Viking is the earliest of a series of strategy games produced by Prickly-Pear Software in which one has to manage a kingdom. In this game, you are in command of a kingdom (there are 9 skill levels of play as well), and each player is in a race to become king of their land, which one does by getting enough people and buildings to qualify (there are multiple rankings that one has to go through in order to achieve this, and you start as a simple Holder of land). One has to contend with natural disasters, fluctuating markets, crop management, taxation and other obstacles in order to do so, and the game takes several hours to play.
Two years after Viking was released, a more sophisticated sequel called Erland came out, requiring twice as much RAM to run. Other companies also brought out similiar games, including Computer Shack's single player version called Castle Greymoon.
Title: Viking
Author: Bill Nolan
Publisher: Prickly-Pear Software
Released: May 1982
Requires: Color Computer 1,2,3, 16K RAM, tape or disk.