American Conquest offers a slew of game play options, from campaigns covering the period from 1492 to 1818, random maps, and individual missions for single players, to death match and historical battles for multiple players. It also includes an editor that allows one to create maps for both single and multi-player games.
The single-player campaigns feature varied missions with focused goals, and although they can often be frenzied, you can always pause the action and still issue orders. It can sometimes be difficult to determine what those orders are, but the game offers a host of easy to use methods to select units, as well as a variety of commands for units to carry out.
Most missions start with a number of peasants and military units, and your first order of business is to establish buildings that allow you to create more peasants, as well as mines and other necessary buildings and units. Peasants work quickly, so you must constantly make decisions on how to allocate them, what resources to look for, as well as how best to meet the stated goals.
Military units can be given orders to patrol, which allows them to take care of the growing camp. As you peel away the fog of war through exploration or other means, opposing forces may decide to attack, so it's important to keep the perimeter well guarded. Diplomacy is also an option, and American Conquest gives you a number of unit types suitable for such endeavors.
American Conquest not only models diplomacy, but also morale, and it also includes a complex and satisfying means of affecting it. Formations, as well as officers, positioning, current battle conditions, and more, can affect each battle, and when combined with the well executed sighting rules, weapons' modeling, and resource allocation scheme, it all makes for a believable and interesting simulation of war during this period.
In addition, not only the Spanish are represented, but also Americans, the British, Indian tribes from North and South America, as well as many other peoples from the included time periods. Weapons, battle techniques, buildings, and clothing all reflect the period and people, which adds great detail to what is most assuredly an outstanding strategy game.