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From: sysop@tlvx.UUCP (SysOp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: FAUG demo of Powermonger by E.A. -- long review
Summary: PowerMonger gripes, problems, and Hints!
Keywords: simply incredible
Message-ID: <455@tlvx.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 91 04:44:44 GMT
References: <1990Dec5.110344.6364@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <16750@cbmvax.commodore.com> <4458@vela.acs.oakland.edu>
Organization: Temporal Vortex BBS of Jacksonville, Florida
Lines: 56

In article <4458@vela.acs.oakland.edu>, hastoerm@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Moriland) writes:
...
> 
> I'm willing to bet that they did. Take a look at any old Psygnosis
> game or ANY Seira-Online game and you can see what happens to
> animation when you don't use the blitter. I think they used it.
> 
...
For fast graphics, how about Starglider II?  That had an Atari ST version.
(No blitter, and I was told that it was as fast as the Amiga version, but
I really don't know.)

Strange thing, PM wouldn't run on a friend's new A500 with 1 meg of RAM.  (He
also may have had a new Agnus; I forgot to run a check on his system to
find out.)  After using "nofast" (the nice utility which reboots the machine
with 512K showing in the system), it ran fine.  Note that if I didn't
happen to have "nofast", we simply wouldn't have been able to run it, since
PM has a custom boot-block and takes over the machine;  Nofastmem comes with
the OS, but of course that won't work.  Aggravating! (Especially since the
first time I visited I didn't have "nofast" with me.  Grr!)

Now some game notes:     ** Spoilers! **

I agree with the others that you should attack passively when possible, so
as to take over men.  Some levels, the computer is rather calm, and you can
just take maybe 1/2 of the men in each town as troops, leaving the rest there
to take care of things because you will probably come back for food, for
instance.  On other levels, the blue computer player moves very quickly,
and overtakes the towns that you've taken over.  I noticed that the computer
tended to do the same thing every game (but in the same land), so I changed
my strategy and burned my bridges behind me, so to speak.  In that case, I
took all of the men and food, and left nothing for the blue player; when the
blue army entered the towns, they had little to claim.  It still can be a hard
fight after all that.

About making ideas, it seems that well-fed troops do this better.  When food is
short, you have to work at everything.  Your army tends to disband as you lose
your food!  In one land that was short of food, I went so far as to go to
passive mode, then "attack" a sheep that was inside of a LARGE settlement.
Since the sheep was on the grass, it didn't cause my army to attack the town.
(Yes, I just blatantly stole their sheep!  I dunno why I didn't think of
that earlier.)  Anyway, it wasn't all that much, but when food is scarce,
that might help you get past a level.

I've not gotten the hang of trading or making allies.  Luckily, I've been
able to get through things fine so far without either option.  Maybe in later
lands I'll need to resort to these strategies.  Anyone get far into the map?

I've gotten most of the levels for 5 across and 3 down, or so, and a couple
beyond that.  Am I doing well?  :-)

Very addictive game.  I had to tell myself that I can't play it at night,
because I tend to lose sleep.  :-)
--
Gary Wolfe, SYSOP of the Temporal Vortex BBS                        // Amiga!
..uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop,   unf7!tlvx!sysop@bikini.cis.ufl.edu  \X/  Yeah!