I had a hard time figuring out what
Seven Kingdoms Conquest's angle is. Is it just humanity struggling against demons? Really, is that all? You'll get a bit of story introduction before every level that explains what is going on and why you're fighting, but sometimes the introductions seem a bit unrelated to your actual goals. Before one particular level, the narration describes demons that haunt the men's dreams and eat away at their sanity. In the actual level, however, it seems like your real enemy is your fellow man, and demons are more than happy to sit back and relax while you the two of you contribute to your own destruction. I considered the possibility that there is some sort of religious angle to this, i.e. demonic forces passively influence man to destroy itself, but it really didn't seem to be going in that direction. Also, the story only seems to be told through the introductions to each level. When you finish a level, you only get a victory picture, and no further story. This effectively means you don't have to play any of the game in order to learn about the story since you can select any level at the start of the game.
Story or no story, in Seven Kingdoms, you'll play as human forces or demon forces. As the subtitle of the game implies, this game is about conquest, as quick and dirty as you can get it done, as long as you conquer everything on the map. There are no set resources, save for villages or cities which cannot be moved. Anywhere around these set bases, you can build mines, barracks, farms, and other specialized structures. There is no need to micromanage worker classes in order to build or mine from resources. You will have to micromanage everything else about the game, however, so I wouldn't say it's simplistic.
In order to achieve your goals, you have several options. You can use diplomacy to persuade surrounding cities to join your cause. The downside to this route is that it is very expensive, and every attempt to take over a city costs you precious resources of gold or in the demon's case, blood. On the other hand, an all-out attack strategy is also risky because it takes so much attention to fight without losing too many expensive troops. You also have to make a strategic choice between using reputation (called fear for demons) points to promote and strengthen individual units or to summon strong and powerful hero units. One last thing you can utilize to turn the tides of battle to your favor is Demonstone Essence, which you can painstakingly summon from Demonstones which are sparsely scattered across maps. Using the essence grants you access to powerful spells and special units, even gods.
By the way, if you want to learn how to play through the game's tutorial, it seems that the human tutorial is impossible to finish. There is an impassible wall that blocks you from sending troops to the enemy side. Chances are a patch will eventually fix this issue though.
Outside of the Campaign mode, you have the Skirmish mode, which allows you to pick a map and a number of A.I. opponents and just play. The Map Editor mode doesn't offer too much customization as far as terrain, but it will indeed let you set up a custom map if you feel like playing with this option. Standard multiplayer modes make it here: you can set up a LAN game or play over the internet. A lobby is available for those that just want to get online and find someone to play.
