American Conquest

Lore & Background

American Conquest was developed by GSC Game World, the same studio behind Cossacks: European Wars. The game was designed to attract the United States computer game market, which had been unreceptive to Cossacks, a hit in Europe and Russia. The campaign mode covers major European powers' conquest in North America—including the Spanish, British, and French—as well as counter-campaigns from the viewpoint of Native Americans who fought against them.

Gameplay differs from Cossacks in that peasants are needed to directly create military units; no units may be trained unless peasants are sent into forts, stables, or fortresses. A morale factor affects military units: units may flee if near a mass slaughter of their side. Officers, standard bearers, and military drummers are used to create formations and boost morale. Buildings such as forts and fortresses are central to defense, and garrisoned troops fire on encroaching enemies.

The expansion American Conquest: Fight Back adds five new nations (Germany, Russia, Haida, Portugal, Netherlands) and 50 new units, along with new campaigns. A total conversion mod called European Warfare: Napoleonica was released in 2006, with updates through 2009 and a re-release in 2024. The second stand-alone expansion, American Conquest: Divided Nation, features four new nations (Union, Confederacy, Republic of Texas, Mexico) in the American Civil War, Texas Revolution, and a single battle in the War of 1812.

Reader's Guide

American Conquest holds significance as GSC Game World's attempt to break into the US market after the European success of Cossacks: European Wars. Its sales in the United Kingdom during the first half of 2003 were roughly 20,000 units, which Kristan Reed of GamesIndustry.biz described as 'not figures that spell H.I.T.' The game's legacy includes two stand-alone expansions: American Conquest: Fight Back and American Conquest: Divided Nation, as well as a gold edition and a compilation titled American Conquest Chronicles. The modding community produced European Warfare: Napoleonica, a total conversion mod that transferred the game to the Napoleonic Wars, and Hawks' Divided Nation, which aimed at realism by removing buildings and workers. These mods extended the game's lifespan, with European Warfare: Napoleonica receiving a re-release in 2024 that added compatibility with newer systems, new units, artillery, naval units, and a functional AI. The game's mechanics—such as the requirement of peasants for military training, the morale system, and the ability to garrison buildings—distinguish it from its predecessor and contribute to its niche in the real-time strategy genre.

Did You Know?

• The game's expansion American Conquest: Fight Back features a total conversion mod called European Warfare: Napoleonica, which was re-released in 2024.
• American Conquest: Divided Nation includes a battle from the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans, where the United States can be played against the British Empire.
• In the United Kingdom, American Conquest sold roughly 20,000 units during the first half of 2003.

The Architecture of Real-Time Strategy

The real-time strategy genre, the category to which American Conquest belongs, is defined by a continuous flow of decision-making rather than the alternating turns found in traditional strategy titles. Players simultaneously gather resources, construct facilities, advance technological tiers, and direct units across a shared battlefield—all while an opponent does the same without pause. The label itself was crafted by Brett Sperry in the early 1990s as a marketing hook for Dune II, though the mechanical template it describes had been developing for years before that. A hallmark of the genre is its layered user interface, which grew increasingly complex to accommodate the sheer volume of simultaneous tasks. Designers even borrowed interaction patterns from desktop computing, such as the click-and-drag box selection that lets a commander target every unit within a highlighted region. Importantly, the genre draws firm boundaries: city-builders, construction simulations, real-time tactics titles, and god games share surface similarities but are generally excluded from the RTS classification, which demands the specific combination of resource economy, base construction, and indirect unit command.

Tracing the Genre's Roots

No single title can claim to have invented real-time strategy. The genre emerged through a long, messy period of experimentation, and many games now retroactively labeled as early RTS entries were never designed or sold under that banner. Scholars acknowledge the difficulty of applying modern genre standards to titles that predate the very term. In May 1981, Tim Barry wrote for InfoWorld about a multiplayer strategy space game featuring real-time response running on an IBM System/370 at a San Francisco Bay Area company—an early glimpse of the concept. By 1982, Utopia arrived, which Ars Technica later called the birth of a genre, praising its real-time element as virtually unheard of at the time. Matt Barton and Bill Loguidice noted it helped set the template, though its DNA leaned closer to SimCity than to Dune II. Cytron Masters, also from 1982, was called by Barton one of the first real-time strategy games, while Scott Sharkey of 1UP countered that it was more tactical than strategic due to the absence of unit construction and resource management. That same year, Byte magazine published Cosmic Conquest as an Apple II type-in program, describing it as a real-time space strategy game with resource management and wargaming elements.

Three Continents, One Genre

The real-time strategy tradition did not spring from a single cultural well. It evolved independently across the United Kingdom, Japan, and North America before gradually coalescing into a shared global lineage. In Britain, John Gibson's Stonkers (1983, published by Imagine Software for the ZX Spectrum) and the 1987 title Nether Earth stand as the earliest recognized entries. On the North American side, The Ancient Art of War (1984), designed by Dave and Barry Murry of Evryware, is frequently cited as the oldest game retrospectively classified as RTS, with a naval sequel following in 1987. Japan contributed its own thread: Bokosuka Wars (1983), an early strategy RPG in which a player leads an army across a battlefield in real time while recruiting soldiers en route, is regarded by Ray Barnholt of 1UP as a prototype. Sega's Gain Ground (1988) directed troops through enemy-filled levels, and TechnoSoft's Herzog (1988) served as a primitive precursor to its more famous successor. These parallel experiments, each shaped by local hardware and design sensibilities, eventually merged into the unified worldwide tradition that modern RTS titles inherit.

Landmark Titles That Shaped the Template

Herzog Zwei, released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1989, occupies a singular place in the genre's history. IGN called it arguably the first RTS game ever, and Ars Technica frequently cites it as the first real-time strategy game. Its split-screen two-player mode forced both participants into simultaneous, unpausable action, demanding rapid decisions under pressure. Though the player controlled only a single unit, the manner of that control foreshadowed the point-and-click mechanics that would become standard. Scott Sharkey of 1UP credited it with introducing core conventions—unit construction, resource management, and the strategic importance of controlling and destroying bases—while Chuck Sperry named it a direct influence on Dune II. Around the same period, Sensible Software's Mega-Lo-Mania (1991) and Supremacy, also known as Overlord (1990), offered deep resource management and economic systems along with advanced technology trees governing offensive and defensive capability, even though they lacked direct military unit control. Together, these titles laid the mechanical and philosophical groundwork that later RTS games, including the American Conquest series, would build upon.