This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Maoist Internationalist Movement

Hundreds of years of U.$. militarism:

"American Conquest" is uncritical military fetishism

"American Conquest: Divided Nation"
CDV and Revolution Strategy
2002, 2005

The original "American Conquest: Three Centuries of War" preceded "Cossacks II" and "Alexander." As usual, and in similar fashion to "Rise of Nations," the assumption seems to be that people want complex strategy games in order to practice war.

There is history in each of these games, but it's mostly battle history. MIM would not even call it good military history, because that requires social and political context.

So to take an example, the game-makers were so good as to let the player be Mexico trying to keep Texas. The Texans are referred to as "upstarts" and the Mexicans as good conservatives. Yet the details of the story line come from an Amerikan sales orientation. There are some quotes from Mexican military officers, but we hear about the Texan side bit by bit, with a group of 30-odd here and Davey Crockett's men there. We get no such detail about the Mexicans, just quotes from military officers on both sides. The story goes in the game that Texans objected to the centralization of Mexico and took a spark from the repression of another province. Yet the reason that Texas revolted was that land-grabbers wanted to establish title to land they would not have in Mexico.

Unlike the "Union" and "Confederacy," Mexico and Texas are not allowed to have town halls or universities. On the plus side, it's nice to play a game where there are series of improvements to make but basically play stays in the same era. It's helpful when one wants to play the underdog. Otherwise, the "Union" would be landing in spaceships while Mexico would be stuck on horseback.

On the other hand, the interesting part of the game is why the game-makers believe Mexico could have no university. Showing how that happens would have been interesting instead of programming it in as fixed.

The "Civil War" buffs of the United $tates will enjoy the game, once again, because it is a replay of battle history. "American Conquest" is reactionary, because it depoliticizes the "Civil War," which Marx called the greatest class struggle of his lifetime. According to "American Conquest," the war was about which officer will try to outflank which other officer and break through defensive lines of the other side. In this way, the "South" gets more than equal treatment. So again, we do not consider it good military history, because the overall resource grind is not evident for the South. The factor of industry is lost in the shuffle of battle history.

On the other hand, the "Divided Nation" sequel is not to blame for separating economics from war. What we like about it is that success in the game clearly depends on the economy. So instead of watching TV or getting history from people who say the South won, in this game, a player gets to experiment a little with the idea of war in general in a dynamic way.

In the "Alamo" battle, one just has to send in all the units to surround the Euro-Amerikans' fort. So some of the historical scenarios are purely military and lose some appeal to MIM for that reason. What's good about it is that there is no pretense that time taken is more than a day of battle. So as a depiction of crucial hours of battle alone, in isolation, "American Conquest" has a case for itself as do many other stodgy ole' war games.

The most palatable way to play the game is in "free play mode," as Mexico. The reviewer chose a three-sided battle with two main teams. One team was Mexico with three players against the Confederacy and Texas as two allied players and the Union as a third minor team with one player. Geographically though, it worked out so that the Union was attacking Mexico from the north and the Texans and Confederacy from the south. Despite having no teammates, the Union ended up leading as the game wore on and my two Mexican partners ended up being the two weakest on the field. In a replay though, it was possible to win as Mexico.

Technically, again, this is a game with many units on the field and one will find that one's computer just cannot be good enough to play a game like this. It will stall and leave one thinking that there is such a thing as having a computer that is too weak. This is great luck for Intel, AMD, video card manufactuers-- all computer hardware manufacturers, because for some years, games were not causing people to junk their computers fast enough.

The game-maker is called "Revolution Strategy," which sounds great. The credits show many Russian programmers. Despite being called "Revolution Strategy," the game is not that political. As for strategy, one has to manipulate individual units to have them perform maintenance. In other real strategy games, one has to build and pay for maintenance units, but not program each one. So that's an annoying feature of this game compared with "Tropico" for instance where "Teamsters," automatically do the job they need to. On the other hand, there is less emphasis on particular military unit formations than in "Cossacks 2."{

There is also a bug in which forts become inactive and inoperable (not from being blown up). The default save setting is one minute, which is quite annoying. If one has a backup version, one can sometimes retrace steps to avoid the fort bug.

Once one has had "Rise of Nations" or "American Conquest," "Cossacks," "Emperor" and "Alexander" do not add much. We would suggest just taking one. We would not suggest taking "American Conquest," unless you are a corporate cling-on, because the program will need a patch and getting the patch puts you in corporate clutches. In fact, once the patch is installed, the game does not work at all unless one registers with the corporation. This is typical of how video game companies think narrowly these days, that they should have the right not to anticipate your problems and instead make you sign up with them for technical support, through a problem that they created through their programming. It's sort of like a parent who treats you as a child your whole life and designs life that way. However, there are still many games out there that do not require one to have an Internet connection and corporate sign-up.

If you do have this game, once you have it running, do not change anything. Unfortunately if your version of Windows needs reinstalling or you upgrade to a more powerful machine, you will end up in corporate clutches to be able to play this game. The problem is typical of capitalism, because the request is for a registration or identification number which would not exist under socialism. Corporations regularly destroy their software with property and security oriented add-ons that would not exist if not for the need to protect licensing fees or to collect marketing information. The next time you are cursing your computer, there's a good chance it is on account of a bit of software that does not need to exist under socialism.

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