Fantasy Empires

"Fantasy Empires" is a fantasy wargame for the PC made by Silicon Knights and published by SSI in 1993. It uses the Dungeons & Dragons license, and is set in the world of Mystara. As the player, you create a character along iconic Dungeons & Dragons roles. This persona serves as the leader of the army during battles, but does not fight. The main portion of the game is played on the 'strategic map'. In this portion of the game, the main tasks include expanding territory by invading and conquering provinces either neutral or enemy owned, constructing building improvements on provinces already owned, and hiring troops. Troops can only be hired if the appropriate buildings are constructed.

Apart from humans, the game also has provinces where orcs, dwarves, elves, halflings, and shadow elves can all be built as units in the army.

The game comes with a full view or fog of war option. The full view allows the entire world to be seen, while the fog of war only allows knowledge of adjacent kingdoms.

A notable feature of the game is its AI, which used a neural net.

Some features of the game are making truces (the breaking of which could cause lawful or neutral characters to become chaotic), creating different types of heroes (fighter, dwarven, elf, magic user, cleric), setting the battle scale (from 20:1 to 1:1) and casting magic spells based upon the points derived from heroes (magic user, clerical, and druidic).

Multiple battles with the same troops against 50 or more opponents could cause them to become veterans or even elites.

The game comes with a number of NPC opponents, some of whom go all the way through the 36th level and are quite formidable.