About
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is a 2009 action game from Pandemic Studios that applies the studio's Star Wars: Battlefront formula to Middle-earth, with large-scale battles of up to 150 on-screen characters and four class-based hero types. It ships with two campaigns: a Good campaign retracing the War of the Ring, and an Evil campaign imagining Sauron reclaiming the One Ring.
Originally released on Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, it drew mixed reviews for its repetitive combat, dated graphics, and balance issues. EA shut down its online multiplayer servers in 2010 (and on remaining platforms by 2016) and later delisted the game, leaving the offline campaigns and split-screen play intact.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- Conquest.exe
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- GE-Proton
- Winetricks
- —
⚙ Setup notes
Overview: Pandemic's 2009 Lord of the Rings battle game — essentially Star Wars: Battlefront in Middle-earth, from the same studio, delisted. Up to 150 characters on screen, two campaigns.
Proton: Runs under Proton; GE-Proton is the safe pick for this SecuROM-era EA title (proton_experimental also works).
Install: Launch the game's own Conquest.exe directly as a non-Steam shortcut — the EA/launcher wrapper is the part that fights the dead activation servers.
Controller: The PC build does not have clean native gamepad support — the in-game menus expose no pad bindings and the community routinely uses reWASD / x360ce on Windows. On Deck the reliable route is a Steam Input layout that maps the controller to keyboard/mouse (start from a community config, or build one), rather than relying on the Deck being detected as a native gamepad.
Multiplayer: Campaign-only on Deck; the original EA Nation online play is gone. Fan multiplayer lives on via the MordorWide EA-Nation re-implementation (with its ConquestPatch) and the older CNQReboot over LAN / RadminVPN.
The one thing to know
Supply your own copy: Delisted EA game. The EA Nation / SecuROM activation (license limit reached) fails now that the servers are gone, so a DRM-free copy is the practical route (the v1.1 patch only touched the dead account service).
Display: Known black-screen-at-launch issue (audio plays, no picture) — minimize and restore, or alt-tab once; running GE-Proton avoids most of it.
Controller: No clean native gamepad support on PC — the game expects keyboard/mouse and the menus have no pad bindings. Use a Steam Input controller-to-keyboard/mouse layout (a community config is the easy start) instead of expecting native gamepad detection.
Cosmetic: Optional widescreen/FOV tweaks exist via fan config edits if the HUD looks stretched at 16:10.
Install: Add Conquest.exe as a non-Steam game and force GE-Proton in its Compatibility tab.
Binary: Conquest.exe (default install: Electronic Arts/The Lord of the Rings - Conquest/Conquest.exe).
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.