Fantasy Wars is a classical wargame, Elemental is 4X TBS. It's a completely different genre.

Fantasy General works just fine in Dosbox. So does MOM, Dune2 and many others.

http://www.dosbox.com/

Fantasy General flat out rocked. Without a doubt the best soundtrack of any game I've ever played. But man the game was *hard*. The 5th continent was beyone scary - if you didn't have several totally maxed out Sky Hunters you were so much toast as I recall. It does seem to me that there was a "bug" in the game wher ethey had mixed up one of the troop types...the "bombers" maybe, so that the "mechanical" and "monster" troops were swapped. Anyone recall that?

I've got Fantasy Wars and FG is just better somehow. Maybe it is the shoulder pads LOL. But FG was, for my money, better than Conquered Kingdoms or Sword of Aragon. QQP put out some good stuff, but I think Lost Admiral was their best - the AI was viscious, much better than in CK. Sword of Aragon was very cool but the interface kind of sucked.

Alas, my FG CD is damaged. Anyone know where it can be had?

I think it's the more generic setting and, because of that, less varied troop types (no mechanical/magic/mortal). It just generally lost depth compared to FG.

I don't recall troop type label issues, but I never really used bombers - Skyhunters just tore them to shreds, as did Archers.

I can see uses for bombers as long as you provide escort with skyhunters and/or siege machines. Not so much for archers, which are sloow, AND move in closed formation meaning they're slowed by forests and rough terrain. Archers are simply the slowest infantry along with spellcasters (I don't see much use for these either).

It's not that archers aren't interesting tactically. Just taking them to frontline takes forever, and by the time you do it may already be over. Archers are better on defense, but in the campaign you need to move forward.

I've seen people praise skirmishers but say there's nothing special about light infantry. But LI is more versatile, strong melee attack protects them from skyhunters and they can compete with skirmishers in rough terrain. Also cavalry doesn't massacre LI the way it does skirmishers, in the open.

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Fantasy General did many things right, but also had some blunders. Unit progression (research) makes very little sense, such as upgrading heavy cavalry TO charriots. Historically, charriots were used because horses of the time weren't strong enough to bear a rider (and there was no stirrups, so which made use of lances and charging impossible).

The Archers support fire makes them invaluable, and they hard counter flying units. Spellcasters I agree with, they're incredibly niche. But Healers are quite useful, as are Druids on the 3rd Continent.

There is an updated version of Lost Admiral available by the original programmer Thurston Searfoss, tho I do not know how well it is supported these days. He were talking of redoing Conquored Kingdoms as well (but I think that project is no longer valid).

http://www.lostadmiralreturns.com/

I invite everyone to discuss Fantasy General strategies in a thread in Offtopic/PC Games where it belongs. I have a lot of fun playing as Mordra.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/351373