By Joseph Luster

Conflict of Nations: World War III is a grand long term strategy game that pits your military skills against up to 140 other players in expansive online multiplayer matches. Everything within it has potential repercussions, from the alliances you forge and the negotiations you conduct to the way you choose to use your powerful munitions. Now a much-loved feature is finally making its way back with the return of Elite Challenges.

For the uninitiated, these challenges presented team-based battles that forced alliances to square off against one another. The twist? The use of gold—which is the game’s premium currency—is prohibited, and participating players must be rank 25 or above. If you’re wondering why they went away in the first place if they were in such hot demand, it simply came down to logistics. At the time, an ever-expanding community meant that setting up Elite Challenges was particularly unmanageable for the team.

Thankfully, that appears to no longer be an issue. To get into the action, players who meet the criteria just need to initiate a challenge by selecting an Elite Challenge map, invite another alliance to compete, and wait for the opposing alliance leader to accept. Once they do so, both players will need to use their Elite Challenge tickets to join the match, after which their strategy skills will really be put to the test.

The return of Elite Challenges was paired with two challenge maps in the form of the Mediterranean and Antarctica. To further differentiate from other matches, these also include double the starting resources, with the tech tree kicking off on day 10, all in the name of giving commanders access to higher army counts and more versatile tech options. Dorado Games Monetization Manager Mark Abdilla called it “only a first step in breathing life back into our alliances and providing them with the necessary support to engage with the very best that Conflict of Nations: World War 3 has to offer.” Hopefully that means we’ll be seeing further retooling and expansion in the future.

Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC, iOS, Android
Publisher: Dorado Games
Available: Now

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