Red Dragon (internet game)

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Red Dragon is a MMOSG (Massive Multiplayer Online Strategic Game). The game was created by a Czech programmer, Marst. It's a browser-based, turn-based game, in which player becomes the ruler of a kingdom, allies with other players and struggles for victory by building The Last Judgement Palace. Currently there are two versions of the game, the Czech and Polish one. There are some major differences between these servers, as JRC Company and alias.net own Czech server and Polish server, respectively. In both versions of the game you can communicate in English.

[edit] Basic gameplay

A player creates a user account, which represents a state (called "governy", in Czech "gubernát") and gives orders to the population, for example:

• some inhabitants will become farmers to produce food
• some will become soldiers
• some soldiers will attack governy X
• some soldiers will join the attack of governy Y to governy Z
• mages will cast spell "Dragon breath" and "Plague" to governy Z.
• all thieves will be sent to explore pacts of governy Z.
• etc.

These orders are evaluated every day at 4:00 AM and then after logging in the player sees whether his attacks succeeded and whether he himself was target of any attacks.

[edit] Alliances

Governies may group into alliances, which can have up to 17 governies. Alliances can declare war on one another and governies may provide defensive help to other governies in the same alliance via pacts.

[edit] Objective of the game

If an alliance manages to build an extremely costly building "Palace of last judgement" then it is considered winner of the age and "new age" is started - all governies are deleted. An alliance that tries to build it is usually subject to strong attacks form many others.

If an alliance is not strong enough to do this, the objective is simply to gain as much land as possible, because this proves the war skills and successes of the alliance. The land also determines how much army one can build if he has time to do it. War is the only way to gain land (except for small governies which can buy land for a reasonable cost). Many players prefer honest wars with exactly defined rules against equally strong opponents, while others try to "eat" weaker governies and are sometimes punished for that by the strong ones.

[edit] Races

Each governy belongs to one of the races:

• Djinns - superb mages, good defenders, weak atackers

• Elves - good mages and defenders, weak builders

• Necromants - good mages and attackers, weak defenders

• Humans - Good thiefs, bonus for population and trade

• Hobits - superb thiefs, weak attackers and mages

• Giants - superb attackers and weapon-makers, good defenders, weak mages, low population

• Gnomes - quite good defenders, good thiefs and mages, poor atackers

• Dwarfs - good attackers and defenders, superb builders, weak mages and thiefs, have some spell-resistance

• Goblins - superb attackers, weak defenders and mages, more resistant against spells

• Br-ougs - weak in everything, which is compensated by very high population density

[edit] Kinds of attack

• Thief attack - can explore status of enemy governy, harm to mages, soldiers, thiefs and economy

• Magical attack - some spells can improve the military and economical strength to allies or damage the same in the enemy governies. Other spells directly destroy the buildings and population.

• Military attacks - the only method of attack that enables to gain land. If war machines participate in the attack, they contribute less to the attack strength (probability of success), but in case of a success, more enemy buildings are destroyed

[edit] Professions and buildings

There are 6 kinds of supplies (gold, food, weapons, mana, stone and infrastructual points). Inhabitants can be either assigned one of the 9 professions (farmers, alchemists, merchants, weapon-makers, stone-miners, builders, druids, mages, scientists) or trained into army (thief, elite soldier 1, elite soldier 2, and hoplit, which is a war machine crew). There are also two special units: dragon and war machines.

The player can build many kinds of buildings:

• buildings directly producing supplies
• building increasing a limit how many people may take part in a given profession
• buildings increasing the productivity of a given profession
• universities (influencing the scientists, who can support other professions)
• schools (helping new workers in the profession to be trained quickly)
• defense towers
• dragon dens that prevent dragons (a very strong unit) from leaving (only CZ version of the game)
• houses (increasing the population capacity)
• several tens of special buildings, with effects like "30% bonus to defense from thief attacks", "0.5 bonus to population density" etc. They are very costly and only one building of each kind each can exist in a governy.

[edit] Other game features

• Marketplace - there every governy can offer or buy supplies for gold from other governies

• 4 kinds of pacts (military, magical, thief, trade) - a governy may be in up to 6 pacts with other alliance members. The trade pact improves the economy, the other pacts allow the army to defend the other governy.

• 5 spellbooks - most races have a limited number of spellbooks to choose from. Therefore they can cast only some spells.

• an extremely destructive spell "Dragon's breath", that can be casted only after completing a special building "magical palace"

• thiefs can steal supplies to other governies (even one with which no war is declared) - if the victim has enough active thiefs, then it detects who has stolen them and usually a revenge follows.

• Every day player can execute 17 so called "turns" (goblins 20 turns) - at that moment workers produce supplies, new inhabitants come etc.

• system of "generals" - for example a general "Defender" helps protect against military attacks. Generals take extremely long to gain experience. Therefore killing an enemy general rids the governy of the corresponding bonus for many weeks.

• internal email and forums

• diplomacy tools where an alliance can add a comment to other alliance or declare "friendship" to one.

• possibility to attack a governy dishonestly without declaring a war

[edit] External links

• http://www.reddragon.cz - Czech version
• http://www.reddragon.pl - Polish version