Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!


Review and Download (if available)

OMFG!!!!!!!!

The last few games uploaded I've thought.... meh ok..but now! but NOW! I'm gonna cry with happyness, I love this game, completely forgot it existed.

The hours and hours of tension filled glory to fall apart at the last minute make this game one of my favs. + the whole cyberpunk thing :bleh:

Hey everyone,

Having a problem. I ran the .reg fil, then tried to run the game, but it just came up with a black screen, with a bar at the top with file, comm, etc across the top. The cursor was stuck on the hourglass, the program wasn't responding. I tried waiting a bit, still no dice. Any ideas?

(Oh, also, I tried running it in dos box, it said you can't run this program in dos mode.)

Thanks in advance!

LOL has anyone seen some of the people you can recruit. Including Used car salesmen, ex postal workers, road workers, fighting nuns, anti-templars(a organization devoted to dissolving religon), and ex-pro athletes!

I have a problem! I just can't reqruit gangs!! I klick and klick ant look but just can't find any way to recruit a gang!! Can someone please explain how to do? thanx

drag a persons pic in the r corner of the screen on to the place u wat to recruit them and wait a turn : )

oh!!!! thanx so very frikkin much!!! i rememper playing this game years ago, remember loving it..now i can get on with my life... thank you.

np :) LOL

Chaos Overlords is - as prooven on many LAN nights - the best roundbased strategic game ever made! You and your counterparts could do a lot of strategies and be cruel to each other on a way a Starcraft, C&C or an ordinary egoshooter could never provide.

Else there are very innovative modes to play in multiplayer. Espacily the "Eliminate" mode should be obligatory for every strategic LAN party... If you ever want to feel like a bloodthirsty headhunter seeking the right hands of your opponent, at the same time frightend to loose yours, you must play Caos Overlords. Timeless Good, like Chess...

So long, i like the smell of Monomrod sliced dog flesh in the morning...

Hi,
I'm having the same problem with the game locking up as "Guest" is. Any ideas on how to fix this? I love this game so I would hate to lose out on the chance to play it again. Thanks.

This is a very good game. It offers well balanced game play, and yet remains a challenge.

The game is structured game is structured around a few simple gang attributes, and a few simple location attributes; a thoughtful, yet basic economic system; and quick turn sequence. Yet these simplicities when combined form a game of full of hidden complexities.

This game was full of 'eureka' moments for me. I would play for (a long) while, then suddently realize, "Ohh,...that's how those attributes combine...", and immediately quit my current game, beginning a new one and checking out my new insight.

I highly recomment Chaos Overlords. It''s a game to which I will continually return.

My heartiest congratulations to New World Computing for creating one of the most engrossing albeit a visually non-stunning game. The gameplay of Chaos Overlords is so compelling even my mom(WHO HATES GAMES) played it and is still playing it! You are constantly trying to stay a step ahead of the ruthless AI. It could have done with a little more effort in the graphics department but the Dark and Moody setting gives the game a decent feel.
Verdict? if you've always harboured a secret fantasy to turn into a crime boss play this game and save ur self some behind whooping. :karate:

I quote every single word. :ok:

Tremendously fun, solid gameplay, many things to do & ways to play..that's not to mention the wicked humour (some of the gangs are just hylarious...)which makes it even funnier to play. :evil:

One of my favourite games, ever.

Sammo

I had this game's demo when it came out so I never got a chance to finish a game, however I still played the 15 turn demo constantly. Thank god for abandonia this is one of those games that never loses it's entertainment value!

Madre de dios ! What a fiendishly hard game !

I love it ! :kosta:

It actually took me four tries to win a game. The closest resemblance this game
has to any regular game is GO (which is even harder), due to you being able
to place gangs all over the board (the piece you control of it, that is).

I've played most of the games listed here and this one seriously springs out.
I can imagine going back to this one for decades.

Extremely highly recommended !

If only all games were like this (sigh)...

man, this game really kicks behind! i dopwnloaded it just because it says in the description it's a turn based strategy games and i downloaded it. well, it remained in my game folder for some days, then i started playing it last friday and i didn't stop till now! all i can tell is: "i was once an ufo fan", LOL.
now it's time to go back kick some overlords' asses :evil: :rifle:

Question on dealing with police. I have decent gangs with rage repeaters and reacting leather, but once cops come around, they get massacred. How the hell do you manage against police units?

Now THIS is a game for an evil genius! A game where you play as an evil lord of a mob, not to save the world, but to rule it!

HAHAHAHA! I LOVE IT!

Great game! My only complaint is that there is no music I could use for the game. Ah well, such is life.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must unleash my Blood Legion on the city.

hi
my name is yakov i am from israel and i am 16 years old
me and more to frens playing this game since we ware 9 years old
the first 4 years we played the demo version and after a long serches
we found the full 1.0 version
we played a lot of time a vere lot of time we played in internet and singal and wi think thet we know all the tricks to win evre one
so we looking for 2 group of 2 peapol thet want to play 2 againts 2 againts 2
or some 1 group of 3 player thet they have played to gether thet will play againts us(we are 3)we search for a long time some 3 players(thet they are frends) thet will play with us bat we didn't found
hope i will find here to contect with fast as you can
my e-mail is: yakov3003@bezeqint.net
my icq is: 133351567
and messenger is: yakov_@hotmail.co.il
thx....... ohhhhh and sorry about the bad english
<yakovi1> <SeR-ZxZ> <Elad7>

I found this forum out of a desperate search. I recieved this game on a demo disk some years ago, and fell in love with the song called 'Order' on it, my interests are that song entirely. I am tryin to find out who did the score. If you have the information concerning the song, any at all. Please email me at gnostkos@gmail.com I would appreciate any and all information concerning the song and or the composer(s) of said song. Thanks for your help.

well since everybody loves this game so much how about a winsock battle?

i cant host tho ;)


My ICQ:

258 695 367


EDIT
Sorry just now learned about the challenge forum :whistle:

now i dont mean to brag but the reason im searching for other players is because the AI sucks IMO.

ive read reviews where they say the difficulty is "impossible"... yeah right... i play the game on the highest setting and its a friggin joke. the AI will send unarmed hackers and bankers into your turf and just sit around thinking that being stupid will get the job done in due time.

just had to state that after hearing about the game being so damn hard wherever i look.

(im not even that good of a player... i think alot of people are just playing the game wrong)

still a great game tho (at least in MP)

Having played this fantastic game on your recommendation, it occurs to me that somebody really did ought to get it together and cross this concept with a Grand Theft Auto style game engine....(Whilst retaining the original strategy elements of course).
If only I'd studied programming and not music....
:sniper:

Wow, another great game from Abandonia! :ok:

I am very impressed with the character of gangs and all these wonderful pictures.

Chaos overlords is a great strategic game, as Xcom and Jagged Alliance is. Hmm, the only thing I wish to improvise this game is hotkeys for commands: C for chaos, B for bribe etc...

Highly recommended for all strategy game fans!!! You will immediately like it like I do, and besides ferocious battles and difference scenarios+strategy+characters, this game is very funny. If this game is made for internet playing this would be great success.

Cheers :cheers:

Omg!, I still have the cd for this game <3
Tho, this cd has a amazing soundtrack. Makes half of the game.
Great without Soundtrack. Amazing with.

This game deserves 6/5

I think what you're looking for is something more like Eidos' Gangsters.

Great game, but I have a great problem: each time I try to open a saved game the game crash for several errors end my game is lost.

Anybody have a suggestion for me?

Thanks in advance,

Marco

Downloaded it two months ago, and finally I've won a bloody game!
I can rest at last....

Yeaaaaah I'm french ! And I love this game , so If you have a good internet connexion , would you like enjoy a party with me ? It's quite easy play it on the web and more fun then in multiplayer on the same screen !
Contact me : borismemmi@hotmail.com

... and keep influence bro's !

An attempt to rekindle some discussion about this interesting game, I'd especially like to hear some opinions on strategy...

I just started playing this, and I must say I still don't always manage to come out as first on the easiest 2 levels... Especially if there's a time limit involved, I seem to lag a bit behind. Give me a couple of extra months and I'll get there.

Any hints, tips, breathtakingly original strategies?
In particular, have any of you managed to build a reliable "blitzkrieg" strategy, i.e. attacking almost as soon as possible to wipe out some players early in the game?

:help:

The game crashed after some sort of error, and my display is in utter disarray... it's as though everything has been shifted to the left so that 40% of the desktop is visible, and the remainder of the screen is black. Also, everything is also fuzzy-like and illegible, like sort of a mirage effect.

After rebooting NOTHING changes. :cry:

IF I lower screen res to 800X600 the mirage effect is gone, but changing to a higher resolution makes the display go crazy again.

Could this have something to do with the .reg file? What, if anything, can be done?


:cry: :wall: I am a horrible monster and pray for death :wall: :cry:

hey ive been playing this game since 2001. its amazing still to this day. i have the cd as well as the downloadable version of this. plus i even now have it on my mac. i love this game but im sick of playing with the AI and would like to test my polished skills against another obsessed fan. my email is amnesiac0101@yahoo.com hit me up anytime and lets all try to like get a game going on every sunday night or something.
- Joe

If you have trouble running the game (big blank screen, menu, mouse as sand clock) it might help to change the "chaosreg.reg"

change the line:
"prefsFullScreen"=dword:00000001
to
"prefsFullScreen"=dword:00000000

I changed the 1 to 0. Reregister the file (double click) and you know should be able to run it in window mode.

Just noticed this post.
All I need to do is disable the sound and music as soon as the game has loaded (via the menu), then the constant switching of the mouse cursor to a hourglass stops.

I need help to figure out how to play the game with a friend of a friend of mine online, we both have windows xp and good internet conection, we have tried the WinSock option but when one of us try to join the game it appears the error message "host doesnt exist or is not ready".

Please would you help me to get this working I really enjoy this game! Advanced Thanks!

"I need help to figure out how to play the game with a friend f mine"

my bad ;)

Are you playing via the internet? Because I and a few friends of mine tried that and it doesn't work. Or rather it does, but as soon as one player dies, the game is stuck and you can't continue regardless of how many players are left. We tried it a few times on different computers and we got the same result every single time, so I wouldn't. In fact, I bet the same thing happens when you play hot seat so unfortunately I'm guessing Chaos Overlords is pretty much a single player game.

Any developers out there?

We're trying to create a web-based version of the game - totally doable because it doesn't require animation and is turn based.

If you're interested, check out http://code.google.com/p/chaosoverload/

Please see www.chaosoverlords.com.

:max:


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Neck Kicker @ Aug 4 2006, 04:48 PM) [snapback]246744[/snapback]</div>

You should check out chaosoverlords.com. The original team is reviving the game.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Neck Kicker @ Aug 4 2006, 04:48 PM) [snapback]246744[/snapback]</div>

If Gnos reads this forum again, I can help...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gnos @ Jun 3 2005, 09:21 PM) [snapback]114599[/snapback]</div>

I seem to have an odd problem; the cops dont do anything. Sure, theres a note at the beginning of my turn that a cop crackdown has occured, but nothing more. No cyborg-death-fascist-cop-of-doom, no nothing. My gangers can just hang out, having fun, causing chaos, nothing happens. Takes away a lot of what the game is all about, I think. Any ideas? I tried patching it, still the same.

It's not a bug... it really takes quite some push before the cops will intervene. First you'll get the crackdown message, and only if you keep chaosing really hard (or if an opponent snitches on you) the cops will arrive.
You will often get the crackdown message because your gangs just happened to chaos slightly more than usual (a high 'roll' in the random generator) but that's usually not enough for the cops to intervene since the next turns your gangs will chaos less again.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(another_guest @ Mar 2 2007, 08:27 AM) [snapback]281569[/snapback]</div>Thanks alot! Should've read the manual more thoroughly, perhaps ^_^

Anyone know how I can contact John K Morris ?
This is seriously important.

I remember spending HOURS playing this game, it was so damn cool. I'm so happy that they're remaking it as well, I really can't wait.

:wallbash: I am looking for a patch for this game. Tried the 1.1patch but still crashes or says disk not loaded? Plays fine on ME with patch but not on XP. Is there a XP patch?

Very (very) doubtful.

Strange, I'm able to run it straight in Win XP. The only option I pick is to run it in a 640x480 window.
- Did you try to add the registry key (not sure whether I've done this, but it may make a difference when you do/don't use it)
- How about Dosbox?

Playing Chaos Overlords from CD on newer Windows
 

Hey guys,

I love this game and have the original CD but don't know how to play it on newer versions of Windows from the CD. Whenever I try to install the game it just says "This game requires Windows 95". Is there anything I can download or do to be able to run the CD? I have Windows 98 and XP.

Cheers, Rob

I've got Windows XP and I'm running it through Dosbox... Works just fine for Chaos Overlords.

DOX box tips needed for running Chaos Overlords
 

Hey Another Guest,

Thanks for the quick reply. I don't know what happened before but somehow I made a post as hpereira? Anyway, Im new to all this stuff and I downloaded Windows DOSbox Win32 installer 0.72 from the DOXbox website but I couldn't get anything to work from my CD. I used to play the game on Windows, not Mac if that makes any difference? How should I go about using DOSbox? I mounted the directory e (my cd drive), but then couldnt run anything from there it seemed. Any help or directions appreciated,

Cheers, Rob

I don't have any experience running games on cd using Dosbox, but I usually use D-Fend (a free front-end to Dosbox that automates a lot of the mount,... commands for Dosbox --> google for it to download) which works for Chaos Overlords. But again, I have it on my hard drive, not on cd. As far as I know that shouldn't make a difference though.

Hoping this helps :)

Killerkoz: Are you getting the "...Win95" message when trying to play it under Win98?

As for DOSBox, could you please post the exact mount command you are using to mount the cd drive?

Cheers for the help Another Guest. I downloaded D-Fend v2 off Wikipedia. In the Game EXE I put E:\_AUTORUN\LAUNCHER.EXE and in the Setup EXE I put E:\_SETUP\SETUP.EXE. It opens up DosBox but then says "This program cannot be run in DOS mode". Any ideas? Cheers again for the help,

Rob

Hey Mighty,

Yes I am getting that message - in Windows 98 and XP. I used D-Fend and the drive mounted ok, it got into the folders on the drive ok, eg. E:\Setup... or whatever it was. Cheers for the help,

Rob

Well, it's kinda tricky. I see on MobyGames that CO is a Windows game, from '96. Have you tried downloading the version found on Abandonia? If not, try that and see if it runs in XP or DOSBox. If it does, then chances are your cd has a "strictly Win95" version, which I only partially believe exists.

Thanks Mighty. I downloaded the version on this website and the game works - missing the sound, the pictures of the places in each sector and the full screen. It would have been good to run it off the original cd but sometimes these things just don't work out. Thanks to you and Another Guest for your help.

Cya, Rob

Did you try to run it in DOSBox for sound and all the other stuff?

Yay
 

It's all good! I ran the version on this site in Windows 98 and all the problems disappeared. Thanks guys for your help!

Cheers, Rob

QFT, sounds like me talking this game has THE BEST MUSIC of any game ever, I have played since the C64 days and Chaos Overlords is in my top 10 games of alltime. Any idea how to get this to run in DOS mode? I want to play Chaos Overlords on my PSP...PSP has DOSBOX emu, but my original CHAOS OVERLORDS is WIN95..how do i get it to work?

Anyone who has the full cd of chaos overlords, could you please make a iso and send to rapidshare or a torrent site?

Im sure a lot of people would enjoy to have the game working as it should, with the music and proper installation.

thanks.

i had this game years ago, but the cd was scratched and lost. if someone found the iso somewhere my email is [BEEEP]@gmail.com

Music
 

I have the original CD and also MP3s of the music. Is there someone I could email the MP3s to in order to get them shared? Or maybe even added to this site?

yo bluebmw, post here


(i see your account isn't fully activated btw, this is a bug, it will be sorted out soon)

Facebook group
 

Just search 'Chaos Overlords' and join up. Let's see if we can get some online matches going...
I'm gonna try to edit the Wikipedia entry to reflect this.

Hello I'm new and love this game, but in my stupidity put it on small window mode. I tried changing it back to full screen mode but every time i start the game it starts back in small window mode. is there any way this fault can be fixed as i love this game to bits, but i've tried uninstalling and its still keep recurring with this bug. Not letting me go back to full screen mode. This wouldn't normally be a problem but in small window mode when you click on part of the map all the graphics are white screened.

Please help a frustrated person who loves this game!

did you try alt enter?

when you uinstalled it, did you install it in the same directory? try different directory

hey guys more chaos ....
 

Im just curious if anyone knows what file would need to be edited to make the smgkickass cheat better (as in ground zeros and money and see all units)

I love this game i play it for 3 or 4 hours a week minimum ive been playing it today since 4am this morning and it is now 10:30 here.... :P

ive looked at the files but they seem to be encrypted I played another game... free lancer... and for that you needed a decrypting program im not sure if that program would work here or not

thanks a lot!

ch(overlord)aos

That you cannot make sense of the files doesn't mean they're encrypted.
More likely is that the data are stored in a binary form.
And no, that doesn't mean they're uneditable - but first you'd need to figure out which bytes are responsible for what, and that's a bit harder than you thought.

binary is what i ment... but the question is.. is there anyone out there who knows if theres a program to convert the files...

thanks again!

I doubt there's one, but with a bit of persistance and a hex editor it might be possible without one (at least in theory).

i thought about that too, but how do i figure out what does what? just trial and error?

That, and Sherlock Holmes' greatest weapon: deduction.
The data is usually arranged in some kind of logical fashion - the trick is in figuring it out.

I play Chaos Overlords all the time - its one of my faves.
If you want to add it to the crack list (I'm trying WITICS and Avish atm) the thread's somewhere - so I don't forget.

Either that or learn to use Debug from windows => Run (which can be a bizatch to use!!!) and get a Binary /Hex Editor - Beav is a good one.
This should help you:
http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/htc.txt

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3191076/Must-Have-Hacking-Tools-for-Both-the-Novice-and-Professional-Security-Tester

I've never cracked a Windows game before... I'm sure that if you search textfiles/piracy/cracking, you'll find help.
Remember to patch the game before you try to crack/hack it and also BACK IT UP!!! EVERY TIME!

I have never won a game of Chaos Overlords, even on easy - I had ONE person left to eliminate! I always come last in the timed games, but now I have the manual I'm doing better.

ps - the files aren't encrypted, but there are some missing from the game.
I'm not even going to touch cracking this one because I want to beat it for real!

I wouldn't mind to discuss some tactics; on easy I usually do quite ok but on any higher difficulty I'm usually wiped out by one of the AI's. They play surprisingly good in fact.

For me, I have to Alt+Tab to go back to desktop, minimising Chaos Overlords, then (depending on what else is going on) close down all processes that aren't needed - don't do this if you're not sure.

Did you follow the instructions right and BACK UP your registry by going to "Windows => Start => Run => regedit. Then File and Save.
Also - make a restore point.
You do this by pressing F1 or going to help from Start button.
Then you need to paste in the Chaos Overlord's Registry entries by double-clicking the file.

It is there at the bottom of the review.
Though - if it's not because of that, it may be that it's because the version here is missing files for sound and it seems to screw with graphics - especially if you don't save into the Chaos Overlord's own folder.
If you don't then it goes funny, like you describe, to me sometimes. I just Alt+Tab out and back in.

The game actually works better on a Mac using a Windows Emulator!
I agree that it'd be good to have the CD version, but the crack may be difficult (if there's on-disc copy-protection like Starfire)

What graphics card do you have?
Do you have the latest drivers?

For my PC Laptop, ATI drivers aren't very good - they don't let me play games. But there is an alternative that covers loads of different cards called Omega - http://www.omegadrivers.net .
They do ATI and Nvidea. Even ones not supported by the aforementioned companies anymore.

I think there was also a fix I had to do but I can't remember and have about 2 year's browsing history to search through - I'll PM you if I do remember it or find it again.

You may be able to right-click on Chaos Overlord's running icon and, if compatibility mode or anything is selected - turn it off. Especially uncheck "Run in Window" and check "Run in Window".
There is one last thing you can try - as I've just tested it out.

The game leaves some of its registry details behind - you need to delete them with regedit.
Remember to back-up and make restore points whenever you try to mess with Windows.
One reason I like Mac's about the same as PCs - they just do not go wrong. But you can't do a lot of stuff on them that you can on PCs without an emulator.
But you CAN get an excellent Mac emulator for PC called http://wwww.hackintosh.org (Hackintosh) - perhaps running it on a PC that's emulating MacOS, emulating Windows will fix it.

I'd try the graphics card, game's properties (from right-click on icon menu) and uninstalling everything and manually cleaning registry and folders, etc... first.
I wasn't really serious about the Hackintosh thing, but it may be a fix.

Good luck mate! I host games, but I've only ever managed to play online twice. And that was me and the mrs on our laptops - on the same network - because we couldn't be bothered to get the USB mouse to plug in so each of us had a pointer instead of having to pass the Laptop around each time.

Cool man!

Join up to the forums and we can start getting serious! Time to start beating these guys with Katana's and Tech's and don't forget..!

The manual really helps - it lets you know which weapon is best against a unit, blade or gun or Martial Art.
Have you ever noticed how sometimes, you do no damage even if your attack is nearly max? It's 'cos of unit resitances.

Maybe - if you got onto the forum as a regular (signed up) we could write a strategy guide for it to put up here.:max:
This game is fecking awesome and even better Multi-player. Second only to Sniper Elite and Guitar Hero, etc...
I like turn-based strategy games - it means that we can chat and relax and smoke a doobie or try to distract the mrs by going down on her or something.

We play VGA planets, Scorched Earth, et al...

Yet, even though I was playing these games before she was even alive, she still beats me...
:no:
Literally, too. I am a beaten husband; oh wherefore doth she folly and perform cruel and humiliating acts of corporeal woe upon my person?!

Heh, I joined years ago, it's just that sometimes the forum gives me grief when I try to log in :doh2:

True, I have to admit that battles don't always turn out how I expect.

I find that at least on easier difficulties it's best to expand rapidly in the beginning, then influence cash-gushing buildings; typically this puts you ahead of the AI in terms of income.

Your hiring plan also matters much:
1) Early on I go for troops that can take control of sectors
2) Next some troops that are strong without weapons, yet not too expensive in upkeep. Preferably ones that can influence buildings
3) A few high tech researchers to get your hands on the obvious weapons of tech level 4-6.
4) Time to strengthen your borders with more advanced troops (good detection, may need some weapons to become strong)
5) Each turn, either hire or get rid of the least desirable candidate. Not doing either is useless. In the early phase it's often even good to go for weak, low upkeep troops that can increase your income through chaos; these cheap troops actually have their use.

Most of the times when the AI wins, it's because I either waited too long to research weapons (and they show up with the rugby player with some crude armor and a lead pipe or similar basic weapons) or to switch from cash-cow mode to building up defenses.
The only exception is if you're being attacked by too many AIs at the same time.
Another weakness is that I don't pay enough attention to detection; often I'll be surprised at one of my borders by stealthy attackers I can't see. On the other hand, two can play that game and I usually only use weapons that don't damage my stealth ratings.

What are your key factors to success or your main reasons for defeat?

I'll come back to this one, matey - There are quite a few reasons why I always fail!
I'll let you know when I've finished. A short guide would definitely help people and make the game more popular - I really want to get a complete version that we can put on site.

I'll see if I can find one to buy or something ;)

Nice one!
A strategy column for games on Abandonia for the AT would be a good regular feature, I reckon.

Strategy on how to win in Homicidal Maniac
 

The secret is 'Stealth' and 'positive cash flow':

- Start by hiring the cheapest stealthy gangs and one high tech level (9 or 10) gang, and try to control 5-6 blocks that increase your stealth (back alley network, etc.) and one with a science center.

- Your initial goal is to chaos as long as possible with the cheap gangs until you research inviso cloak, camo suit, smoke bombs, and can hire a forger, Hacker, or Banker. At Homicidal Maniac level all the AIs will team up against you, but it will take a few turns before they will invade your blocks with more than 3 gangs at a time. That's why your cheapees with a 9 or 10 comulative stealth have a very good chance of going undetected and chaos away for a while.

- Once you've got a hard to detect positive flow gang, move it to remote corners of the map, deep inside enemy territory (make sure its a low traffic block, meaning that the AI owns 2 or 3 blocks surrounding it). This is your insurance, because even if they kill off the rest of your gangs and take all your blocks, you'll stay in the game and continue to slowly make money (I've come back and won the game with one single forger and no blocks). Keep hiring these 'farm' gangs whenever you have a chance, and NEVER use them to fight or control until you own half the city.

- Your next goal is to research monom rod, body stabilizer, battle armor, and Plasma Gen in that order. At this point the AIs are probably starting to detect/kill your gangs and taking blocks. Don't worry about it and just focus on researching these items. Try to create a buffer between your science ctr block and and the AIs, and hold them off by hiring cheap gangs to stall them.

- Now that you have your essential items researched, you can try to secure a corner of the map (less borders to defend). You need to strategically pick the corner with one science ctr block, and blocks that have stealth, healing, and money in that order of importance. To do so you need to hire high stealth gangs that can attack: Team StickMan with inviso cloak, emp enhancer and monom rod is nearly undetectable, packs good damage, heals nicely, and has good control/influence. I usually don't start the offesive until I have 2 or three of these fully equipped. You will also need a couple of heavy hitter/damage absorbing units (Angel of Arcadia, Ground Zero, Trantian Fusers) fully equipped and with body stabilizers.

- The moment you start controlling blocks again, the AIs will hit you hard with 3-4 gangs each. Your goal is to attack their heavy hitters with your stealthy guys (StickMan), while your ground zeros kill off the weak gangs, take damage and heal. The reason you want to kill the weak gangs is you want to avoid to many gangs in the sector so that your stickmen stay undetected.

- Once you survive the initial waves, expand using a stealth unit paired up with a heavy hitter. Remember to keep your borders guarded with 2 mid level stealthy gangs (Shadow Ninja, Ebon Order, Night Crawler, etc.), while your inner blocks are being farmed by the cheap gangs (also equipped with stealth items, in case your borders get breached)

Final hints:
- don't waste your time on detection items, just move 3-4 gangs to where the stealthy enemy is and you'll see him and kill him quickly;
- every gang is useful, you just need to know where to place it;
- you can typically chaos with 2 gangs in one sector as long as their chaos doesn't exceed the sector's tolerance level.
- always use body stabilizer or pain negator for your non stealth units
- Martial artists are good only for mid-game guarding, when you have enough income to support them, and sectors with Alleys/temples.

Challenge (no time limit, no reloading because you don't like the starting gangs, and no save/re-loading):
- beat 'Armaggeddon' in homicidal maniac (Chaos Lord)
- beat 'kill 'em all' in homicidal maniac (Chaos Overlord)
- beat 'kill' em all' in homicidal maniac AFTER giving up all your gangs and sectors except one fully equipped forger (Chaos God)

Great information, will certainly keep that in mind whenever I pick up Chaos Overlords again, thanks :thumbs:
I had no idea that having multiple gangs in 1 sector improves your chances of detecting enemies, that is very, very useful to know!
For chaosing gangs I would say it's best to keep a buffer between the total of your gangs' chaos and the sector's tolerance level: whenever the chaos exceeds the tolerance level, you're missing out on income and risk a police crackdown. Therefore it's more profitable to chaos a little less, but have income every turn.

As there is no patch file included in the download, can anyone confirm that the executable is already patched?

No prob :)

The chaosing part you're talking about is optimal and true for lower levels and when you have plenty of sectors. But in Homicidal Maniac you will have more gangs than sectors...most likely 2-3 per sector, especially when you're starting to go on the offensive, so every dollar you can squeeze counts, instead of having idle gangs. So I tend to push the tolerance levels, then take it easy (below tolerance) after 2 crackdowns for 2 turns. Remember you will lose your sector if you get 3 crackdowns in 4 or 5 turns (I forgot the exact number of turns).

Once you own a quarter of the map, your strategy comes into effect.

When you own half the map, you definitely want to have a healthy tolerance buffer, because I noticed I got crackdowns even when my Chaos level was half the tolerance. I'm not sure if it's part of the game to increase the chances of crackdowns when you have several sectors.

Either that, or the chances of your gangs going over the tolerance level is higher because you have many more sectors and gangs. From what I remember, the actual chaos every turn is the chaos level of a gang plus or minus a random number. So the more sectors, the higher the chances of those random numbers reaching some extreme values.

You're right! :D Now it makes sense...

Is there a patch I'm missing?

I've been gettng muckstomped on the 'kill all' setting.
Opponents are letting other people pass through their territory peacefully to come attack me.
It's like fighting one enemy with 5 times the resources as I have. I can hold out for a few hours, but eventually I run out of funds or they slip people past my 12 and 15 detection to get at my undefended areas they shouldn't be able to reach.
I just don't have the resources needed to have 4 or 5 powerful gangs in every space I own and still make progress.

Perhaps that's the meaning of "kill all": you have to kill all?

In case the meaning of that's still unclear, don't forget that the manual is here:
Manual
Reference Card

I've also found this helpful - it also explains a bit about the multi-player modes:
Unofficial Guide

[ed]
I haven't found any problems with Mac/PC inter-operability so far (in multi-player).

:mhh: Page Eight..? I only have 5 pages for this thread... Guess I have my forum preferences set up differently.

What's your difficulty level? On Homicidal Maniac they will gang up against you.

Also, your approach is wrong: you're trying a "muscle" defense when you really need stealth. Forget detection items, you need to focus on (cheap and cash-generating) stealth gangs. Put two or three on your borders, don't worry about powerful gangs until you have enough money to afford 3-4 per sector, and even then, make sure you pair up a stealthy 'heavy hitter' (team stick man, sniper) with a 'muscle' gang (ground zero, iron cadre)

See my strategy on page 8 of this thread...always works for me.

Cant get it working
 

I am running a 64 bit windows 7 home edition and I cannot get this to run. I have set compatibility to win95, done the fullscreen fix suggested above to set it as a window, I am not sure what else to do. As someone said it is a win95 games so I cannot run it in DOSbox to my knowledge.

Has anyone gotten this to run in a 64 bit environment, hopefully window 7?

Did you read this?:



Apart from that, I can only recommend to run a 32bit operating system as virtual machine.

Just for the record, there appears to be a Facebook page now for the in-development new version of Chaos Overlords:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chaos-...18573421512394

Doesn't look like there's been much activity, though.

Have there been any updates on its' state for last year or so?

Last was in April:

They don't seem to post much, which is foolish if you're going to maintain an FB page, since that's pretty much it's main function: establishing and keeping contact with others.

Cant get it working
 

well that almost worked. I downloaded VMware and installed a Windows 98 operating system. Move the game into the virtual machine, and was able to play for a couple hours. Next day tried to play again and started getting the "funky" error when it's unable to load files. This completely crashed the system for the most part. I get the option to start a new game or open an old game but I can't see anything and any choices made here crash the system.

I don't have any saved games at this point, as I deleted the entire folder several times, clean the registry several times, and re-copied the chaos folder that originally worked back over to the virtual machine. Now nothing seems to work!

Very frustrated, anyone have any ideas?

Not since April. I frankly wouldn't have expected many, but if they were going to start a FB page, they should have realized that people would use it to, well, communicate.

Ragnoff: I've gotten the funky error before when I've saved the game outside of the folder. My chaos installation is in C:\Chaos, and by default the game tries to save in My Documents or something, so make sure you manually change the location to C:\Chaos or whatever

I appreciate I'm somewhat late but hey, this is also an old game, improves with age and the absence of a reboot right?

I have the game working well, including saving and restoring save games, on a Windows 7 64 bit installation.

The one and only thing I've done to achieve this is run the game via D-Fend Reloaded. In detail what I did was:

1. Install D-Fend Reloaded (I used a portable installation)
2. Manually created a game folder for Chaos Overlords in the D-Fend Virtual HD folder
3. Unzipped the content of the archive for Chaos Overlords downloaded from this site
4. Used Profile > Add Manually within D-Fend Reloaded and told it to run Chaos Overlords.exe
5. In game, disabled the music to prevent the flickering cursor
6. Set my windows taskbar to auto-hide, so that it did not obscure part of the gaming screen (I can only run fullscreen, haven't managed to run inside a window yet)

Does anyone know of a location from which the soundtrack for Chaos Overlords can be downloaded? I've been listening to the individual tracks on Youtube, and by gosh they are stunning.

CO soundtrack
 

I would also love to get the soundtrack for this game. I downloaded a file that said it was the full game with the soundtrack included. But I cant get the music working or even find the files.

In win7 the game is unable to write in registry however it can read, the reg should look something like this.
The best way to determine where the keys are - is to start procmon utility, filter only Chaos Overlords process out and apply a second filter with "Path" -> "contains" - > "Stick Man Games".