Lords of the Realm is my absolute favorite DOS game of all time. It is set in early medieval England and Wales You start out with a small county, e.g. Sussex. There are also a number of other computer players or human players (but only on the one computer). The aim of the games is to conquer every other territory and become the new king (or maybe queen) of England. The game is turn based and each turn lasts one season.
The other players of course have the same aim.
To play the game you have to manage the income of each county. This means making sure they have enough food growing charging them reasonable amounts of tax and that they are generally happy people. Wolves will make them unhappy whereas buying them ale will increase it. Sometimes however a natural disaster will happen and you don’t have a control over.
If they become unhappy hey will revolt and lead a peasant army around the country. Armies can be generated either by buying or making the weapons and equipping them to your peasants or by hiring mercenaries. Making them requires time to mine the iron and then turn it into weapons, an effort that many decide no to bother with. Thus a player also has the option of recruiting
peasant only armies. These may be good for conquering independent and scantily protected neighboring territories but they will need either many times more peasants or better armed peasants when coming up against knights and other armed soldiers.
As castles were a big part of medieval life they too are available to build. You can even design them yourself by using the inbuilt design interface. To gain control over neighboring territory you will need to lay siege over it's castle (if it has one) and not only defeat the armies within. Sieges are thus part of the game and during a siege soldiers can be used to make siege weapons. Because of all of these different parts of the game strong alliances are necessary for survival.
All in all this is a great DOS especially since it still runs quite well in Windows XP. The game really keeps you interested unlike many classic and retro games. Anyone who loves a strategy game will no doubt love this one and I give it a nine out of ten.
