model used for combat hopefully will be copied, as it is intuitive, with units responding just like they would in battle...which you had better keep in mind before battle is joined or you will lose the day...Captain...

This game is incredibly detailed; purists will have a difficult time finding fault with it. Those who like constant action may get bored before really getting to the fun points of the game. I would recommend this game to any gamer that likes to plan, design, and use long-term goals to defeat the enemy.

Company:
Interactive Magic
www.imagiconline.com

Category:
Real Time/Strategy

NOTES:

Interest: 85%
Maniability : 80%
Graphics: 86%
Sound : 82%
Originality : 80%

TOTAL : 82.5%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium or better

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
30 MB

Sound Card:
Windows compatible sound card

Video:
2MB SVGA video card

Andy Brandt

DEMO