Conflict: Master diplomacy and warmongering in this classic
What do you do if you only have a 386 PC on your desk and need to sate this craving for world domination? Why, play Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator, of course. And this is exactly what I did back in 1994, when I had been stuck for hours on end manning the editorial offices of the college paper.
Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator, or simply Conflict, is a turn-based government simulation game designed by David Eastman and published by Virgin Interactive in 1990. Although available for DOS, Atari ST, and Amiga, I played it only on DOS on (yes, you guessed it) the 386.
The game is set in fictional 1997, when the prime minister of Israel has just been assassinated, leaving the player to run the country as the new head honcho. The player’s objective is to cause the defeat of the neighboring four states, either by invasion or political destabilization. What, no options for peace? Haha.
For those who have forgotten how to play the game, and those who have no idea whatsoever about what I’m talking about, here’s a little gamplay backgrounder, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Each game turn represents one month in real time. Each turn the player decides what diplomatic, espionage and military actions to take with regard to the other countries in the game, and then ends the turn. The game engine then runs and the results of the turn occur (each turn begins in fact with some information about what has occurred in the previous turn being presented as a screen of newspaper headlines). The actions available to the player are broken up into two phases: diplomatic/espionage and military.
Diplomacy
Each country in the game has a diplomatic relationship with every other country in the game, with that relationship varying from military pact (best) to war (worst), through a number of stages: Excellent (military pact), Profitable, Beneficial, Favorable, Satisfactory, Workable, Indifferent, Lamentable, Deplorable, No relations, At War.
Each turn the player directly sets Israeli diplomatic policy with regard to the other countries in the game. Diplomatic policy is very simple: Israel is either trying to improve the diplomatic relationship, keep it as it is, or make it worse. The action change in the relationship for a turn depends upon Israeli policy set against the policy of the other country; if both are trying to improve, the relationship will improve by one step. If either tries to make the relationship worse, it will deteriorate by one step. Otherwise, it remains steady.
When a relationship is Indifferent and Israel decides to reduce the relationship in the diplomatic phase, or if the relationship is at Lamentable or Deplorable, Israel can declare war and invade.
When a relationship is at Profitable, the player can choose to request a military pact. If this is given, then if Israel goes to war with a country which also has a border with the allied country, that country will in turn reduce its relationship to Lamentable and then declare war. (Note however there is no such obligation placed upon the player, who can simply ignore wars his pact partner enters into).
Espionage
Each country’s government has a stability rating. If that rating falls to the lowest value, the government collapses and the country is out of the game. Each turn, for each country in the game, Israel can choose to work to reduce the stability of the Government, keep it as it is, or increase the stability of the government. Stability ratings are: Very solid, Firm, Moderately solid, Good, Fair, Fragile, Weak, Very weak, Dangerously weak, Close to revolution.
Also, each country has a level of insurgency, which represents how well-organized the insurgent forces are. Insurgency ratings are: Ready for action!, Guerilla Force, Strengthening, Ineffective, Disorganised Rabble, and Non-existent.
If a country’s stability rating is Weak or below or if the insurgency the country is at Guerilla Force or better, Israel can opt to consider extreme measures, which are to attempt assassination of the country’s leader or start a coup. If this attempt succeeds, the country collapses and is out of the game.
However, if the assassination attempt fails, Israel is detected and relations with that country and with the West sour. Also, if an attempted coup fails, the insurgent forces are usually destroyed. A coup is very unlikely to succeed unless the insurgents are very strong and the government is very weak, so a premature coup which destroys the insurgency can be a useful strategy for helping a government (often much more effective than disrupting a fast-growing insurgency).
Once diplomatic and espionage policy is set, the player moves on to the military actions. It is not possible to come back to diplomacy and espionage once the player has completed diplomacy and espionage and moved to military actions.
Military
The player has two tasks to perform: the first is to spend the defense budget, the second is to set military actions with regard to the other countries in the game.
Each turn, the player receives a budget to spend on weaponry. The size of the budget seems to depend on the level of hostility in the surrounding countries; if Israel is at war, or if another country is in the process of reducing diplomatic relations to declare war, the budget is large (300 million plus, per turn). If the level of hostility is low, and life is peaceful, the budget is small (100 million).
As such, the defense budget awarded by the game is an indicator of the policy intent of neighboring countries; if they’re peaceful, the budget will be small, if one or more countries is bent on war, the budget will be large.
Weapons are bought from the USA, United Kingdom, France or a private arms dealer. (Each country sells weapons that it itself produces, except the private dealer, who is a South African providing access to Russian weaponry.) Each source offers a different range of weapons with different prices and most countries will only offer better weapons once a reasonable number of purchases have already been made (which establishes that a relationship has been built up). Not all countries offer all weapons; for example, anti-SAM helicopters are only available from the USA and the private dealer.
Whew! Information overload! Let’s talk about Conflict again in a later post. In the meantime, let’s see if Conflict will work on my Pentium IV Core2Duo.
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POSTED IN: Blowing people up, Blowing stuff up, DOS Games, General, PC, Re:Retro, Simulation, Strategy
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