Brought to you by MobileFreon
Brought to you by MobileFreon
Introduction
Welcome to the world of Conquest, where you are the high-stakes venture capitalist trying to make your fortune on the DotCom market (before they all go out of business)! Your goal is to have more money at the end of the game than your rival venture capitalists. You accomplish this by forming companies, buying stock in those companies and then merging those companies. But only the major share holders of the company benefit from mergers, so be sure you are top dog before you merge companies!
Version
17 March, 2001 - 1.0D1
Release Notes
Contact Us
Please report all problems, feedback and suggestions to conquest@mobilefreon.com.
How To Play
The game starts by asking you how many computer venture capitalists you want to play against. You can play against 2 to 5 computer controlled venture capitalists.
Once the game starts, a board is drawn which shows where each player can form companies. The positions on the board marked with an "x" are positions where you can place a tile. Positions marked with a dark square are tiles placed by already on the board. Tiles connected with other tiles and contain a letter represents a particular company. When you place a tile next to an already placed tile that is not part of a company, this forms a company (assuming all companies have not already been formed)! There are only seven companies that can be played. If there are no more companies ready to be formed, then a tile that forms a company can not be played.
Once a player has placed a tile, they can then acquire stock in any existing company (or the company that the player just formed, if that was the result of their tile placement) by purchasing it in the Buy Stock dialog. Each player is limited to purchasing 3 shares of stock per turn. For example, if there are three companies formed, a player could purchase 1 share from each company, or 3 shares from 1 company, or any combination which results in the purchase of 3 or less shares for that turn. Once the player has finished purchasing their shares, they should click the "Done" button which will then allow the other players to take their turns.
Merging is accomplished by placing a tile in between two, three or four existing companies such that after the tile is placed, the companies would all be inter-connected. The result of this action will be that only one company will survive the merge. The largest company in the merge is the surviving company. If there is more than one company with the same size, then the merging player (the player who placed the merge tile) gets to choose which company gets to survive. If there are more than two companies merging, the merging player also gets to determine which company merges first (and second and third, if applicable). Once the surviving company and the merge order has been determined, then the merging happens. To merge a company, the majority shareholders of the merging company must be determined. The shareholder with the most shares is awarded the Major Shareholder bonus. The shareholder with the second most shares is awarded the Minor Shareholder bonus. If there is more than one player determined to be either major or minor shareholder (or both), the bonus(es) gets divided evenly amongst those individuals. If a player is the sole shareholder of a company that is merging into another company, than that player will get both the Major and Minor Shareholder bonuses. Once the merging bonuses for the first merging company has been awarded, then the player who merged the companies has to decide what to do with the shares that s/he owns in that company. They can do one of three things with them in any combination; (1) sell their shares at their current value, (2) trade in their shares of the merging company for shares of the surviving company or (3) keep their shares in the merging company. In the first option, the player returns the number of shares they want to sell and gets paid. In the second option, the player can trade two shares of the merging company for one share of the surviving company. The exchange rate is always 2 for 1. There must be enough shares of the surviving company for the trade to take place. Once all the shares of the company are purchased or traded for, other players will not be given the option to trade their shares in when it is their turn to indicate what to do with this company's shares that they own. Option three allows the player to hold on their shares in the now unformed company. If any player then reforms that company, then those shares immediately become active and the player continues to be a shareholder in that company. Once the first player's merge has been completed, then remaining players determine what they do with their shares of the merging company (if they have any) until all companies are merged. Then the other companies are removed from the board and the merging companies become the surviving company. If any of the non-surviving companies are greater than eleven in size, then the merge can not happen. Once a company has reached a size of eleven, they are considered safe and are prohibited from being merged into other companies. They can still parcipate in a merge, but only if they are the surviving company.
The end of the game is determined by several different scenarios. The first is that all companies on the board become safe. Once that happens, the player who places the tile that makes all of the companies safe would then be given the option to end the game. They can choose to play on if they wish (note: the computer player will always try to end the game if it is possible). Another scenario is when there are no more playable tiles in a players hand and there are no more tiles to draw from. The final scenario, is when a company becomes larger than 40 tiles in size.
The Major Shareholder bonus and cost per share is displayed on the Info screen. The Minor Shareholder bonus is always 1/2 of the Major Shareholder bonus. The Major Shareholder bonus is always 10x the cost per share. The cost per share of a company is detemined by two factors; the kind of company that it is (cheap, moderate, expensive) and its size. The first two companies(AsteroidVictims.com and GetCommonsense.com) are the cheap companies. The next three companies (IMF.com, LiveLiverDonor.com and MobileFreon.com) are the moderate companies. Finally, the last two companies (PsychicBlindness.com and WirelessRants.com) are the expensive companies.