CONFLICT

 In CONFLICT, it's the mid-1990s and you are the new Israeli Premier. You must
balance the various antagonisms of the Palestinians and your Middle Eastern
neighbors, and ultimately attempt to neutralize all of the various threats to
Israel's security. CONFLICT's diplomatic emphasis and power brokerage give the
game the flavor of a compact BALANCE OF POWER. (This review is based on the
IBM-PC version.)

 Play is quite straightforward, with turns representing a month of real time. At
each turn, you're first presented with news summaries in the form of headlines;
these highlight important events that occurred as a result of the last turn's
actions. Once these are read, you may then dictate policies for each of the
other countries involved. In addition to Israel, represented in the game are
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, and Libya.

 For each country, you must determine your diplomatic posture: Improve
relations, spoil relations, or leave relations at their current level. Your
ability to change posture is restricted by your current relations with each
country, ranging from Deplorable (on the brink of open war) to Excellent. If
relations are very bad, you may be advised that improvement is unlikely. Also,
if you have good relations with a country's enemy, it may be unwilling to
improve relations with you.

 In addition to diplomatic initiatives, you may also engage in intelligence
activities. You may foment rebellion in other countries by supporting
insurgents, or aid the government by helping to suppress insurgency. Or, you can
simply leave things alone. As insurgency rises, it's possible to instigate a
coup or assassination attempt. Success in these endeavors throws a country into
turmoil, which effectively eliminates it as a threat.

 Once diplomatic and intelligence activities are decided, you'll receive the
strategic policy-making screen. Here, you may review your defense forces and
decide on acquisitions and deployment; you may also elect to fund nuclear
weapons research. The various acquisitions cost money, as do nuclear weapons
research and intelligence activities.

 At the end of each turn, the results of your actions and those of the other
countries are resolved. This may involve conflict resolution, as well as
resolution of diplomatic and intelligence activities. Results are reported by
the headlines at the beginning of the next turn.

 Despite its name, CONFLICT is not a game that emphasizes open warfare. Instead,
you'll find that a careful combination of clever diplomacy, sly intelligence
activities, and a firm defense is required to do well in the game. In fact, the
overall ability of the Israeli defense forces is rather less than past
performance might lead you to expect. For example, the IDF can barely beat
Syrian forces in a protracted battle, much less other countries. Against Egypt,
the IDF was simply overmatched. While this forces you to search for subtler
solutions to Israel's security problems, it strikes me as unrealistic.

 Another anomaly is the exclusion of Saudi Arabia from the game. Though Saudi
Arabia has never been belligerent in past conflicts, its presence cannot be
ignored. Also, the Palestinians are present as a "problem" that the player may
have to deal with through deployment of one of its precious IDF brigades. Each
year there is a summit; sometimes it allows you to eliminate the Palestinian
problem by creating a Palestinian homeland. This seems altogether too
convenient, particularly as creation of this homeland has no discernable impact
on Israeli security.

 Lack of realism is one problem with CONFLICT. Additionally, the subject matter
is highly controversial, and the game's creators have clearly imposed their
views on various aspects of the game. Those with a heavy emotional commitment to
one side or the other in the Middle East conflict will no doubt find something
to take offense at in this game. For others, I can only suggest that CONFLICT's
perspective be taken with a heavy grain of salt.

 CONFLICT supports EGA (640x350x16), CGA (320x200x4), and Tandy graphics modes.
It runs on PCs and compatibles, and requires 384K of RAM. The program may be
installed on a hard drive; it is not copy-protected in any way. Input is via the
keyboard. No sound boards are recognized.

 The caveats are few, but significant. First, the documentation is sparse, with
little hard data. For example, nowhere in the rules does it say that nuclear
funding requires $20 million each month, nor are the costs of other activities
detailed. Worse, the actual victory conditions are not described, except in
vague terms: While it's nice to leave some things for the player to discover,
this seems excessive. Finally, only a single-player option is provided, although
the game is a natural for multi-player capability.

 That all said, I confess that I enjoyed CONFLICT. Play varies from game to
game, and is always intricate. It's _hard_ to win, but the program does present
an evaluation in the event of ultimate defeat that lets you know how you
performed. Thus, you may console yourself with the knowledge that your
performance was good, even if events weighed against you. The small number of
countries and options makes play less overwhelming than in BALANCE OF POWER,
allowing you to focus more on the intricacies of international relations in the
Middle East.

 I recommend CONFLICT for fans of power-brokerage and diplomatic games, but
beware if Middle East politics are a personal hot-button.

 CONFLICT is published and distributed by Virgin Mastertronic.

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