Takeover is a flash strategy game by Iriy Soft (the makers of Cursed Treasure), in which you must lead the Duchy of Westaria, Crimson Horde or the Icedale Cult to victory over the course of three campaigns. Victory is achieved by taking over enemy strongholds, and using them to launch further attacks against the enemy.
The game can be played here
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Do not confuse with The TakeOver.
This game contains examples of:
- Ancestor Veneration: The Crimson Horde worship their ancestors, and eventually animate their mummified remains as their elite cavalry unit. At the end of the game, they realize this wasn't a good idea and go back to just worshiping them.
- An Ice Person: The Cult uses frost magic. Their wizard squads freeze enemies in their tracks.
- Anti-Cavalry: The Cult's Rebels (later Myrmidons) are equipped with spears that do extra damage to cavalry.
- Artificial Stupidity: Unfortunately applies both to your troops and the enemy's. Squads in range of an enemy will always attack it, no matter the difference in strength or if it's a sleeping ogre (fortunately, the computer doesn't pick up the gold left behind).
- Awesome, but Impractical: Trebuchets deal huge damage to strongholds at unmatched ranges, can't be poisoned or scared... but are extremely slow to move and fire, take up two cap (when five squads in an almost unstoppable army) and cost a lot.
- Barbarian Tribe: The Crimson Horde are nomadic horsemen and hunters.
- Cosmetically Different Sides: Averted. While each faction has the same unit types (melee, ranged, magic and cavalry), they are vastly different in terms of stats and abilities.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Ranged units suffer anywhere from 50% to 100% damage penalty against melee troops. Averted by Icedale's Giantbots and Westaria's Zealots, whose "Martial Artist" ability removes the penalty (and appear to be armed with giant chainsaws).
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Duchy's religion is the Church of the Lord, who sometimes deigns to appear on the battlefield as a sword-wielding giant.
- Death from Above: The Horde's Cataclysm special sends meteors raining down across the map, (theoretically) doing more damage to the enemy than to your troops.
- Dragon Rider: The Cult's upgraded cavalry turn into these.
- Evil Versus Evil: The lategame of the Horde's campaign is this, raising their dead ancestors to fight the undead Rivadis. However, the former have a Heel Realization once the campaign ends, and return to just worshipping them.
- The Empire: The first campaign is an aversion (you're playing them, after all), but later campaigns play it straight.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Horde are a mishmash of desert cultures and Mongolians.
- Fisher King: When a stronghold is taken over, the surrounding province reflects the change in ownership: grasslands for the Duchy, desert for the Horde, tundra for the Cult, and dead wastelands for the Empire.
- Floating Continent: Rivadis, or at least so far above the clouds it might as well be floating.
- Garrisonable Structures: Strongholds are captured first by destroying them, then stacking troops inside to repair the structures and heal the troops. Once repaired, it begins producing gold and/or mana, increases your squad cap and allows you to produce various units. When a garrisoned structure is attacked, the defenders pop out to attack. Towns train the basic melee and ranged troops, towers train melee and magic, and castles can make every unit except magic users.
- Glass Cannon / Squishy Wizard: the Cult's troops do very badly in prolonged combat, so their tactics depends on preventing the enemy from acting at all.
- Heel Realization: The Empire fell into decay when its aristocracy started to explore necromancy. The Horde have a moment of this (after you've beaten their campaign) when they realize that's what digging up their ancestors to fight alongside them will lead to.
- Hellish Horse: the Horde's undead cavalry are symbolized by a skeletal horse.
- Knight Templar: According to the Cult advisor, peace treaties with Westaria are prevented by the more zealous members of the Church of the Lord, you must defeat them for negotiations to begin.
- Knock Back: Charging cavalry has this effect on enemies, as do hits from ogres, stoneworms and Avatars.
- Fragile Speedster: the Horde specializes in very fast troops that deal a lot of damage, but have little staying power.
- Limit Break: each faction has a special power that is only available after a long cooldown, and is heralded by Boss Subtitles.
- The Duchy's Advent of the Lord summons a huge Physical God wielding a sword more than half its size.
- The Horde's Cataclysm summons meteors that strike indiscriminately.
- The Cult's Grand Transformation reduces all enemy troops to half health, and gives you gold and mana for each enemy killed.
- The Empire's Call to the Grave randomly transforms enemy squads into their undead equivalent.
- Loads and Loads of Loading
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Westaria's Guards and Legionaries have an ability called 'Shield Wall' which reduces ranged damage.
- Magitek: The Cult consists mostly of mages with robotic minions.
- Mighty Glacier: The Duchy's troops are heavily armored and focus on staying power, but all except their cavalry move very slowly as a result, including their massive Physical God.
- Money for Nothing: Averted; unless you have half the map's buildings devoted to mining gold you will run out.
- More Dakka: Gunsmiths, then Gunbots, then Giantbots specialize in this.
- No Campaign for the Wicked: The Undead faction is unplayable. Of course, given how overpowered they are, this isn't surprising.
- No-Sell: Undead units, robots and Legionaries are immune to fear.
- Physical God: the Duchy's Avatar.
- Religion is Magic: The Duchy's secondary spell is a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
- Resurgent Empire: Westaria's endgoal is the restoration of the Rivadis Empire (minus all the necromancy).
- Sand Worm: Or Stoneworms, as they're called by the Horde. Very useful for destroying strongholds and units.
- Shout-Out: The Giantbots bear a strong resemblance to ED-209.
- Simple, yet Awesome: The very first spell of each faction can be upgraded and will see a lot of use.
- The Duchy's banner constantly heals units in its Area of Effect.
- The Horde's banner makes units attack faster and deal extra damage to strongholds.
- The Cult's frost spell paralyzes all enemies caught within it, letting their squads attack with impunity.
- Summon Magic: The Call of the Advent and Stoneworms spells.
- Undead Counterpart: Every faction has their own variant of each unit type (melee infantry, archers, mages and cavalry) The undead faction's ultimate spell casts Zombify the Living on randomly selected enemies,
turning them into their variant under their command, which explains why they're not playable. - Zombify the Living: Call to the Grave instantly turns some of your units into their undead equivalents.
