Seven Kingdoms (computer game)

Seven Kingdoms is a real-time strategy game for Windows and Linux . It was developed by Trevor Chan of Enlight Software and launched by Interactive Magic in 1997. A short time later, the free expansion Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries appeared for the game . The successor, Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars , was released in 1999. The Seven Kingdoms: Conquest , published in 2007, was no longer developed by Enlight Software itself and did not tie in with the game elements of its predecessor.

The source code of Seven Kingdoms was published in 2009 and the game has since been further developed as an open source project (GPL).

Gameplay

As usual in strategy games, the main aim of the game in Seven Kingdoms is to destroy all opponents. B. the achievement of a certain population size can be selected. The destruction of the enemy is usually achieved through the use of combat units. The game offers few tactical options in combat, which means that in principle it is a matter of setting up the most extensive army. Unlike most titles in the genre, this is not achieved by building units in buildings, but by training farmers to become warriors. It is therefore important to bring as many farmers as possible under control, whereby these cannot simply be "generated", but already at the beginning of the game live in many independent villages, which are spread over the entire map. There are three methods to induce these villages to join your kingdom. For a takeover you first need a general in a nearby fortress. If he has the nationality of the residents and his fame is high enough, the residents' resistance may drop enough that they will join. If this does not happen, the inhabitants can be given money or the village can be attacked until the resistance is broken, but this causes many inhabitants to come out of the village and fight. As a result, the number of inhabitants drops sharply so that the village will buy fewer goods. After the village has been captured, you can train the peasants won in this way to become warriors by sending them to a fortress and subordinating them to a general, who then trains them permanently and slowly increases their fighting skills. However, farmers can be used for other things besides training to become warriors. They work in factories, mines or research centers. Mines have to be built on raw material sources and the farmers working in the mine extract the corresponding raw material in order to process it into goods in the factory and finally to sell it on the market place to the farmers living in their own villages, which is the main source of income for the only one in the country The means of payment in play is: money or gold. The gold is mainly needed for the construction and maintenance of the company's own buildings and for grants to foreign villages. In addition to the gold, it is also important to keep an eye on the supply of food, of which every farmer living in a village regularly produces two units and each person needs one unit. So in the long term you should have at least 50% farmers. There are also research centers and armaments factories that are used to produce military equipment such as catapults or cannons.

Nationalities

There are seven nationalities available in the game, one of which must be decided before the game starts: Normans, Greeks, Vikings, Persians, Chinese, Japanese and Maya. The Ancient Adversaries expansion added three nationalities: Mughals, Zulu and Egyptians. The individual nationalities differ, apart from the appearance and the language of the units, in the type of their combat skills. Regardless of this, it is crucial which nationality you choose, because taking over an independent village is much less complicated if the nationality of the people living in the village is the same as your own. Each player will first try to capture all villages with their own nationality. A kingdom must and will not only consist of people of the same nationality, but the decisive factor is the nationality with which you start the game, the nationality of the starting units and that of the king, who essentially functions as the general in the game, depend on this. Units in a kingdom are more comfortable when they are of the same nationality as their king, so usually most units in a kingdom will be of the same nationality as their king.

loyalty

Each unit has a loyalty value that depends on the reputation of the kingdom, availability of sufficient food, the current situation in which the unit is and many other things. The loyalty of a soldier who stands around uselessly will decrease, that of a warrior who trains under the direct command of his own king in a fortress will increase to the maximum. When a unit's loyalty drops below a certain point, it will leave its kingdom and defer to the enemy or move to an independent village. If loyalty gets too low in an entire village, whole revolts can break out.

Unit types

There are no unit types in the classic sense in Seven Kingdoms . There is only one model per race for all units, in the initial state a farmer. However, each unit can learn different skills, such as working in a mine or fighting, which means that it is referred to in the game as a specialist (miner, factory worker, soldier, researcher, spy, priest). Almost all skills can be learned in the village (as long as it is controlled by a commander who sits in a neighboring fortress). Many skills can be learned by sending simple farmers into the appropriate buildings. All specialists gradually improve their skills when they apply them in the appropriate building.

However, there is the possibility of building catapults, ballistae, cannons and flamethrowers. Unlike other units, they are not subject to loyalty, do not need food and have their own models. However, these war machines do not receive any training bonus either. They are easy to build and are available for battle from the moment they are completed until they are destroyed. In addition to the conventional soldiers, these units make up a not negligible but minor part.

Building types

Village

Villages are all over the map. Most of them are neutral at first, so it's important to take them. Up to 60 farmers live in a village and slowly multiply. The farmers in their own villages can be trained to become specialists (workers, fighters, spies, researchers or builders) if and as long as they are controlled by a commander (king or general) in a neighboring fortress.

mine

A mine is built on a source of raw materials. Up to 8 miners can mine the available raw material in it.

factory

Up to 8 workers work in the factory who process the raw material produced in a mine into goods.

Marketplace

Goods and raw materials from mines produced in the factory are stored on the marketplace and sold to your own village population or other players' caravans.

fortress

A fortress is primarily used to train soldiers. A fortress can accommodate a maximum of eight soldiers and one general or king. The soldiers continuously improve their combat skills while in a fortress with a general or king. The better the general, the faster the soldiers in the fortress will improve.

Tower of Knowledge

Up to 8 researchers can work in the Tower of Knowledge. Here, research can be carried out on technologies that enable the construction of military equipment such as catapults.

Armaments factory

In the armaments factory, up to 8 workers produce war equipment, provided that the required technology has already been researched in the Tower of Knowledge.

Inn

Units can be recruited in the inn. The player is shown there which units are in the inn and which skills they have. If desired, the desired unit can then be hired for a fee. Units in an inn are randomly generated there, so they cannot be seen on the world map until after they have been hired, but not before they enter the inn or after they leave the inn without being hired. The value of an inn lies in the fact that one can recruit highly trained specialists (e.g. a soldier with leadership value 92) from different peoples, which opens up great advantages (e.g. being able to quickly convince a large, neutral Greek village with a Greek general ). Spies who are well trained in a second job can disguise themselves as neutral units, enter inns and be hired by opposing players.

Further development

Since August 2009 the game has been further developed as an open source project by the community and optimized for modern operating systems. Since the SDL porting in July 2010, the game is also compatible with the Linux operating system. The latest version 2.15.3 was released on December 22, 2019.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b 7kfans.com: Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries , accessed September 30, 2019.
↑ 7kfans.com: Seven Kingdoms Community - August 31st, 2009 , accessed August 6, 2011.

Web links

[lastversion-1] 7kfans.com: Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries , accessed September 30, 2019.

[2] 7kfans.com: Seven Kingdoms Community - August 31st, 2009 , accessed August 6, 2011.