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)

I hope that you enjoy this game as much as i do ;)

Even today 12 years later when i played it for the first time, the game is still fun to play.

Petter1979 :ok:

Looks like they broke some intellectual property laws while making that game. Those "cyborg" look like they are taken from Macros and Battletech.

Hmmm, never played this one before, looks promising, thanks Peter1979 :)

Looks interesting... I'll give it a try.

still it does look like a copyright violation.....ahh who cares

Ahahah, this game is the exact same thing as Fantasy Empires which was also made by Silicon Knights, just with different graphics. Literally, it's the exact same game. I'll post some pictures just to emphasize my point.

http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/iss...s/fantasy2.gif

http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/iss...s/fantasy1.gif

http://archive.gamespy.com/interview.../dyack/02s.jpg

Ahahaha, what sellouts.

Well that takes this game down ANOTHER notch on the originality scale for me. its pretty close to starcontrol I used to play on my good ol sega (now deseaced. some ass poured soda into it and it went kaput)

think this games shot down to 2 out of 10 on the original ideas scale for me. still wish we could upload Heroes of might and magic II...now that would be a great time killer. only chance to play that I had was a trial version, bleh wasnt even enough time to really get into it! (come on 1 HOUR gameplay time? you'd only do that if you rushed everything) but im starting to rant again... should hear me on politics. belive it or not an admin on another forum actually messed with my profile. put my occuipation as Professional Ranter........ oh well thats it for me. need some sleep.

(and yes i finally bothered to register on the boards)

You really shouldn't be giving us ideas like that ;)

The Picard:

Could you find a game link to those games? Macros, Battletech.

Want to see how they look like

I think you can download Battletech here on Abandonia!

This game actually looks fun, I'm going to try it out. I love those old Mech games. :ph34r:

Battletech and Macros are not games (although there is a game called battletech on this site http://www.abandonia.com/game.php?genre=strategy&ID=86) , they are universes.
The Macros universe is a Japanese Anime series from the eighties. Better known in the US as Robotech.
Battletech was inspired by (the succes of) Robotech in the US. It is the universe behind the Mechwarrior and Mechcommander games.

:huh: Wow not only a gaming site but educational in things you'll never use in real life. but still thats interesting to know. and I liked the mechwarrior games, was way to easy to just kill mechs though. always just shot off their legs in the later ones too easy.

Well you could athleast try the game before judging it :whistle:

about the originality fantasy empires thing, im quite critain cyber empires came first

Cyber Empires was made in 1992 and Fantasy Empires was made in 1993, so yep, your correct sir!

Man I loved this game. Me and my friend would play this game every time we came over. I wanted to be against him so bad, but he always wanted to make an "alliance". We always complained how you couldn't ally, and the only "alliance" you could really do was sit at the same computer and promise not to kill each other. :D

Anywho, kudos on this game, rocks, rocks rocks, punk rocks!

This game was also called "Steel Empires" as I think the name Cyber was trademarked at some point. Either way, this was/IS one of the absolute best mech based strategy games ever created. Even in 2005 nothing has quite come to the level of playability that this game had nearly 13 years earlier. Sad.

This game FREAKING ROCKS. This game alone makes me want to give money to Abandonia. And if you're playing this for the first time, learn to use the Dragon.

There are better mech-based strategy games out there, albeit those're based on the Universal Century(Gundam 0079+ NOT INCLUDING WING OR SEED), Gundam Gihren's Greed(PSX) and Gundam Gihren's Ambition(PS2), tho those might be a bit troublesome to play for those with no knowledge of the Japanese language.

Are there any Windows-based updates or follow-ons to Cyber/Steel Empires? The game is GREAT, but it runs dog slow in a DOS compatibility box and it's inconvenient to reboot to DOS 6.22 or use a bootdisk.

^^^^ Have you tried Dosbox? download link is under Utilities on mainpage.


Yes the game was called Steel Empire for the amiga in Europe athleast back in 93, dont know if it was the same for the PC. The PC back then werent that good as i recall, ohh it played arkanoid i remember, on 5 1/4 floppy :)

I used to play cyber empires in amiga, but it was call steel empires.

I was a master in this game, I could defeat a Heavy tower in woods with 10 robots, with only a mars. :Titan:

Nice one indeed. Fantasy empires too. They r similar but not the same.

Hey guys is there anyway to make this game faster? Its so slow on my pc. I don't remember it being this slow. Thanks

I had a blast playing this game.

I didn't like the hands on of using the individual machines so much as the more global option, but I did play both ways.

Had a blast.

It was slow, are you guys saying it isn't any faster on today's cpus???

I used to have a text file with the questions and answers that the game asks you when you load it. For example:

Q: "What is the Armor of the Dragon (pg 14)"
A: 90

Fortunately, Abandonia has the manual available for download. I just used the EDIT - FIND feature of notepad and typed in "Dragon", the second or third entry had the specs for the Dragon mech. I will search through my old floppies again for it, but in the meantime, that would be nice to have, a list of the Q & A to start the game.

Also, if you note in the manual, it clearly states that the game is called "THE WORLD OF STEEL EMPIRE" and to use "STEEL" to launch the game.

This game does rock and was very advanced for it's time. It was completely original at that time. It's not original anymore since so many other games were designed after it, Cyber Empire being the role model. To call this game "unoriginal" is not quite right.

I spent many hours playing this, much enjoyement. I loved the player configuration where you can select human or computer, had a couple of friends and we would play this, taking turns sitting in front of the computer while the other person went into another room until their turn was over.

Good stuff ... thank you.

What strategies do you use?
I often use the sim button. I've found I can take a volcanic country with 9 hercules by setting the
attack mode to capital. Also, I manually attack a coniferous country with hercules army. I'll take
cyborg around the outer edge of the field, and sneak around the back of the fort. Once, inside I can
pick off their cyborgs one at a time from behind, and they won't even turn around to fire. Also, if the fort
missiles are trying to get me while doing this, I will position myself in such a way that their fort missiles will
destroy their own cyborgs! This strategy takes time and patience, but it works really well!
Anyone have any other ideas?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest_allen_* @ Sep 7 2006, 06:56 PM) [snapback]253508[/snapback]</div>good idea.. i will try them.. i realized as i startet playing this game again, that im pretty lousy without a joystick :wallbash: btw.. as i unzipped it, my virus program bulldog, discovered a virus.. u can remove it and still play, no problem.

:angry: *meep*, there seems to be a Virus on the download tells me my G Data Virussoftware. As I m no computer Crack, does any body knows about this:
File: Cyber empires.zip
Virus: behaveslike:bat.gen

You also posted the same about Prehistorik 2 and Ishar 2.
All of our archives go through virus-checks before being placed on site. The possibility of such a thing occuring is close to none.

Remember that many antivirus programs are known to cause false alarms every now and then.
Did you enable advanced heuristics in your current antivirus program? Disable and rescan the archive. This function is used to identify new virii not listed in the program's database, but at the same time heavily increases the ratio of false alerts.
Then, just to make sure, try scanning the archive with a different one, like AVAST.

Hmm, really want to try this, but it lags and goes incredibly slow when in XP. Will DODBox make it smoother, or should I try something with the XP compatibility stuff?

I have found that the game is confusing and disorienting. Then again, the computer that I run my games on is too slow for me to run PDFs, so I don't think it will get much better.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Aug 7 2007, 03:27 AM) [snapback]303274[/snapback]</div>It should work better on DOSBox.

Definately love this game, still have our original copy on the old(or ancient) computer up in my room, but I tried moving it to my new computer and everything works but the actual battles. Anyone know what I could do to fix that??

Use DOSBox?

This game works a lot better in DosBox compared to running it natively in XP.

Victory Screen:
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...es_Victory.png


Empire Status After Victory:
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ory-Derek2.png

yo i got a problem during the fights, i have no joystick and wonder how i fire a weapon? found nothin in the manual, hope somebody can help.

In DOSBox, press CTRL+F1 to access the keyboard mapper.
You can map keyboard buttons to joystick axes and fire buttons there.

There is no key for firing?

[edit] For me it's Spacebar for first, Numpad + for second player. [/edit]

I've played both games but I believe Cyber Empires was released earlier and Fantasy Empires had slightly improved graphics. I much preferred Cyber Empires though. Sort of like warcraft vs starcraft in a certain sense and I like starcraft ;-)

32-bit/64bit?
 

Thanks! I have search for many years. Is there coming furder version that are compatible with win 7?

Dosbox 0.74 runs perfect in Win7.
+Game runs fine in dosbox 0.74.

=> Run game in dosbox on Win7.

Capiche?

If you want to play this game under Windows 7, you'll have to use DOSBox.

This game has been published 18 years ago. The developers almost certainly have no intent to release an update to make it compatible with modern systems.

Most of these strategies are only relevant on the hardest level:

Using the rear attack fortress coniferous strategy is extremely effective, and can be done with a lone cyborg. Mercury can be used in dense forest or weak defenses, Mars/Achilles if you need more to get past the LRMs. I consider all enemy coniferous countries to be soft targets through the entire game for this reason.

If you go in with a lone cyborg, you may not be able to conquer the country if there is overwhelming tonnage spread across the base. Decide early if you are trying to kill all the cyborgs, otherwise just go for the capital. It will kill the fortress and incur significant financial loss to your enemy.

Race to acquire cities at the beginning of the game and surround them with a ring of fortified countries to avoid having battles in them that depreciate their value. Using the Quadpost factory with 4 Mercuries as your starting build order will help you achieve this, and ration spending on early capitals to get to potential cities. In a game with several players, Titanium is pretty financially worthless due to its central location and repeated battles, don't get your hopes up for it.

For early defense in the rush phase, your capital structure can be used as cover if facing superior firepower. You can hide behind the cover of a corner of the capital and the enemy will continuously fire, typically overheating, allowing you to overtake them. When their cyborgs bunch up, they sometimes injure each other with friendly fire as well.

My cyborg tech tree is:
Mercury (first few turns)
Dragons (throughout entire game)
Mars/Achilles (mid game, may absorb damage while Dragons go in for kills)
Hercules (all mid-late game, from 2-enhancement factories)
Crossbolts (late game, take out fortresses in arctic/volcanic/desert)
Titans (late game)

Standard defense is:
Fortress
Handful of dragons (primarily under my control)
Handful of Heavy cyborgs (Hercules) to barricade in front of capital in case of LRM attacks

Beware of using cyborgs w/ LRMs as defense, your own CPU AI can inadvertently damage many defenses with their LRMs.

For espionage (esp. on fog of war), you can save money and gain much more information (type of fort, types of cyborgs) by sending a lone cyborg into the country of interest and then retreating when you've gathered your intelligence.