Expeditions: Conquistador Discussion Thread

[JarlFrank]

An historical

Why?
Whenever I see people write "an historical" it confuses me because that's extremely hard to pronounce compared to "a historical", and you only use an when the word begins with a vowel.
Do you not pronounce the h in historical??

Well its better than ahistorical.

But it gives me an eurysm

 

[Deuce Traveler]

An historical

Why?
Whenever I see people write "an historical" it confuses me because that's extremely hard to pronounce compared to "a historical", and you only use an when the word begins with a vowel.
Do you not pronounce the h in historical??

The answer is I'm old.

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-historic-vs-an-historic/

Time has passed me by and I need to get with modernity and avoid such an honest mistake. It's been an honor to answer you.

 

[Darth Roxor]

as long as you dont become an hero

 

[Infinitron]

GameBanshee finally reviews Conquistador: https://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/125707-expeditions-conquistador-review/all-pages.html

Introduction

Back in 2012, when we were all naïve enough to believe that publishers were the big bad and crowdfunding was the future, it wasn't unusual to see millions of dollars go into projects that would inevitably overpromise and underdeliver.

This enthusiasm for crowdfunding, however, allowed Logic Artists, a small Danish studio, to narrowly hit their humble Kickstarter goal of $70,000 and finance Expeditions: Conquistador - a historical RPG that invited us to explore the newly-discovered America as a squad of Spanish conquistadors.

The game launched in 2013 and was successful enough to warrant a sequel - Expeditions: Viking. That one was released back in 2017, with the third game in the series, Expeditions: Rome, currently scheduled to launch later this year, but with how things are these days, we probably should expect it sometime around 2022.

So, at this point, it's safe to say that following that original Kickstarter success, Logic Artists was able to carve out a fairly unique niche for themselves, one that's all about historical RPGs with a strong focus on exploration.

But that's a pretty wide umbrella. The actual games differ greatly from one another. Conquistador took after King's Bounty in its general structure, only with individual units instead of recruitable troops. Viking was closer to a traditional isometric RPG with its overworld map dotted with self-contained locations and a more story-driven adventure. And now Rome promises to shake things up again.

And while we've already reviewed Viking and are eagerly awaiting Rome, up until now, the original game in the series was somehow able to avoid a closer examination. To remedy this oversight, we offer you our review of Expeditions: Conquistador.

Age of Exploration

Expeditions: Conquistador puts you in the shoes of a young Spanish noble with a seemingly simple mission - set sail to the New World and bring back riches and glory for both the Crown and yourself. Now, how you go about this task, is very much up to you.

And to help you decide how you're going to be approaching things, the game will ask you to create a character and assemble a crew of up to ten followers.

Your main character serves the "hero" role and doesn't directly participate in battles. Instead, he or she (and in Conquistador this choice affects a reasonable number of dialogue options and even some quests) has six attributes that include Tactics, Diplomacy, Healing, Survival, Scouting, and Leadership. All of these have clear uses for an aspiring conquistador and can be manually raised all the way up to ten.

Your starting crew will then include a combination of Doctors, Hunters, Scholars, Scouts, and Soldiers, with other, predominantly native classes like Shamans becoming available later in the game.

Followers will not only act as your main fighting force, but also improve your character's attributes, with Soldiers making you better at Tactics, Doctors improving your Healing skills, and so on. Leadership then, is the odd one out, as you can only increase it by promoting your followers to officers. More on that later.

Your followers aren't mere cannon fodder or stat boosts, though. They all come with a small bio section, weapon proficiencies, and three personality traits that run along the lines of Greedy or Altruistic, Racist or Openminded, and so on. With each character having three traits, it's pretty much impossible to assemble a party that would agree on everything, resulting in frequent clashes and confrontations.

Managing your followers' expectations then becomes an integral part of the game, as acting in ways they disapprove of lowers their morale, and that reduces their combat efficiency and can even lead to a mutiny. This forces you to walk a tightrope between the kind of conquistador you want to be and what your crew expects of you.

And the game is very much eager to provide you with plentiful opportunities for that in its two campaigns. The first one is smaller and doubles as the tutorial. There, you'll be dealing with some rebels trying to overthrow Hispaniola's legitimate governor, and in the process learning the ropes, interacting with the natives, and immersing yourself in the game's setting.

The second campaign is the main dish, then. The map is larger, the stakes are higher, and you get to explore all the story threads introduced in the first one. The big thing there is a civil war within the Aztec empire, where you can support one of two warring factions, or alternatively use this chaos to your advantage and pillage a bunch of valuables, since the game's ending depends among other things on how rich you are by the time you're done with your campaign.

The game's world is populated with major and minor settlements where you can trade, interact with the locals and take up quests in a very much RPG fashion. Outside of those, you'll be traversing a wild and untamed land packed with events, points of interest, and treacherous terrain. The curious thing here is that you can pan the camera, but only a little, so you never know what you'll discover next.

All of this is presented to you through a bird's eye view reminiscent of King's Bounty or Heroes of Might and Magic, where your party is represented by a lone horseman and all the points of interest are usually just one or two buildings you have to click on to start an event.

Your party has a limited number of movement points that last you longer on roads than they do in some Aztec swamp. Once you're out, you need to make camp and feed your troops. Making sure you have sufficient supplies is crucial, as food in Conquistador has the annoying tendency to run out.

Camping also leads to various events where your followers get to argue or fall in love, slaves become especially rebellious, and thieves will do their best to steal everything not bolted down.

To make things at least somewhat manageable, you'll be able to task your followers with guarding your camp, scouting the surrounding areas, and hunting for extra supplies. While camping, you'll also be able to tinker with your equipment, improving your party's long-term performance. Tinkering also allows you to create consumables like net traps and caltrops you'll then use during battles. And on occasion, contextual events will allow you to go fishing or raid burial grounds.

Still, it's pretty much impossible to perfectly cover all your bases while camping. Things will go wrong. The important thing then is how you deal with those setbacks.

With the game being out for quite a while at this point, you can't help but hear things. And one of the more common complaints about Conquistador is that managing your camp is too annoying. And because of that, Viking already simplified camping, and now Rome is looking like it's going to move even further away from Conquistador in that regard.

And that's really a shame. First of all, there really isn't anything too daunting about camping. When starting your campaign, you need to make sure to use perishable meat before your usual rations, task your soldiers with guarding the camp, hunters with hunting, etc. And that's pretty much that. You have the basic setup that will carry you through the game. You will only have to alter it when a contextual event pops up, you get a surplus of meat, or some of your soldiers get injured during a battle.

But in return for this slightest bit of hassle, you get rewarded with a feeling of managing a party in an untamed land, watching supplies dwindle, and not knowing if you'll be able to find some rations for your troops.

Games with tough choices get applauded, but at the end of the day, most of those are merely flavor. In Conquistador, you can choose to pillage a native village for supplies, or you can choose to tough it out in the hopes of catching a break soon. But if you don't, your party's morale will start deteriorating, which may eventually result in a mutiny and a campaign loss. And so you have to decide where your morals end and self-preservation begins.

Alternatively, you can just be a jolly pirate, pillaging for the fun of it and buying your crew's loyalties with fat freshly-looted rations. The choice is yours. And to think that all of this was gutted because some players couldn't be bothered to check some boxes every once in a while.

Well, whatever the future may hold for the series, and Viking at least was still a very good RPG, we'll always have Conquistador. Few other games out there offer a similar sense of wonder. The game invites us to explore a land of superstition, one where you can never be sure if the supernatural elements are real or merely products of your overactive imagination reacting to being immersed in a new land that's so unlike anything you've seen before.

Conquistador's art, and portraits, in particular, do a great job of selling its setting. Its character all speak in a manner that makes you believe that they really are Spanish conquistadors, as opposed to just modern-day people glued to a slightly washed-out canvas. Or worse, some slapstick routine. And in this day and age, finding a game like this is about as rare as actually discovering the City of Gold or the Fountain of Youth.

Cool Hats for Everyone

Being a conquistador, a lot of fighting is kind of right there in the job description. And in Expeditions: Conquistador that fighting will be happening in a turn-based fashion on a hex grid.

The game eschews individual initiative in favor of alternating turns between two sides of a conflict. Which side goes first is often determined by various skill checks and events leading up to the battle.

If you get some time to prepare, you can deploy barricades, traps, or even a cannon in order to even the odds, since your enemies are oftentimes more numerous. Your standard battle party consists of six people, although certain scenarios stick you with five or even just three soldiers. Your enemies though can easily double your numbers. The most common objective is to eliminate your opposition, but occasionally, you'll be tasked with just surviving a set number of turns or disabling all your enemies before they escape.

Your followers' classes determine their combat stats, initial weapon options, and active skills. Each class has three unique active skills unlocked by ranking up, and if upon unlocking all of those you keep promoting a certain character, they'll become an officer, begin improving the whole team's morale, and unlock a new active skill independent of their class. With you being the Captain, you can have up to two Sergeants and one Lieutenant in Conquistador.

Ranking up also grants one passive ability and improves a follower's camping skills. While the latter are self-explanatory, the former can improve a character's combat prowess in a variety of ways, like making them more resilient to critical hits or improving the damage they do when flanking.

All in all, the combat system is fairly complex and isn't too streamlined. You're not limited to two actions per turn and are instead free to spend your attacks and movement points in whichever order you see fit. Direct line of sight is significantly more important than mere cover, and flanking requires you to actually flank an opponent, and not just have two or more characters adjacent to an enemy.

On the other hand, the game's classes aren't created equal. Scouts are so much better than just about any other class that you will always want to have as many of them as possible. Their supposed drawback is their lack of ranged weapons. But it just so happens that ranged weapons in Conquistador are borderline useless.

Even your best sharpshooters will have around 80% hit chance on a target in a clear open field, with your other classes scoring as low as base 30%. And if you know anything about probability when it comes to turn-based games, this translates into you never being able to actually hit anything. But when a miracle happens and you land a shot, it will generally do less damage than a melee attack that always hits.

The game's passive abilities are also very much uneven, with some of them being barely usable, while others are an absolute must. And since you only get a few of them, you don't get a lot of room for experimentation. This lack of viable options then makes the game's battles feel a bit samey after a while.

Still, overall, the game's combat system, while not overly varied, is more than solid. Plus, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. The injuries you receive during battles take at least a few days to heal, incentivizing you to be cautious and strive for flawless victories.

Another curious thing about Conquistador's combat and character development systems is that both experience and equipment go into a general pool, with you being free to choose which of your followers to promote. Equipment takes things even further and instead of actual items exists as an abstract resource you can use to upgrade the gear of your followers. And while spending experience is a permanent action, you can freely redistribute equipment depending on who you want to take into battle.

One last thing to mention here is the game's difficulty settings. There are four default presets you can then further customize by adjusting how deadly the AI is going to be or how many resources you're going to find during your travels. There's also an optional Ironman mode if that's your thing.

Technical Information

Unfortunately, Conquistador was one of the early adopters of the Unity engine. Which means the game utilizes way more resources than it has any right to and is prone to occasional stutters even on modern machines. Things aren't too bad, honestly, but you’d expect a game from 2013 to run silky smooth, and that's not exactly the case here.

Other than that, the game isn't prone to crashing and doesn't have any glaring bugs other than an occasional visual glitch.

Speaking of visuals, they're not exactly high-end, but they're aesthetically pleasing, especially when it comes to character portraits and loading screens. Still, with the graphics being fairly basic, it's the game's music that does a lot of heavy lifting to sell the setting to you. And it really gets the job done. The tracks are both memorable and appropriate.

Unlike some other early Unity games that outright claimed it was impossible to implement a proper save system (only to then add it in a post-release patch), Conquistador offers both manual and autosaves that work without any noticeable issues.

The game also has a multiplayer mode that allows you to fight duels with your friends by first putting together two teams and then throwing them into your arena of choice.

Conclusion

Expeditions: Conquistador is a game that despite its budget-related limitations manages to fill you with the spirit of adventure. It is easily one of my favorite games of the whole Kickstarter gold rush era, and I can't recommend it enough to anyone looking for a unique experience. And if you so happen to find the conquistador aesthetic really cool, you'll enjoy it all the more.

 

[razvedchiki]

how much starting diplomacy i need for a diplomatic playthrough? 10?

 

[Alphons]

how much starting diplomacy i need for a diplomatic playthrough? 10?

I'd go with 8 or even 6. You can get a scholar and a civilian in Mexico for extra 4 points.

 

[Sranchammer]

I'm concerned about the lack of discussion regarding the role of slavery in this game. I hope the majority of dialogue is dedicated to it.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Playing this right now on Insane difficulty (cause I am INSANE!).

Overall, very good game, but some shit in it just nibbles my giblets.

I HATE the fucking camp event system mechanics with a passion, specifically the way you have no control over them at all. Put up a bunch of qualified guards to guard the camp for the night rest (say up to 88-92% guard rating), doesn't matter a fucking bit, if they script in a night attack, it's gonna happen regardless. Same for theft.


Then of course, if that wasn't bad enough, fucking 8 attackers on 6 defenders, and since the defenders were caught by surprise (you know, LARPing that I DIDN'T HAVE an army guarding the camp), my guys are in their underwear, armed with daggers.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Ok, now I am fucking stuck. Made it to the end of the game on Insane difficulty, and trying to take Tenochetlan with the useless Totecs allies.

Stuck on the causeway battle, trying to enter the city. I've enjoyed the game in general, but the design on this quest is literally one of the worst I've ever seen in my life. You have 15 turns to take out 14 enemies, which are spread out over multiple "rooms" connected by chokepoint corridors, with barricades, caltrops and other shit in between. So doing basic math, you have roughly a turn to take out a single enemy, and how this makes sense in a game where you only get one attack per turn, and 6 people, one of which has to be a doctor, cause you are getting pepper sprayed with poison arrows every second, I have no fucking idea.

I've tried different approaches, and winning the battle itself is pretty easy, but there is just no fucking way I can see doing it in 15 turns. The closest I've come so far is 2 enemy survivors after 15 turns, which makes you lose the battle anyway.

I've used soldiers with a doctor, used lanterns, cannon, etc, but you are very limited in tactics in this one just because of the map layout (e.g. cannon can only be placed at the entrance and is immediately out of play for anything beyond the first space), and the time limit makes you rush through everything, not giving you a chance to apply any tactics.

Anybody here beat this shit on insane and got any tips?

P.S. Another piece of retardation, at the start of the quest, you can use your tactics score to have allies shoot arrows into the enemy. According to the LARP section, this causes enemy deaths, but I've tried both ways, and it doesn't seem to make any difference whatsoever in enemy numbers, mission difficulty, etc.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I never played the game on insane and now I think of it, never completed it either, great combat engine, boring exploration and a lot of minor nuisances like the ones you mentioned piling up.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ok, now I am fucking stuck. Made it to the end of the game on Insane difficulty, and trying to take Tenochetlan with the useless Totecs allies

Passed down to you by Cuauhtémoc, Eagle Warrior of Tenochtitlan

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

There is something legitimately weird about that causeway battle in E:C. So as I said, I had to take out 14 enemies in 15 turns on Insane, enemies behind barricades, caltrops, several maps and tight corridors. This is impossible.

But I thought let me search the web, someone probably has some tips or something. Nothing. I can't find a single thing referencing that battle. Found one walkthrough online, the guy goes through the same battle, facing 10 enemies AND NO time limit. Wtf?

Ok, so I thought he is playing on an easier difficulty level, let me swallow my pride and lower the difficulty. I lower the difficulty, and the number of enemies and time limit do not change at all.

This is next level retardation. Logic Artists are lucky I played and enjoyed Expeditions: Viking, otherwise I would have refunded Rome just on the basis of this bullshit.

 

[Darth Roxor]

maybe you need to l2p

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

maybe you need to l2p

Words are cheap, El Raton, tactics to defeat 14 enemies in 15 turns or gtfo.

P.S. Or alternately, tactics to change difficulty within save-game, cause apparently this game needs tactics to do this.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

tactics to defeat 14 enemies in 15 turns or gtfo.

Beat one dude per turn.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Alright, spilling over from the Rome thread, i decided to give this series a spin and imma start with the original. I'm thinking going insane right off the bat. I'm not entirely sure what playstyle i'd like to make though. I'm tempted to make every stat even, except healing which i remember reading somewhere can be used as a dump stat since the game throws a lot of healing supplies at you. Also, there's comments like this in this very thread:

how much starting diplomacy i need for a diplomatic playthrough? 10?

I'd go with 8 or even 6. You can get a scholar and a civilian in Mexico for extra 4 points.

So right now i'm going like this:

Tactics = 8

Diplomacy = 6

Healing = 3

Survival = 7

Scouting = 7

Leadership = 7

I have a feeling this is the kind of game where it's best to pick a particular route and stick with it but until i play it i have no idea what i'd like to do, either go the diplomatic route or just genocide all the natives etc.

BTW, i did find a mod to fix the "wokeness" but in typical mod fashion it wants to change other things besides lowering the incredibly unrealistic female to male ratio:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/expeditions-conquistador-realism-mod

Might not be a good idea to use this on first playthrough.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Mmmmh, i'm looking at the companions and i see there's personality traits to consider, so i guess i'll have to pick a direction to take from the get go. Funny how the nun is the "racist" one. I guess the l1brul writers of this game have no idea what catholics were actually like during the conquest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomé_de_las_Casas

I'm think i'm gonna fight against this game's prejudices and try to play it according to my own sensibilities. My group will neither seek to butcher the natives but it will try to bring the words of Christ to them and will reject and stamp out all the Pachamama shit. Fuck you.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i loaded the game. Man this game has the WORST antialiasing setting i've ever seen, and the bloom is also terribad. Had to remove both. I like the portraits at least.

BTW i also can't find a UI scaling option and everything looks a bit tiny on my 1440p screen.

 

[Beowulf]

Man this game has the WORST antialiasing setting i've ever seen

Have you played Alien Isolation?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Man this game has the WORST antialiasing setting i've ever seen

Have you played Alien Isolation?

No actually. Now i must check that shit out too lmao.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Damn, i'm getting old. I can't play at 1440p. I can read the text but it's just so small that my eyes tend to get strained after a while and since there's no UI scaling i had to set the resolution to 1080p. This makes things a little fuzzy but there's nothing much i can do about it. The game isn't exactly amazing in terms of graphics so i guess i just have to roll with it (can always put it back to 1440p for battles).

Anyway, this is what i finally came up with:

Spoiler

The name is a mix between Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who became a Christian saint, and Tomás Luis de Victoria, the greatest Spanish composer of the Renaissane. Victoria also means victory in Spanish which is exactly what i'm gonna do! I also picked the Klaus Kinski difficulty preset because i'm not a slack-jawed faggot!

Now, this is my roster of sordid characters. For the record, i DO plan on recruiting natives despite picking mostly racist or pious characters. I'm gonna make that part of the challenge. The real conquistadores made alliances with the natives and used them against each other after all, and i doubt there were a lot of "l1brul" types among their rank and files which means commanders like Cortés or Pizarro probably had to deal with a lot of internal malcontent. The aim of this playthrough is mostly conquest but i'm also gonna do a little bit of diplomacy if it's possible. I put leadership as high as i could as i probably need it to keep the band in check. I expect SOME of them will mutinity, specifically the ones that have too many conflicting traits but we'll see. I'm not going to be actively racist, but on religious matters there's not going to be any compromises. In fact, i consider bringing the light of Christ to the heathens to be an act of mercy and to be for their benefit!

Anyway, first, i have a doctor and his nurse assistant:

Spoiler

I wanted at least one l1brul type to see how that pans out.

Next, i have two hunters, both of them very religious, but with a bit of conflicting attitudes:

Spoiler

For my scholar i picked the nun. I'll need her help to convert the natives:

Spoiler

For my scout, i picked this unruly veteran:

Spoiler

I actually plan to add a native scout if it's possible which would make for some knewl roleplaying possibility.

Lastly, those are my soldiers. No wombynz in this rough bunch of course:

Spoiler

And so it begins. Wish me luck!

Spoiler

 

[Darth Roxor]

Every self-respecting man always takes the nun, Quintero and Ruiz.

 

[Lyric Suite]

WTF i can't even step into the game that all my shit has been impounded. Serving the king my ass i very much doubt any governor would have the authority to simply confiscate goods like that.

I wonder how consequences in this game work. I was very rude to both the captain and the governor. Wonder if dialog choices like that will have any impact.

 

[Barbarian]

Don't forget to recruit

Spoiler

The bald giant chapter 1 villain guy

You need a backer code or file in order to do that if I remember correclt, but just ask and surely some bro here will provide via PM(that is the way I got him when I played). Not only he has the most unique content of any follower, he has a unique model and appearance as well.

 

[Abu Antar]

Lyric Suite I built a PC, able to play 1440p or 4K... yet I reverted back to playing at 1080p. My eyes aren't scaling to high resolution levels.