Medieval Lords lets you become the ruler of your realm - that is, if you're successful at managing and keeping the population content while you venture forth to expand and rule. The premise for this game is that you, a young lord or lady, must construct a village from the ground up. You will strive to keep the peasants happy through various means at your disposal, such as building improvements to entertaining the locals. While expanding your kingdom through conquest, you must fend off various types of opposition who want to remove any ideas of success on your part.

As with all things, installation is a must, and you should meet or be close to the minimum requirements. My system easily met those, and in some cases exceeded the desired requirements. If you have a DVD/R that is capable of reading game files, then I'd recommend using it for installing and playing the game over your slower CD unit. It greatly improves cut scene playback, and installing the files is much faster. I then checked for any patch updates, and was pleasantly surprised to see that none were available as of this writing.

Once the menu list popped up, I glanced around looking for tutorial files. I finally found one in the in the campaign section and began our journey back to medieval times. The tutorial campaign gives you a basic run through on what you need to know. After playing that a couple of times, I then brought up the first of three campaigns. (There are other campaigns as well, but they must be unlocked to continue on.) The first campaign sounds pretty simple, as all you need to do is get the population to 6,000 and repair a lighthouse. There is only one hitch, you start on an island and the lighthouse is on another island. To add to the problem, you are located in the southern part of the island, which has limited space for expansion. Getting to that lighthouse requires you to build a bridge, but to do that you must conquer a few islands.

As with any expansion and conquer game, you have to worry about resources that people need. These are water, food, security, serenity, health and leisure, which require constant attention. If you don't pay attention, then failure sets in very fast in the form of lost revenue. I consider the two most important parts to be food and revenue. Without food your army starts deserting, and the peasants refuse to pay their taxes. Run out of money and the king, your dad, will give you a small stipend to stave off disaster, but it's just not enough. If you are neglectful and not providing the right sense of well-being for the peasants, then you might as well toss your hands up in defeat! The reduced taxes aren't enough to stave off all the maintenance costs, and destroying what you've built to reduce those costs just make matters worse.

As in most RTS games, improving items already completed requires upgrades for buildings and businesses and the standing army. Other improvements affect how the population feels about the ruler. This one is no different, except in the way it's done. To unlock certain buildings means needing the cooperation of the population. When you inspect a peasant cottage a number shows the current level of the cottage, which also indicates the present level of the village. This is important to remember since you won't be able to put down, say, a mason shop until you have met all the restrictions that keep it locked.

Combat is interesting as well, since you are unable to direct the troops in combat. You can move units into opposing territory to achieve a favorable outcome, but the actual combat is left up to those units. The process starts with troop movement onto territory not under your control, which results in a declaration of war. Once troops have been placed, there is a short period of time where neither side may attack. Then each side responds automatically, whether defending a village or meeting out in the open field of battle.

As my campaign progressed, it was necessary to invade other territory, since the current bridge type wouldn't stretch far enough to reach the lighthouse island. I watched with interest as the fight unfolded so I could see how the A.I. would handle the battle. In this case, my two cavalry and two infantry units destroyed two towers full of troops, broke through a wooden barrier then went straight to the town dungeon destroying the defenders. Once this occurred, the town and territory came under my control. Unit damage on my side was moderate, as the defenders were still fighting back all the while.

Other things of interest are the different maps which are actually charts, showing how well you're doing. These would be the usual types like revenue spending, population growth and different responses to the community's well being, among other things. There is a Pause feature that will let you plan your strategy, or add more structures before you release the action. The real time mode has three settings, from normal to 5X speed, which I never bothered using. Another novel item is the food production, where you can upgrade, say, a hen house to a pig sty, lay down cattle pastures or fields of grain. You also have a landscape editor, and can even adjust the difficulty factor so no game will play the same way. Another aspect that I enjoyed is the camera view. You have the usual controls like zooming, left and right aspect, angle adjustment, plus first-person view. That part was pretty great, as it felt like you were standing on the street corner watching the bustling activity around you. Keyboard controls were kept to a minimum, with most abilities just a click of the mouse.

There were a few minor problems with laying down fields. If the elevation was too high, then the side wouldn't complete and you would need to start all over again. If you were laying down a field and forget to click the start point, then you needed to redo everything. These, and a few others, were just small annoyances and didn't affect the game play.

In closing, I'll just say that playing Medieval Lords can be mesmerizing, and a fun way to spend time being the lord over all that you see!