Seven Kingdoms (computer game)
Encyclopedia
Seven Kingdoms is a real-time strategy
(RTS) computer game developed by Trevor Chan
of Enlight Software
. The game enables players to compete against up to six other kingdoms allowing players to conquer opponents by defeating them in war (with troops or machines), capturing their buildings with spies, or offering opponents money for their kingdom. The Seven Kingdoms series went on to include a sequel, Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars
. In 2008, Enlight released a further title in the Seven Kingdoms series, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest.
than to the traditional "build-workers, and harvest-resources" system in games such as Command & Conquer
, StarCraft
, and Age of Empires.
The game features an espionage
system that allows players to train and control spies individually, who each have a spying skill that increases over time. The player is responsible for catching potential spies in their own kingdom. Inn
s built within the game allow players to hire mercenaries
of various occupations, skill levels, and races. Skilled spies of enemy races are essential to a well-conducted espionage program, and the player can bolster his or her forces by grabbing a skilled fighter or give ones own factories, mines, and towers of science, a boost by hiring a highly skilled professional. For instance, having a skilled Persian
general can make capturing and keeping a Persian village much easier.
The diplomacy system within the game is akin to a turn-based game allowing players to offer proposals to another party in which they are able to choose either to accept or reject them. Each kingdom has a reputation and one suffers a penalty for declaring war on a kingdom with a high reputation - making a player's 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. A ranking system 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.
, Chinese
, Mayans
, Persian
s, Viking
s, 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.
Interactive Magic
later released a free patch that added three new cultures, the Egyptians
, the Mughals
and the Zulus, and a new war machine, called the Unicorn. The game was re-released on June 08, 1998 under the name Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries with this patch included.
es collected whenever a village's average loyalty reaches a certain level. The game allows the player 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 can be determined by a number of factors including the number of races living in the village, the leadership and race of any generals/kings in any forts
near the village, availability of jobs and goods, and the player's reputation. The presence of enemy generals/kings can decrease the loyalty of your village while friendly ones have the opposite effect.
In addition, the player can temporarily increase a village's loyalty beyond the nominal level (the increase is roughly 10 units), granting it funds, and whenever the player taxes the village its 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 the tax setting on the game is set 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. However, if the player then sets the tax rate to 100, loyalty will increase from 30/40 to 100 at a gradually decreasing rate, and subsequently cycle between 90 and 100 at a more sedate pace. The player will earn more revenue over a given period of time if he or she sets his/her tax rate to 40. Most importantly, the player's nominal loyalty is subject to rapid spikes. If the player's reputation drops because he/she kill civilians, declares war, loses a spy, or if the village is attacked, then the player will see a sudden drop in current loyalty, which could easily put the player under the rebellion
threshold.
In the event a king is likely to be killed, a replacement king with the same skill in leadership is needed. Otherwise, military and peasant loyalty can drop in the event the king is killed. The consequences of replacing the king with a less powerful one can be rebellion, susceptibility of villages and military units to spies, and increased risk that soldiers outside of a fort will desert
and change sides because of dropped loyalty in response to the replacement king. Training replacements and military leaders is time-consuming and expensive, which may explain why many players rely on military machines.
s are harvested from mines and then transported to factories. The resources are copper, iron, and clay which can be sold to the surrounding kingdoms. Both have a maximum capacity of 8 workers, and have a limit as to how many raw materials that can be stored. Initially, miners are more efficient than factory workers where a small number of miners should be able to keep an entire factory of 8 workers productive. Alternatively, a player could build several factories to process the output from a single full mine. Either way, one should watch 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 worker
s must also be paid wages.
which allows it run on other operating systems such as Linux
.
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
(RTS) computer game developed by Trevor Chan
Trevor Chan
Trevor Chan is a game designer and CEO of Enlight. He has designed strategy video games such as Seven Kingdoms, and business simulation games such as Capitalism II. He is considered one of the bigger names in PC game development, in part because he is one of few game developers to have his name in...
of Enlight Software
Enlight
Enlight Software is a publisher and developer of interactive entertainment. The company was founded by Trevor Chan in 1993, and their first project was the economic strategy game Capitalism, which was published by Interactive Magic in 1995. In 1997, they released Capitalism Plus and the real-time...
. The game enables players to compete against up to six other kingdoms allowing players to conquer opponents by defeating them in war (with troops or machines), capturing their buildings with spies, or offering opponents money for their kingdom. The Seven Kingdoms series went on to include a sequel, Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars
Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars
Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars is a history-fantasy real-time strategy computer game developed by Enlight, released in 1999. Seven Kingdoms II is the sequel to the original Seven Kingdoms game and its updated re-release Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries.-Gameplay:Fryhtan Wars retains a great...
. In 2008, Enlight released a further title in the Seven Kingdoms series, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest.
Gameplay
Seven Kingdoms made departures from the traditional real-time strategy model of "gather resources, build a base and army, and attack" set by other RTS games. The economic model bears more resemblance to a turn-based strategy gameStrategy game
A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome...
than to the traditional "build-workers, and harvest-resources" system in games such as Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as Tiberian Dawn, is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a...
, StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
, and Age of Empires.
The game features an espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
system that allows players to train and control spies individually, who each have a spying skill that increases over time. The player is responsible for catching potential spies in their own kingdom. Inn
INN
InterNetNews is a Usenet news server package, originally released by Rich Salz in 1991, and presented at the Summer 1992 USENIX conference in San Antonio, Texas...
s built within the game allow players to hire mercenaries
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
of various occupations, skill levels, and races. Skilled spies of enemy races are essential to a well-conducted espionage program, and the player can bolster his or her forces by grabbing a skilled fighter or give ones own factories, mines, and towers of science, a boost by hiring a highly skilled professional. For instance, having a skilled Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
general can make capturing and keeping a Persian village much easier.
The diplomacy system within the game is akin to a turn-based game allowing players to offer proposals to another party in which they are able to choose either to accept or reject them. Each kingdom has a reputation and one suffers a penalty for declaring war on a kingdom with a high reputation - making a player's 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. A ranking system 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.
Cultures
The game allows players to choose seven different cultures to command. Players can choose between the JapaneseJapanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
, Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
, Mayans
Maya peoples
The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...
, Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
s, Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
s, Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
, and Normans
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
. 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.
Interactive Magic
Interactive Magic
Interactive Magic was a developer and publisher of simulation computer games during the 1990s which was founded by MicroProse co-founder Bill Stealey in 1995 after the buyout of MicroProse by Spectrum Holobyte...
later released a free patch that added three new cultures, the Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...
, the Mughals
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
and the Zulus, and a new war machine, called the Unicorn. The game was re-released on June 08, 1998 under the name Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries with this patch included.
Loyalty
Villages within each kingdom have taxTax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
es collected whenever a village's average loyalty reaches a certain level. The game allows the player 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 can be determined by a number of factors including the number of races living in the village, the leadership and race of any generals/kings in any forts
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
near the village, availability of jobs and goods, and the player's reputation. The presence of enemy generals/kings can decrease the loyalty of your village while friendly ones have the opposite effect.
In addition, the player can temporarily increase a village's loyalty beyond the nominal level (the increase is roughly 10 units), granting it funds, and whenever the player taxes the village its 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 the tax setting on the game is set 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. However, if the player then sets the tax rate to 100, loyalty will increase from 30/40 to 100 at a gradually decreasing rate, and subsequently cycle between 90 and 100 at a more sedate pace. The player will earn more revenue over a given period of time if he or she sets his/her tax rate to 40. Most importantly, the player's nominal loyalty is subject to rapid spikes. If the player's reputation drops because he/she kill civilians, declares war, loses a spy, or if the village is attacked, then the player will see a sudden drop in current loyalty, which could easily put the player under the rebellion
Rebellion
Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors aimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state...
threshold.
In the event a king is likely to be killed, a replacement king with the same skill in leadership is needed. Otherwise, military and peasant loyalty can drop in the event the king is killed. The consequences of replacing the king with a less powerful one can be rebellion, susceptibility of villages and military units to spies, and increased risk that soldiers outside of a fort will desert
Desertion
In military terminology, desertion is the abandonment of a "duty" or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning...
and change sides because of dropped loyalty in response to the replacement king. Training replacements and military leaders is time-consuming and expensive, which may explain why many players rely on military machines.
Raw materials
Raw materialRaw material
A raw material or feedstock is the basic material from which a product is manufactured or made, frequently used with an extended meaning. For example, the term is used to denote material that came from nature and is in an unprocessed or minimally processed state. Latex, iron ore, logs, and crude...
s are harvested from mines and then transported to factories. The resources are copper, iron, and clay which can be sold to the surrounding kingdoms. Both have a maximum capacity of 8 workers, and have a limit as to how many raw materials that can be stored. Initially, miners are more efficient than factory workers where a small number of miners should be able to keep an entire factory of 8 workers productive. Alternatively, a player could build several factories to process the output from a single full mine. Either way, one should watch raw material stocks and work to remove bottlenecks as they occur. Idle workers in a factory or mine incur an opportunity cost
Opportunity cost
Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the best alternative that is not chosen . It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. The opportunity cost is also the...
in terms of food they could be producing as peasants. Foreign worker
Foreign worker
A foreign worker is a person who works in a country other than the one of which he or she is a citizen. The term migrant worker as discussed in the migrant worker page is used in a particular UN resolution as a synonym for "foreign worker"...
s must also be paid wages.
Open source project
In August 2009, Enlight released the game under the terms of the GPL and has provided a website at www.7kfans.com for the community. In 2010, the game was ported to the Simple DirectMedia LayerSimple DirectMedia Layer
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform, free and open source multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface to various platforms' graphics, sound, and input devices....
which allows it run on other operating systems such as Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
.