Hostile Takeover

Hostile Takeover is a turn-based strategy game for one or two players in a fantasy setting that bears many similarities to Steve Fawkner's Warlords. The world map is generated randomly for every new game session and has two opposing sides, alongside many neutral castles. Each player starts with one castle, which generates income and can produce various unit types, and must explore the map (which is initially hidden, unlike the first Warlords game), capture neutral castles and build up an army with the ultimate goal of defeating the opponent.

The game is controlled entirely with the keyboard: the arrow keys are used to scroll the map, and the numeric keypad moves the selection cursor for units and structures. Commands are issued via keyboard shortcuts. There are no heroes and no units stacks, unlike Warlords, so each unit is moved individually only. Otherwise the game rules are fairly similar to Warlords: castles may be upgraded to improve defence (but not garrisoned with units), and stronger units not only cost more but also take more turns to produce. Players pay upkeep each turn for every active unit in their army, so a careful balance must be maintained between income from castles, production costs and the costs of keeping existing units. Apart from castles, there are no special places in the game world, and no roads, but other terrain types vary by the amount of movement points that a unit spends by traversing them.

Hostile Takeover was marketed as shareware. While the unregistered version contains no limitations, the users were encouraged to register their copy, with an option to get the improved Hostile Takeover 2 (for double the price of simple registration), which offered more unit types, larger map size, better AI, improved unit control and other features.