Castles II: Siege & Conquest was a 1992 DOS game by Quicksilver Software (published by Interplay Productions). As you might imagine, it's the sequel to Castles. However, I recall once trying to play Castles, and finding it beyond me. Castles II, though--I loved Castles II
The game starts with a cutscene of images and voiceover informing you that the king is dead. As such, you and all other nobles of the Bretagne are expanding their territories in hopes of establishing their claim as the new kind. I typically played as Burgundy, but you could also be Albion, Duke of Valois, Anjou, or Aragon. God how I hated Aragon.
This is a 4x game of sorts. Different territories are for different resources -- food, iron, timber, and gold. You will collect resources from them, build a military, scout the neighboring regions, claim them in battle, fortify them with castles, and engage in diplomacy (and spying) with your adversaries. All the while, you need to court the Pope, as he will ultimately approve your claim to the throne -- or someone else's.
The map is fixed, 36 territories. The players all start at the same location, but the resources are variable. (You can set them to be balanced, random, or geographic.)
As the game begins, it's a mad dash to grab some unclaimed land. The majority of the board starts unclaimed, and easy to conquer. Pretty quickly, you'll start running into the other AI players, at which point attacking has much higher stakes.
Actions and Resources
You begin with three action slots -- one administrative (gather resources, build castles), one military (recruit, attack, send a saboteur, police the realm, build siege weapons), and one political (scout, send a diplomat, send a spy, call a council, increase realm happiness). Over time, you'll earn a second slot for each of these. You also begin with 3-4 points of each to allocate to these actions, which you'll work up to 10 by end game.
The plurality of points for a given action type must be of that type, but you can boost it with others. For example, an attack with 3 military points can have up to 2 administrative points and two political points assigned to it. The more points allocated to an action, the faster it goes.
Additionally, you can't ignore infrastructure. Your regions can rebel. I believe Happiness helps avoid this, but the real prevention is that a Large castle will prevent its region and all neighboring regions from trying to succeed. Any castle will also double the resources a region can provide. They take ages to build, but you need them eventually. Additionally, you can choose from various historic castle designs, and they offer boosts of one sort or another. (They also are defensive structures if you're attacked.)
You want to maintain healthy relations with at least some of your neighbors (until you're ready to wipe them out), build up your military, and acquire the necessary resources to do all this (and pay your military--the more soldiers you have, the more it costs, and if you pay late, some will desert.)
So manage your resources, manage your relations, expand and build castles, an enjoy the random plots. Eventually, you hit 7,000 points and can petition to take the throne (at which point relations plummet and you struggle to maintain status for several months until the Pope agrees to back you.)
The experience
The opening cutscene is dramatic. Then peaceful, repetitive medieval music plays. This music, by default, will play on repeat for the next several hours, except during battle and plots.
And here's the thing: the quickest of these actions (scout?) takes close to a minute to complete if you load it up with action points. The slowest (building a max size castle) takes for. ev. er. (15 minutes? 30 minutes? I don't know. Forever.)
So you need great patience to play this game. You'll queue up your actions and then wait a minute or two before you can do the next.
Oh, or you could figure out that you can fast forward by holding down the right mouse button. Was it weeks of playing this before I discovered that shortcut? Months? I don't know, but I definitely spent many, many, many hours of my childhood playing this on slow mode before discovering this transformative feature.
And it's not all waiting for your actions to complete. There are plenty of external plots that appear. Big ol' cutscenes about how people are sad and want a festival, or you caught an enemy spy, diplomats (requesting money), and saboteurs. Less frequently, though, larger quests appear: a fullscreen animated video will appear and you'll learn of the potential to send an exploratory mission to Africa, or asked to help with a tree blight. Your options will cost money, or soldiers, or other resources, and may ultimately pay off well.
There's a fairly rich set of actions you can take. Harvest, attack, recruit, build several siege engines, sabotage, trading, diplomacy, and so on.
Combat
You're capturing (and defending) territories, so there's a battle mode wherein you can choose strategy and watch your soldiers kill/die. The strategies are just for each infantry type, you can tell them stand, melee destroy, or retreat. I never understood the strategy. I just always typed in "bamim" -- "Begin, Archers Malee, Infranty Malee". (And if I had knights, they'd also melee.) The attacker has an advantage (defender has their soldier count halved), so go out and conquer!
Oh, hey, I just looked at the manual and you can target individual enemy units! Also, I had forgotten that during defending, you get to pick the combat location. I'd always place the enemy in a marsh with me on solid ground, if possible. Then we could shoot them down while they're bogged down.
Note: Do not attack the Pope. He has a few territories, and if you attack one, relations with him will plummet, eventually leading to excommunication, dropping your realm happiness to the floor.
So where do I buy the CD-ROM?
idk, ebay? It's the future, ya'll: you can play it online at the DOS Games archive or on playclassic.games (though it's a little clunky). It was in native DOS as well. There appears to be a Steam version, which is perhaps more polished.
(oof: I just discovered that on playclassic.games they ask you random questions from the manual to prevent piracy and ensure you're learning.)
Anyway, I just got my butt kicked by Aragon and Valois, so I've decided I don't like this game after all. This is a stupid game.