It's a relatively quick game that plays easily in hotseat. Don't mind the graphics, or the slightly clunky interface, and you'll have yourself a fun little game with plenty of variety to play when you're with a mate and need something to help pass the time.

I tried to like this game but I could not. The graphic is just too old and you do not control battles. It looks like a shorter version of Dominion. Not for me.

This game reminds me alot of the original Warlord system, with a little bit of Heroes of Might and Magic thrown in (You need heroes to move your troops around and capture resources). First, its a sandbox game. You can choose an era, which somewhat influences how many resources and neutral creatures there are. Things are distibuted randomly so you might have a very difficult or easy start. There is no real story or campaign outside of the descriptions of the factions and their place in Elysium. However, the 18 factions are certainly unique, and that enough is motivation to play each one through. I've completed the game with 4 factions at this point and each one played out very differently, and I've avoided all the "magic" factions so far, which have more depth than the ones I have used. The factions borrow from all sort of mythical, historic, and literary traditions, whether it be the Cthulu stories, or Aztec mythology, or Ancient Rome. Each faction has various things which make them unique, such as the way they gather reasources, their magic, the types of troops they have, the variety of troops at their disposal, or the numbers of troops they can enlist. This means that some are easier to start with, while others peak more as the game advances, which encourages different strategies. Also some factions do better in certain eras. Dwarves, for example, thrive in the dark ages, because the other factions are struggling to control the few towns that exists, while dwarves don't need towns, though settlements do give them some money to recruit human troops occasionally. The game focuses on grand strategy. You select which troops to produce, how to group them, where they go, who to fight, and managing resources. Combat is carried out automatically, so there are no tactical decisions.

This is definately an old school game. It is not fair, you will be hurting yourself by not reading the manual, and the graphics are 2D. If you can look beyond these things, though, you will find an excellent game.

Don't overlook this gem. It might look dated and uninteresting at a glance. It is actually pretty fun. It is full of content. There are a lot of different characters each with different strategy. This game can consume you tons of hours if you really dig into it. And even if you are tired of AI, you can also play multiplayer.

Fantastic little indie game, keeps me hooked for hours and hours. I especially enjoyed trying all the different races and develop a new strategy. The level of complexity is very deep and watch out for the AI at higher levels!

This game is a wonderful strategy game for $10. There are many possible ways to play this game with, 5 map sizes, 6 "eras" to play the game in which effect the terrain, 18 different classes, 10 difficulty levels the AI can be set on, being able to add up to 7 AIs in a single player game, also the ability to separate the players into teams, and play multiplayer makes this game a wonderful game that everyone should have for $10, even if the graphics are a little lacking.

I struggled with what to rate this for some time. I am of two minds, and so leave it unrated. Some issues I feel will only be relevant to myself have been marked before and after with dashes - to show that they are issues I believe will only matter to those like myself.

Call of Elysium 3, or CoE3, is another turn based strategy from Illwinter Games - the designers of previous games in the Call of Elysium series the more micromanagement-intensive Dominions 3 series. You take control of one of several individuals/groups struggling for supremacy in the world of Elysium, all of them (very, very) loosely inspired from mythological and religious roots. This has long been one of the strengths of Illwinter Games - besides throwaway references in other games, most media tends to use only a few limited mythological offerings in their work; the only one I can think of that has similar breadth would be the Shin Megami Tensei main series. Needless to say, to theologians such as myself this is interesting not only as a turn-based game but as an interesting look into the minds of the developers.

But how does it look, and how does it handle? Some will mention that the graphics are dated - if by which the user means they aren't 3D, the answer is yes. The illustrations are detailed and interesting however, and the spritework tends to be very diverse. It can be very hard to see do to shrunken and stretched images that work better on different resolutions, but most units look good, and interesting. You watch the seasons change, and terrain has a feel that brings to mind the fantasy craze of the mid-80's.

The gameplay is much more concise then Dominions 3, which at first appears to be fantastic. Even as a fan of that previous game, the amount of micromanagement necessary to do well became very grating, very quickly. You select a leader, press 't' for tactics to select which units they will take with them, and off you go! You can also change what spells your mage-commanders have memorized... That will be your only option in battle tactics however.

Although fans of real-time battles might feel bothered by this, it speeds up the game and does a good job of making you feel that your troops are autonomous - though there are several options that seem oddly non-present, such as switching unit ranks (front, middle, back). Though you could argue this as a function of said autonomy, it makes it very frustrating to replenish your squads and have a formation where a good portion of your units with both ranged and melee attacks find themselves unoptimally placed.

But if that is a complaint, it is a minor one - the gameplay itself is smooth and interesting and, unfortunately, almost completely unplayable out of the box. Not unplayable as in glitched or broken or difficult, but extremely unenjoyable. I'm sure we all remember the siege of Istanbul by wild deer, or the great snake invasion of Pine Woods?.. in Conquest of Elysium, the wildlife will take your cities and structures and regularly. This is not so much a problem for the player - very annoying and very stupid, but usually something that can be dealt with if you are guaranteed a decent starting location enough to buy reinforcements... Which you aren't, because the game is very random - a 'balanced starting locations' option that would guarantee relative accessibility of resources would be a huge boost.

But the reason random hostiles render the game almost unplayable is this: the computer is terrible at dealing with them, even on (especially on?) the higher difficulties. It will not be a surprise to see the enemy go down and know instinctively that they left their Citadel (home base) undefended yet again. The AI in general is very poor at understanding relative risk/gains, which is not unusual for AI and forgivable for a two-man team. Like it's spiritual sibling, Dominions 3, the single-player campaign is only really there to teach you how each group works; the heart of the game lies (unfortunately for individuals like me, who have no interest in playing online) in multiplayer.

By applying the Less Agressive Animals + Fix the Wildlife mods (Search that exact phrase, + possibly Call of Elysium) you make random encounters less mobile in general, and thus less of a headache for the CPU, meaning your chance of actually encountering a challenge from them is greatly increased. I am sure it will also help new players somewhat, though you should still keep an eye on your Citadel. Truly, if there were mod that completely removed the ability of monsters to move I'd install it in a heartbeat. The CPU might still throw its troops towards objectives it wants but is unlikely to take, but hopefully less.

The other thing you start to notice as your game goes on - there is no load or quit to menu button. While this may seem like a minor inconvenience, for those just learning the game it will become a pain to be unable to load and fix a mistake. For those who don't need or want to see what they did wrong, it is somewhat fine until you realize that if you are tired of a current campaign and want to start a new one, you must close the game, restart it, and then start one from scratch. As the feature to quit to the main menu was present in Dominions 3, there is no reason for this not to be present. And there are a lot of little issues like this, which leads to the beginning of points that may only be relevant to me.

I've been with Illwinter for some time now - I actually missed the news about CoE3 though due to it not being released by their custom distributor, Shrapnel. Because they are pretty much the only company out there who features some semblance of mythologolism in their turn-based strategy, I feel somewhat as if I don't have a choice. I've watched them grow and change with each game, often improving on their mistakes - but just as often leaving those same mistakes in and not speaking out because they are, of course, just two guys.

But for some reason, CoE is different to me. After playing every group several times, they all start to feel somewhat same-y. Survive first winter, get troops via herbs/fungi/blood sacrifice/gems, stock up on big ones with good resistance or regeneration before anyone else does. If both you/opponent have such troops, survive to second winter, summon stronger troops, repeat. While one could argue this is the fate of all TBS, in Dominions 3 I still somehow felt that my army of Satyrs and Dryads was unique compared to the Fallen Legions of Ermor or the Magisters of Man. In CoE, my troops feel all the more a collection of numbers, perhaps because the gamespan even on large maps is so relatively short.

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In addition to that and the user-interface issues, something else that's always bothered me is the slightly Folkish (from a mythological/religious use of the word) as opposed to Universalist perspective of the games. In Dominions 3, the game tended to feel somewhat like a teenagers view of mythology - relatively few non-monstrous women in power besides your character if they were one, blood sacrifices that were represented by a rather specific category, some of the more blatant unit design. In Conquest of Elysium, I for some reason though we'd be able to choose which gender our leaders were in most cases - I mean, you can't tell on the sprites alone, and most leaders would work fine as either gender.

It may feel a complaint, but why can't I play a male Witch, a Seidemann? Or perhaps a female Warlock? Something that I could ignore, or perhaps was supposed to ignore because it was after all 'just two people' has become harder to ignore as I've grown older. That and the 'cannibal villages' (really? at least there was Machaka in Dominions 3, not that was much better...), the end-game sameness (y

Playing CoE3 brings me back to memories of nights in highschool, playing "one more turn" strategy games until 2am in my parent's basement. The game is extremely well-thought-out and engaging to play. If you have ever been a Turn-Based Strategy fan, pick this one up. It is well worth the money.

Easily one of the best strategy games that works on PC/MAC/LINUX. I play this game with friends every single weekend. Every single class plays differently, and the game is very similar to a hybrid of Heroes of Might and Magic, and Master of Magic from days of old. Easily one of the best fantasy strategy games!

I can't believe I never found this game sooner. The only problem with it is how addicted I have become to it. It is reminiscent of the Warlords series in a way, or like Civilization but without a technology tree (but with much larger differences between factions).

- Easy to learn interface but tons of depth. A 70+ page instruction manual is testimony of the depth and its nice because not many games go to the trouble to give you a detailed manual anymore.

- 17 different races/factions to play with. Some factions share some similarities but each has some rather radical differences from the others. The biggest part of learning this game is learning how to play (and play against) the different types of factions.

- Highly replayable. The creators of this game clearly envisioned replayability as a key factor. There is a random map generator, six different types of random map to create, which will influence the frequency of the different structures placed on the map, and five different map sizes. You choose how many CPU opponents you play against and they can be random factions or you can select their factions. There are about 9 or 10 different difficulty levels you can set for each AI. You can even setup team games and decide how many opponents and how many teams there are.

- There are magical items in the game which can be transferred to heroes or even regular troops, so long as they have an available slot for the item (animals, for instance, have limited slots).

- Although the graphics are not cutting edge, they are quite respectable.

- Combat occurs automatically and you simply watch what happens. This is a good thing because it greatly speeds up the game. Also, since magic casters will cast random spells on random units, it leaves room for unpredictable combat outcomes and keeps certain powerful spells from being abused. Casters aren't dumb though, and won't cast a spell on an invalid target, or cast a harmful spell on an ally.

This is one of the rare games in the 'Master of Magic'-Genre.

In one of 6 different (still random) settings, you play a the ruler of a to-be-forged realm. You explore and (hopefully) conquer the surrounding land, until every other player is extinguished.

In Detail & Depth I would give the game 5/5 stars, due to many higly different souvereigns and the great possibilities of the different random scenarios

Sound & Music is average, not bad, but not extraordinaire either

Graphics are - as you can see in the screenshots - severeal years, if not decades, behind. Similar games like Warlock or the Elemental series have much more to show in this area, while being the same pricegroup

Conclusion: For people that like that specific genra it is a good game, although the proce is somewhat high. I fell 15 € would be fair, 10 a nice price and for 5 € everyone should by it.

4/5 in total

I never really got on with Dominions 3, but this game by the same dev for a fraction of the price is so worth it. Illwinter (designer of CoE3) supported D3 with patches for six years. Aaron Hall charged $30 for his World Supremacy game on the same site - Shrapnel - and abandoned it. So vote with your money, folks. There are already good mods for this game, so replay-ability will basically never end. Plus, even an idiot like me can mod it to some extent. You just need to like turn based and need to enjoy pondering the inner strategies. Right now, I'm just moving counters - and losing - but having fun. Also, I had a problem locating my mod files and got an answer in less than 12 hours. To me, that is worth $15 right there. Now, is it better overall than Warlocks Master of the Arcane at $20? No, I'd buy that first, but CoE3 soon after!

A few facts should be stated before my review.

1.Illwinter is literally a 2 men indie company

2. I am a long time fan of theirs

Conquest of Elysium 2 was interesting game, in a way it's Dominions light version. (simpler mechanics and gameplay etc). But it suffered from it's terrible interface that kept me from playing that promising game for long before resigning myself and going back to Dominions. Now with CoE 3 I decided to give it a try and hope it got better. And it did. Sure, it still ins't the most intuitive experience ever for newcomers but anyone who played a Illwinter game should find his way around easily. (really, just read the manual and then try doing things, you can always restart if you screwed something up, in half an hour I had mastered the interface) It's relatively simple, but fun, interesting and it's simple graphics have that unique flavor characteristic of the company. It's worth buying, just don't expect more than it's supposed to deliver.