Seven Kingdoms (computer game)

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Seven Kingdoms is a real time-strategy computer game developed by Trevor Chan of Enlight Software. In the game, you compete against up to six other kingdoms. You can conquer your opponents by defeating them in war (with troops or machines), capturing their buildings with spies, or offering your opponents money for their kingdom.

The seven cultures you can choose to command are the Japanese, Chinese, Mayans, Persians, Vikings, Greeks, and Normans. Each culture has its own weapons and fighting styles. Each culture can also summon its own "greater being", each having different powers.

Fryhtans are fictional beasts that hoard treasure and hold "scrolls of power", objects that enable you to summon greater beings. They are quite powerful, and have been known to offensively attack kingdoms.

The Seven Kingdoms series went on to include a sequel, Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars. While the second installment sported improved graphics and more challenging missions, the gameplay remained essentially the same. SKII, as it was abbreviated, expanded the number of civilizations to twelve (all the previous cultures returned except the Mayans), and had a plot set at the height of a war between the Fryhtans and the human cultures. The player was the ruler of the "Western Empire" and had to contend with both the Fryhtans and the Eastern Empire for rule of the world. The plot was the same no matter what civilization was played, though there were minor mission differences.

Interactive Magic later released a free patch that added three new cultures, the Egyptians, the Mughuls and the Zulus, and a new war machine, called the Unicorn. The game was re-released under the name Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries with this patch included.

1 Gameplay
2 Strategy
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Gameplay

From the start, it's obvious that Seven Kingdoms plays in a completely different and unique way to traditional real-time strategy (RTS) games. Admittedly it's still important to maintain a balance between offence, defence and upgrading your civilisation, but that's about where the similarity ends. To start with, the economic model is unique and bears more resemblance to a turn-based strategy game than the traditional build-workers, harvest-resources system in games like Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires.

Another major point of difference with the traditional RTS is the espionage system. You train and control spies individually. They have a spying skill that increases over time. You're also responsible for catching potential spies in your own kingdom.

Many gameplay elements are made easier by the inclusion of inns. Once built, they allow you to hire mercenaries of various occupations, skill levels and races. Having a skilled Persian general can make capturing and keeping that Persian village a lot easier. Skilled spies of enemy races are essential to a well-conducted espionage program. And occasionally you might just like to bolster your forces by grabbing a skilled fighter, or give you factories/mines/towers of science a boost by hiring a highly skilled professional.

But what probably makes the biggest difference to other RTS games is the diplomacy system. Again it's more akin to that of a turn-based game where you offer proposals, and the other party chooses either to accept or reject them. Each kingdom has a reptuation and you suffer a penalty for declaring war on a kingdom with a high reputation - making your people more likely to rebel, and more susceptible to bribery. Diplomatic actions include making war, proposing an alliance or friendship treaty, buying food, exchanging technologies, offering tribute/aid and forging trade agreements. There's also a ranking system that allows all players to gauge the relative military and economic strengths of their allies and enemies - making alliances against the stronger players a natural option.

Elements such as race, loyalty and reputation add a human side to the game. There's an urge to be a good king, to rule your people wisely and fight only when honour demands it. Else you could be a despot, rule your kingdom with an iron fist and threaten death to all who refuse to bow before you.

[edit] Strategy

Taxes are collected whenever a village's average loyalty reaches a certain level. The game allows you to automatically tax a village at any multiple of 10 between 40 and 100 - if a village (or any other unit) has loyalty below 30, there is a risk of rebellion. Normally, a village's loyalty is determined by a number of factors - the number of races living in the village, the leadership and race of any generals/kings in any forts near the village (enemy generals/kings can decrease the loyalty of your village while friendly ones have the opposite effect), availability of jobs and goods and your reputation. In addition you can temporarily increase a village's loyalty beyond the nominal level (the increase is roughly 10 units) granting it cash, and whenever you tax the village it's loyalty decreases (again by 10 units). The rate at which loyalty returns to normal is determined by the difference between the current loyalty and the nominal loyalty. So, if you set your tax at 40 and a village's nominal and current loyalty are at 100 then loyalty will drop very quickly to 30 and increase at a relatively quick pace from 30 to 40 and cycle between those values. But if you then set the tax rate to 100 loyalty will increase from 30/40 to 100 at a gradually decreasing rate and then cycle between 90 and 100 at a more sedate pace. You will earn more revenue over a given period of time if you set your tax rate to 40. However, there are two reasons why this is less than prudent. Most importantly, your nominal loyalty is subject to rapid spikes. If your reputation drops because you kill civilians, declare war or lose a spy, or if the village is attacked then you will see a sudden drop in current loyalty - which could easily put you under the rebellion threshold. Also, if you ever have an urgent need for cash you won't be able to tax the village manually. So the recommended tax rate is 50-60.

Raw materials are harvested from mines and then transported to factories. Both have a maximum capacity of 8 workers. They also have a limit as to how many raw materials they can store. Initially, miners are more efficient than factory workers - a small number of miners should be able to keep an entire factory of 8 workers happily productive. Alternatively, you could build several factories to process the output from a single full mine. Either way you should keep an eye on raw material stocks and work to remove bottlenecks as they occur. Idle workers in a factory or mine incur an opportunity cost in terms of food they could be producing as peasants. Foreign workers must also be paid wages.

Each race has different combat characteristics.

The Chinese have excellent melee, but incredibly poor ranged attacks which they receive at level 30. The Persians have excellent ranged attacks (from level 1) but poor melee. The Maya have a very good melee attack. Japanese and Vikings have good melee and gain a special strike at later levels. These do a lot of damage, but have a cooldown. The Greeks have a good melee attack, and at later levels are able to use their shields to reduce arrow damage. The Normans have a good melee attack and are able to use shields at later levels. They also gain a good ranged attack at level 50.

In general these differences are subtle, but noteworthy. If you recruit your entire starting village of Chinese, and your opponent recruits his starting village of Persians, you have a good chance of victory. However a troop of 100 level soldiers of any race are a force to be reckoned with. The trouble is, they represent a significant investment of time. On the other hand, there are war machines. Ballistae are the most basic siege engines with low effectiveness, but catapults and cannons can be much more effective,provided they are researched. They have a fairly mediocre hp and defence, but they can deal large amounts of splash damage and, unlike soldiers, can be mass produced. Although they may be more costly, they don't permanently damage your economy by denying you your most important resource, people, and they can't be bribed or betray you. It is not uncommon to see a long game end with massive armies composed almost entirely of war machines slugging it out.