marketplace.comFor Lords of the Realm II fans Sierra announces more excitement new combat plus head-to-head combat on the Internet with other Lords of the Realm II fans. The Lords of the Realm: Royal Collection offers you everything you need. Get the original Lords of the Realm together with Lords of the Realm II and the Internet-ready Lords of the Realm II Siege Pack in the Royal Collection.ReviewForget about chivalrous kings and courtly honor: The Middle Ages sucked. If you didnt come down with a severe case of the Black Death in those days then your poor starving plague-ridden village was being ransacked by some neighboring tyrant. Sierra tries to capture the bleak reality of the bloody feudal struggles during these so-called dark ages in their recent turn-based/real-time strategy title Lords of the Realm II. Devout fans of strategy greats hoped that this would combine the best of both Warcraft II and Civilization II and while it falls just short of being that ultimate game Lords II still provides a challenging and entertaining experience for strategy enthusiasts. And challenging it is: The Middle Ages were tough times and similarly Lords of the Realm II is a tough game.The premise of Lords of the Realm II: The king has been axed and you along with other feudal lords are vying to capture neighboring fiefdoms and gain rule over the land. The majority of the game takes place in a three-quarter perspective (like Civilization II) showing your village surrounding industries (like mining tools production woodcutting and agriculture) and traders who tpartyl in and out of your territory periodically. The first part of a typical campaign is normally spent carefully managing agricultural resources and adjusting tax rates to foster more peasant growth and build up a decent economy. After a few seasons (each turn advances you a season) when industrial growth becomes more of a concern you can simply adjust a slider that controls your farming vs. industry priority. This all sounds pretty straightforward in ink (or electrons whatever ) but your peasants are fairly temperamental. They get ticked off by things like slight tax increases food shortages over-conscripting and being overworked. A happiness figure located on the toolbar indicates the status of your village and if your villagers arent feeling hunky-dory about the way youre governing theyll revolt at the drop of a hat.Once you have a decent number of (happy) peasants you can start conscripting them to build up armies. Different soldier classes - peasants knights archers pikemen and mercenaries - all become available depending on the storehouse of tools you possess. At some point you have to deal with the other power-hungry lords. These guys are real cocky bastards and their continual snotty provocations just make you want to get medieval on them all the more. Guide your troops over to meet an opposing lords army or allow him to try to attack a garrisoned castle and the screen automatically switches to real-time combat mode. Music gets a little more dramatic and as happens in Warcraft you select troops point and click on enemies and the chain mail flies. If youre defending a castle you can be really cruel dumping sizzling oil on enemies and perforating them with arrows while they try to break through your castle walls with siege towers catapults and battering rams.Ill have to admit its pretty exciting to defend a besieged castle. But on the whole the real-time combat in Lords of the Realm II could have been improved greatly. Your men are frustratingly difficult to maneuver stumbling around at times as though theyd just had a frontal lobotomy. Also just like a field of pre-adolescent soccer players the combat field gets a little too crowded too easily.Although the economic model of Lords I has been simplified to incorporate these action elements it still adds a new spin to and makes more challenging a title whic