Krieg um die Krone translates to War for the Crown, which concisely explains the strategy game's goal. You and up to three other players take the roles of barons who are trying to find three symbols of power in order to become the realm's king.
Apart from competing against your human opponents, you also have to put up with armies of trolls and a sadistic dragon that just likes to burn stuff.
Look at the green bastard there, casually flying across the sky and already breathing fire with a gleeful smile on its lizard face. Maybe it wants to burn away that huge title parchment blocking most of the horizon.
The above title image is actually preceded by another title image, this time with the company name taking up half of the space. Outer space, to be precise:
While this looks quite fancy, stars and galaxies and nebulae are not exactly what I associate with a fantasy game. The music (which is played during both title screens) isn't particularly medieval either. It's a rather odd melody that soon derails into off-key territory.
What makes this affair a bit aggravating is the fact that both screens are loaded separately from disk, one after the other, even though they share the same music and the same scrolling text at the bottom. You have to wait for them to load each time you want to fire up the game.
Once you get past those screens, the game gets loaded and then finally starts. Oh wait, I lied:
Behold, it's everyone's favorite, the copy protection! I love the all caps heading * KONTROLLE DER ZUGRIFFS-BERECHTIGUNG * coming across all stern and self-important. It wouldn't be out of place as a warning sign in Wolfenstein 3D.
It's one of those anti-piracy measures that ask you to whip out the physical manual and find a certain word in it. This was one of the rare cases where a Golden Disk 64 issue came with an actual paper manual. I still have mine:
Compared to other games that were published on Magic Disk 64 and Game On, Krieg um die Krone was considerably more complex, so a physical manual was certainly appropriate. I can't say the same for the copy protection.
After having entered the correct word, you are greeted not with the game, but with another loading screen. Really, German Design Group? You had to make the copy protection another separately loaded program?
Finally! Took you long enough, game.
The title menu allows you to start a new game or load an existing one. The ability to save and load was quite a rare occurrence in C64 games, especially in budget priced ones.
Krieg um die Krone's playfield is randomly generated, and you can watch it getting created when you start a new game, which is a neat feature:
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| Not quite Dwarf Fortress, but cool nonetheless. |
The game asks you to enter your name, and based on that it even tries to guess your gender. It does so by looking at the last letter of the entered name. If the name ends with "a" or "e", it assumes you're female. Tough luck for all Andrés and Joshuas. If the game gets it wrong, you can still correct it, and it even apologizes for its mistake.
In this game, I'm setting not-yet-king Richard against the evil not-yet-witch Scotia because I like Lands of Lore.
After the human players have selected their respective starting castle and regions, the map gets populated with trolls, and chests appear in several locations. The regions owned by Richard have green shields, while those occupied by Scotia sport pink ones. The numbers indicate the size of the army in that region.
If you feel reminded of certain board games, you might already have a good idea how the game works. It's somewhat reminiscent of Risk in that you take over neighboring territories by attacking them and distribute your armies at the front lines to fend off enemy attackers. Cinemaware's Defender of the Crown was probably an inspiration as well.
At the start of the first round, the trolls invest time in some intensive breeding and increase their numbers in certain regions. You can adjust the game's difficulty by increasing or decreasing the trolls' breeding rate.
It's Baron Richard's turn, and reinforcements consisting of 4 soldiers have arrived. The number of new soldiers increases with the number of territories a player owns.
Since he doesn't yet have a sorcerer under his command, Richard gets the option to hire one in exchange for two soldiers. Sorcerers increase the chance to win battles whenever they're present. Pulling bunnies out of top hats apparently acts as a morale boost for human soldiers and as a source of confusion for trolls.
Richard gets the option to declare war on a territory adjacent to one of his own. There's a castle in the top left that's only occupied by two trolls, and Richard has most of his army situated right next to it.
Any occupied territory requires at least one soldier to stay there, so Richard can only recruit an army of 10 to lay siege to the castle. He could also call in the sorcerer who currently resides in Richard's starting castle.
The game is nice enough to display the attack and defense power of both sides before the actual battle takes place. These numbers are calculated depending on race, terrain, and type of units. Normally, a castle full of trolls is very hard to capture, but in this case, the stronghold is running on a skeleton crew. Casualties on Richard's side should be sufficiently low.
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| Our castles are so secure, they don't even have entrance gates! |
The battle screen presents the fight in steps. Moving the joystick in any direction advances the battle while pushing the fire button commands the attacker's remaining army to flee. This conflict went rather well with an equal loss of units on both sides.
After a successful attack, the victor can distribute the remaining soldiers across the regions that were involved in the battle (i.e. where the battle took place and all adjacent regions that also belong to the victor).
Despite her unhealthy hate for Richard, Baroness Scotia decides not to attack her human opponent but instead goes after the trolls directly north of her castle.
They didn't stand a chance.
SOME TIME LATER
Scotia didn't stand a chance.
The trolls decided to attack her southernmost region, and the virtual dice rolls flattened her army of four.
Look who's arrived!
The dragon is impartial, thus its path of burnination can hit any side. Lucky for Richard and Scotia, the green menace went after the trolls in this round.
SEVERAL ROUNDS LATER
Scotia isn't doing too well. She captured one of Richard's territories and two troll regions, but at the same time, she lost two of her three southern regions. These defeats, in combination with some rude dragon visits, drastically reduced the size of her army.
Meanwhile, Richard plans to attack the troll castle in the bottom left with the goal of capturing the chest that's located there.
Strength in numbers?
Strength in numbers!
Whenever a player seizes a region with a chest, they get the opportunity to open it. Why the opening procedure has to take place at night between a tiny fig tree and a bush with feet is anyone's guess.
Welp, Richard found the crown. War's over, Scotia can go home.
At least you might be inclined to think it's over since the game is literally named War for the Crown. But the rules state that a player needs to find all three symbols of power before kingship can be achieved.
Baron Richard has found his first symbol, the crown, and is thusly named Count. As a reward, he gets to freely distribute 8 additional soldiers across his regions.
SEVERAL ROUNDS OF TROLL BEATING LATER
Richard is expanding to the southeast. His next attack is directed at another troll territory with a chest in it. His army outnumbers the enemy forces 3 to 1, so this should be a cakewalk.
Wow, a cakewalk indeed. Richard wiped the floor with the poor sods. On to the chest opening!
Oh, dear. Cancel all celebrations, Count Richard cannot open this chest!
You may have noticed that a total of seven chests was placed on the playfield when the game started. Three of those only open for Richard, and another three are for Scotia to claim. The seventh chest is a dud and contains nothing. Neither player knows in advance whether a chest is meant for them until one tries opening it.
Since Richard now owns a region with a chest that belongs to his adversary, Scotia has to capture that territory if she wants to retrieve one of her symbols of power.
MEANWHILE
GO AWAY, STUPID LIZARD! NOBODY LIKES YOU OR YOUR STINKING BREATH!
Even a rampaging dragon can hardly make a dent in Richard's army anymore. The count owns enough regions by now that he gets a lot of soldiers at the start of every round.
Richard's eyes are on the map's largest territory which is guarded by a grand total of two trolls. Also, there's a chest just waiting to be opened.
Or not.
A HANDFUL OF ROUNDS LATER
Finally! Richard found the holy hand grenade and is now a prince. At least, that's the closest English translation I could find for "Fürst", even though its definition is a bit different to a regular prince, which is "Prinz" in German. I'm not very familiar with titles of nobility. Hell, I didn't even make it through the tutorial part of Crusader Kings II.
EVEN LATER
After seizing a troll-infested castle and finding another unopenable box, Richard is about to make his final move by attacking one of the last remaining regions with a chest in it. Scotia is so far behind, she has pretty much given up at this point.
Hm, I wonder who'll win this one.
Well, I never!
Let's hope this isn't the empty chest...
Luck smiles on Prince Richard today, and by retrieving the scepter, his final symbol of power, he gets promoted to king.
And that's the end of the game. According to this victory message, King Richard, as the most successful player, is now proclaimed king. I guess achieving highest nobility requires some redundancy to make the title stick.
The final message just reiterates who won and then tells players how they can order German Design Group's product catalog for more gaming goodness. That's a bit of an anticlimax, so I allowed myself to add a splash of story to the game's conclusion:
After her dramatic defeat, Baroness Scotia casts off her aristocratic title and takes up witchcraft instead. Then she starts digging for a mask that's really just a confusingly-named ring, and His Most Serene Highness, King Richard of Gladstone, gets voiced by Captain Picard. The End.
CONCLUSION
Krieg um die Krone is an entertaining and surprisingly accessible strategy game. It's probably too lightweight for die-hard wargamers, but for a novice like me, this game poses about the right tactical challenge. The difficulty can be adjusted by turning the dragon on or off, allowing/disallowing trolls to mobilize their armies from adjacent regions, and changing the troll breeding rate.
Graphically, the game isn't much of a looker, but the high-res graphics are clear and competently drawn. To be fair, most strategy games from the time were not known to be a showcase for the C64's technical abilities, Defender of the Crown being a rare exception.
You probably noticed that I didn't say anything about the game's sound. While the intro pictures come with music (which is reused in other titles from German Design Group), the game itself is completely silent.
Krieg um die Krone works perfectly fine as a single player game, but it becomes considerably more enjoyable against other humans. In my experience, players usually band together at first to go against the trolls, but as soon as one opens a chest, any nonaggression pacts dissolve faster than cotton candy in water.
German Design Group went on to publish a full-priced sequel, Krieg um die Krone II, which I haven't played. Judging by the screenshots, I can tell that it features a larger playfield, and the title screen uses graphics directly lifted from Defender of the Crown. Way to go, GDG!
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