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Andrea Rosa

LEVEL DESIGN WORKSHOP

A retrospective of World Conquest

I started designing and programming World Conquest in 1993, with the intention of submitting it to the Italian branch of Zzap! for showcase and evaluation purposes. Back in those days, new Commodore 64 games were becoming rare, so the famous magazine had started reviewing the works submitted by its readers, and obviously I didn't want to miss the opportunity to be mentioned on its pages. At first I aimed for a faithful conversion of Risk!, but soon I changed my mind and decided to go for something more complex which could justify the use of a computer. So, after a few days of planning, in a couple of weeks I coded World Conquest and, after a proper testing phase, I sent my floppy disk and waited. That first version was limited to two human players (with the promise of adding the AI in a subsequent version) and it did not include the instructions, which were printed separately on a home-made booklet. Several months passed, but there was no sight of World Conquest on the pages of Zzap!. I must infer that my package never reached their offices, or maybe the program had not been deemed worthy of attention since it had been written in BASIC. Whatever may have happened, I abandoned my hopes of publishing a C64 game. A little later I moved to the Amiga, good old Zzap! ceased to exist, and for quite some time I no longer thought about World Conquest, which was about to fall into oblivion. During the summer of 1995 I finally remembered this pending project, and I decided to complete it, implementing the AI and incorporating synthetic instructions into the program. Later on, I continued to use my C64 and A1200 in tandem until the beginning of 1998, when I bought my first PC, a Pentium 200 MMX. I soon discovered emulation, but only in recent years I've decided to get the tools required to convert my old programs into digital format. So, in 2016, I was finally able to share World Conquest with the C64 community, using Facebook as launch platform. The game was soon noticed by the Hokuto Force group, which decided to officially release it as a public domain title, thus somehow making my teenage dreams come true 23 years later. At this purpose, the info contained on Gamebase64 related to the Primary Control are incorrect: World Conquest is entirely operated with the keyboard, so the joystick is not required. Also, the Hokuto Force version is compacted, thus the BASIC listing can't be displayed. For the original version, please refer to the Commodore 64 section of this website.

 

ABOUT THE GAME

World Conquest is a turn-based strategy wargame inspired by Risk!. Similarly to the classic board game, players control regions of the world through armies, attempt to expand by conquering adjacent regions, and progressively gain reinforcements. The map is also very similar to that of Risk!, being divided into 42 regions, although there are some slight differences in the names and connections. Differently from Risk!, which can accomodate from 2 to 6 players, World Conquest is designed as a 1 vs 1 challenge (you can play against another human player or the computer). Both players start with 7 randomly assigned regions, while the remaining 28 regions are neutral, thus they can defend but not attack. The outcome of the attacks is random, and the probability of success in battle is the same as in Risk!, including the slight advantage for the defenders. Each region has economic attributes (expressed in Resources, Energy and Technology) which directly affect the progression of the game, making some regions more desirable than others. Specifically, the total amount of mineral resources determines the number of reinforcements that can be built, energy is converted into the number of attacks per turn, and the technological level allows to progressively unlock a series of upgrades that can be purchased through War Credits, which in turn are earned by destroying armies, discovering secret vaults, and collecting tributes from the owned regions. Once acquired, upgrades provide several advantages (both in terms of military and economy) and even special abilities. Players also have the chance of capturing Dr. Helmut Kriegbringer, a famous (and likely crazy) scientist who has taken refuge in one of the neutral regions: the player who captures the Doctor will gain the ability to access a special upgrade. Nuclear weapons are another element which further distinguishes World Conquest from its board game predecessor: it is possible to perform two types of nuclear strike (groundburst or high-altitude) as long as an armed nuclear silo is owned. Players can attempt to take over existing silos (located in Alaska, Eastern States, Russia, Great Britain, South Africa, China and India) and even gain the ability to build them. By default, players can only strike at regions situated in the same continent where the nuclear silo itself is located, but this limitation can be overcome by adopting ICBMs.

 

The game can be won in multiple ways: either conquer 30 regions, gain complete control over three continents (one of which must be Europe, Asia or North America), eliminate your opponent, or force him to surrender. The game can end in a draw, though it's a rare occurrence: in the case of nuclear escalation, the radioactive levels in the regions can rise dramatically, which could lead to the onset of nuclear winter and the immediate defeat for both players. Due to the many additional features, the typical strategies for Risk! turn out to be obsolete when applied to World Conquest. Undoubtedly, the knowledge of the dynamics of the board game can facilitate the approach, however the players are called to develop new tactics and take into account a greater number of factors, such as the economic value of the regions, the race for tecnhological superiority and the constant nuclear threat. The most boring part of World Conquest is having to learn the 3-letter codes that identify each region and which are used to input most of the game commands, but there's an option for displaying them during the game: press "R" and, when prompted for the region code, input the asterisk. 

 

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

World Conquest is written entirely in BASIC. The graphics are obviously in text mode, but the PETSCII character set always proves to be extremely flexible. The program weights more than 35 Kb, so in terms of sheer length it pushes the interpreter to its limits: once the program is running, less than 3 Kb remain to accommodate the variables. The length of the program is inflated by the presence of the instructions, which also heavily contribute to the consumption of RAM. When I added both the instructions and the AI in 1995, I wanted to implement more features, such as infrastructure sabotage, air raids, natural disasters that would have slowed military operations in the involved regions, but probably the time spent with my A1200 had altered my perception of the good old C64 and its limitations, and ultimately all these ideas had to be scrapped due to the lack of memory. Perhaps the best solution would have been to move the instructions to a separate file, but I've always had a habit of incorporating them into my programs. Some aesthetic elements were also probably superfluous, but I wanted to give the program a polished look to compensate for the fact that it was written in BASIC.

 

The slowness of BASIC 2.0 is well known, both in terms of execution and displaying, so I have used the location 53265 to mask the screen until its tracing is completed. Another problem, which arose during the initial development phase, was the slowness with which the figures related to the armies in each region were sequentially rearranged on the map. This wasn't a big issue if a single region needed to be updated, but it caused an annoying waiting time every time the Status Screen was closed and the world map had to be redrawn: initially I had relied on a pair of string vectors consisting of the characters CRSR DOWN and CRSR RIGHT, but later I was able to halve the execution time by using the instructions POKE 211,X and POKE 214,Y which, together with SYS 58640, allow to position the cursor directly at the desired coordinates. I used monochromatic sprites to make the region markers, and also to display simple animations during the nuclear strikes. Sound effects are sparse, but present nonetheless.

 

SOME WORDS ON THE AI

World Conquest was conceived as a two-player game, and no doubt the most fun is experienced when playing against a friend. Challenging the computer is not as compelling, and after a couple of games if will become evident that the AI is not very smart, especially during the movement and reinforcement phases. However, the computer does perform all the actions of a human player (except for surrendering), simulating a certain degree of unpredictability and focusing both on expansion and consolidation. The weakness of the AI is partially due to my inability to conceive a better algorithm, but it was also a design choice in order to obtain reasonably short thinking times by the computer, thus avoiding the onset of the chess syndrome (back in a time when playing chess against an home computer was a true ordeal). Typically, the AI will go through the following actions: 1) Distribution of reinforcements or collection of tributes, depending on the turn; 2) Search for a valuable and viable target; 3) Attack, if possible; 4) Repeat the last attack, if the targeted region is particularly valuable; 5) Nuclear strike, if possible and if it's worth it; 6) Acquire an upgrade, if possible; 7) Search for different or additional targets, if the last targeted region proves too difficult or if the overall economic level demands for further expansion; 8) Move armies to a recently conquered region; 9) Build a nuclear silo in a well-protected region, if possible, or skip silo construction and save money if the special upgrade can be accessed; 10) Finish the turn. The routines perform frequent checks to prevent the computer from being trapped in a loop during one of its various activities. One thing to take into consideration is that the AI is tailored to the starting conditions of the randomly generated map: when playing against the computer and before confirming the map settings, the player should make sure that his opponent has access to a fair number of easily conquerable regions (i.e. protected by a single army), otherwise the computer will not be able to attack during the early turns, thus leading to an excessive disadvantage.

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