Conquest of Elysium 4

Conquest of Elysium 4 is now completed and can be bought on Steam. While still a quicker game than Dominions, we are raising the complexity of CoE a bit by adding features to interact with the world in more ways and to make the character classes more random from game to game. Below are reviews, screenshots and descriptions of some of the new features in CoE 4.

Videos and Articles about Conquest of Elysium 4

Explorminate has videos about the game Youtube video,
Tokshen has a series on youtube where he plays the Troll King (after a few failed starts).
Das24680 plays the Voice of El on youtube.
An article from Jesse Galena On Time to the Party: Conquest of Elysium 4.
Tech Raptor wrote Conquest of Elysium 4 Review - Worth the Effort.
An article from Game Watcher Turn-based tactical fantasy gets a healthy dose of roguelike elements.

Screenshots

Features

Here is a list of some of the features in Conquest of Elysium 4.

• Random maps with six different planes
• Roguelike randomness and replayability
• Over 1000 different monsters
• Text descriptions for monsters
• A huge variety of special abilities
• 20 classes to choose from
• Over 300 different rituals
• 60 paths of battle magic
• 1 to 16 players, network or hotseat
• Team play with AI or humans
• Improved AI
• Fortifications and siege engines (or siege monsters)

New Map and Climate Generation

The random map generation has been completely remade and produces much more varied and logical maps. There will now be large continuous deserts or forests, or maybe a long mountain stretch. This makes the map both more natural and more fun to play on as it will be easier to predict where the mines or the ancient forests will be. Temperature also plays a large role now. The northern parts of the world will be cold and south will be warm, also mountain areas will be slightly colder than the flat lands. Winter will the make things colder and snow will appear where the temperature allows it. Of course it is possible to influence the temperature, create a second sun on a mountain and that part of the world will never see snow until it is destroyed. Frost giants might lower the temperature around them and create local cold spots.

Planes

The game now has 6 planes instead of only having the Elysium plane. There is for instance an Infernal plane that is the home of the devils and the demons. So if a demonologist manages to summon a demon lord, there will suddenly be a dark citadel without its master in inferno. Banishing a devil will now force it back to inferno instead of slaying it permanently. Although extremely difficult it is now possible to permanently destroy a demon lord by storming inferno and slaying it on that plane.

There is also the plane of Hades. It is a copy of Elysium, but everything is dead and the towns are populated by ghosts and spirits. Every time someone is killed in Elysium there is a chance that he will appear as a spirit in the same location in Hades. Powerful undead that are banished from Elysium will appear on this plane and will not die permanently until they are slain here.

Although there are many planes now you will only rarely have to visit them. But they continue to run in the background and can make certain actions or random events much more exciting than before. E.g. the cultist that opens a portal to inferno now actually does that. The devils from inferno will try to assault Elysium and bring sinners back to inferno. Bringing sinners back will increase their power and enable inferno to get more devils and demons. Unless it is closed Elysium will be in some serious trouble.

New Combat System

The new combat system is more board game like and less abstract than previously. Each combat unit has a counter with information such as hit points left, poison damage and magic items on it. The units will move around on the battlefield and can only strike units that are within range. There is also initiative values that usually corresponds to how long weapon a unit has, so a unit with a spear will get to strike before an opponent with an axe. Units with multiple attacks can have different initiatives for each weapon.

There are also fortifications with gates that have to be broken down before you can storm the fort. Archers manning the walls will get cover bonus depending on how high and well protected the walls are and some castles feature wider walls that can have more archers on them. So while you no longer get a general advantage as defender, you get quite a large advantage if you defend a fortified location. However there are units like spiders that can climb the walls, birds that can fly over the walls and ghosts that can simply walk through them.



Spell casting in combat has also been improved. Some spells can take an extra round to prepare before being cast and a skillful mage might be able to cast several low level spells in a single round. The new combat system has also made it necessary for spells to get different range and area of effects than previously.

Random Rituals

In CoE4 most classes start with a random set of rituals that will make your starting powers different from game to game even if you play the same class. It is possible to gain more rituals during the game, usually by spending enough resources to perform a ritual of mastery. To get a decent amount of randomness many new rituals have been added to the game and many old rituals have been altered. Thanks to this many classes feels and plays quite different from the previous version of the game.

E.g. the druid had previously only summon animal rituals of three different levels. Now the druid might have rituals to transport his armies long distances on faery paths or to summon messenger crows that can spy for him. He could also have rituals that awakens the ancient forests and have them do different things in his favor or a ritual that plants stealthy man eating flowers that will ambush anyone entering the forest. Of course there are rituals to summon beasts to fight for him as usual too, but you might be without these from the start.

Buying and Forum

The game can then be bought on Steam. There is also a forum on Steam that you are welcome to use if you have any questions about the game or want to report a bug.

Manuals

The player manual for CoE 4 can be downloaded here or you can access it from the steam client. There is also a modding manual that explains how to mod the game using the basic commands. Event modding and map creation is not included in that document, see the steam forum for more information about that.
Player Manual (4.01b)
Modding Manual (4.25)


If you want a printed manual which is recommended, then you can order one here from Lulu.. The printed manual is about 70 pages and comes with full color print and a nice shiny cover. It costs $5.31 which is the lowest price possible for a manual of this size on lulu.

System Requirements

As usual the game is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. You will need a somewhat newer computer than CoE 3, but nothing too fancy. A graphics card capable of OpenGL (that should be about all of them if you have downloaded the right drivers) and a computer with 1 GB of RAM + some swap space should do.

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