User:MikelZap/Kingdom Game

Kingdom Game is a text-based, real time multi player browser based game developed by Phutty Studios Ltd. The game is designed to work with the iPhone, but will work with any AJAX capable browser. This game requires great strategy, along with good communication skills to grow your economy in resources, allies, and troops.

Although it is not possible to win Kingdom Game, the objective is to grow your kingdom from a small estate by exploring and attacking other players. You can trade by land and sea with other players.

Kingdom Game was nominated by Apple staff, as a "Staff Pick" in their apps store for the iPhone.

Kingdom Game is undergoing a continual process of enhancement, with releases every week or two developing new features, and fixing bugs. .



Game Mechanics
Each 'world/continent' in Kingdom Game has up to 2,000 kingdoms, with each kingdom run by a player. Three worlds/continents are grouped together to form a larger 'world.' Kingdoms can interact between their worlds/continents by creating ports, ships, and trade cogs. The kingdoms are ranked by their worth, which is calculated based on the size in acres, population and other resources. Although you start with only 75 acres of land, you can easily gain more land by exploring, or by attacking other kingdoms.

When a player is not logged in, their kingdom continues developing, growing food, troops can finish their training and, potentially, be attacked by others.

Attacking
To ensure the game is balanced, a kingdom can only attack with a certain range - not more than double and not less than half the attackers net worth. Castles add to the defence of a kingdom as does the amount of armour the defending troops have available. The attacking troops can be bolstered by giving them wine and the defensive bonus of the castles either totally or partially negated by sending siege weapons. There are also both attacking and defensive prayers, which cost a certain amount of mana (produced by priests) to invoke.

Each attack usually results in the loss of troops on both sides (unless very few troops are sent to attack, in which case they may all return alive) with the percentage lost being dependent on the size of the respective forces and the outcome of the battle. All battles result in one of the following conditions: "Your troops fled the battlefield", "Major Loss", "Minor Loss", "Stalemate", "Minor Victory", "Victory" and "Overwhelming Victory."

In a stalemate or better land is taken from the defending kingdom and in a minor victory or better resources are also taken.

Buildings
There are many different types of buildings in Kingdom Game and each building has a different function and brings different benefits. Each building costs resources and takes time to build. The more expensive the building is (in both resources and time) the more benefits it brings.

Building Types


 * House - Increases population maximum
 * Farm - produces food, stores food
 * Lumber Mill - produces wood, stores wood
 * Stone Quarry - produces stone, stores stone
 * Barracks - houses foot soldiers and pikemen
 * Archery Range - houses archers and crossbowmen
 * Stable - houses cavalry and knights
 * Castle - houses peasants, provides a defensive bonus, stores resources
 * Temple - houses priests
 * Guild Hall - houses spies
 * Embassy - houses diplomats
 * Market - enables trading
 * Barns - stores resources
 * Blacksmiths - converts iron into armour, stores armour
 * Iron Mine - produces iron
 * Port - enables inter-world trading and ship production; essential for communication with colonies
 * Siege workshop - produces siege weapons
 * Spice plantation - produces spices
 * Vineyard - produces grapes
 * Winery - converts grapes into wine, stores wine

Units
Attacking
 * Peasant - Att: 0.25 Def: 0.25 - Peasants provide money through taxes and can be trained into any other unit except Elites.
 * Foot Soldier - Att: 2 Def: 2 - The basic defensive unit and the only troop that can become Elite.
 * Pikeman - Att: 3 Def: 3 - Better than foot soldiers and valuable in that they can give your cavalry units a bonus when attacking.
 * Elite - Att: 15 Def: 15 - The best unit in the game they are only awarded when you win in a battle.
 * Archer - Att: 1 Def: 5 - The best defensive unit in the game.
 * Crossbowmen - Att: 2 Def: 3 - Best used to give attacking pike a bonus in battle.
 * Light Cavalry - Att: 6 Def: 6 - Light mounted units which cost less food and money to maintain than the other mounted units.
 * Heavy Cavalry - Att: 7 Def: 7 - Heavy mounted units.
 * Knight - Att: 10 Def: 10 - The strongest unit in the game apart from Elites.

Elite soldiers are veterans of combat - if a foot soldier survives a battle and the result of that battle is Stalemate, Minor Victory or Victory, there is a chance they will become an Elite. Elites have a very good cost to effectiveness ratio (the best of all the troops).

Support

There are three types of support units: Diplomats, Priests and Spies.


 * Spies - Used to infiltrate other people's kingdoms and give you information. If you send more spies than the spied upon kingdom, you glean information about that kingdom. The more spies you send, relative to the spies at home in the spied upon kingdom, the more useful the information you can obtain. Spies are trained in the Guild Hall.
 * Priests - Used to generate mana. The more priests you have, the faster you gain mana. Mana can be 'spent' on a variety of spells such as attacking frenzy, ncreased production of resources, home guard and increased productivity. Priests are trained in the Temple.
 * Diplomats - Can be sent or exchanged with other kingdoms within the same continent. If you wish to join an alliance, you must exchange peaceful diplomats with a kingdom empowered to invite new members. When a diplomat is initially sent, the status is set to neutral, speeding up any trades made between the two kingdoms. The diplomats status can be changed at any time to either peace or war - peace increases the speed of trade stil further and also prevents the receipient kingdom from being attacked by the diplomat's kingdom. Changing the status to war slows down trade between the kingdoms but gives the diplomat's kingdom a defensive bonus if attacked by the recipient kingdom. Diplomats are trained in the Embassy.

Naval Operations
To build a navy, a kingdom must have at least one port.

Four ships can be built as follows:
 * Fishing boats - allows the harvesting of fish.
 * Trade cogs - enables inter-continent trading via the Market.
 * Carrack (war) - a defensive / offensive unit.
 * Carrack (transport) - enables troops to be transported to other continents; essential for forming a colony.

Colonies
Following a successful naval attack and an Overwhelming Victory land attack on a kingdom in another world, the player is given an opportunity of founding a colony (unless they already have one on the world they attacked). Colonies become like second kingdoms but can be managed via the primary kingdom. In order to maintain communication between the primary kingdom and the colony, both must have a port.

The bonus of having a colony are that they allow the primary kingdom to gain access to the unique resource of other worlds.

Resource List:

Training and Research
Each kingdom has skills that they can choose from to progress their kingdoms in particular ways. The three areas of Training and study are the Training Yard; which allows a kingdom to study formations, and tactics for military bonuses, The University; which contains research to help farm production and spy effectiveness along with others, and the Church Studies; which contains research related to mana production and use. Only two items can be researched or trained at a particular time, and each next level increases the time taken for it to complete. As the game is in production not all researchable items are available when finished there will be a total of 50 items to be studied.

List of current researchable items as of 9/23/08

Alliances
An Alliance gives a player the ability for dedicated forums, an alliance page, and a community of people to trade, strategize, and attack with. Most alliances have peace treaties with one another to keep the chaos down, but this isn't always the case. Alliances can contain up to 50 members, and each kingdom can only belong to one alliance per world. To enter an alliance both the kingdom to join and the alliance leader, or an appointed individual allowed to add new members, need to exchange diplomats via the embassy and have their status set to Peace.

Cost
There are three levels of Kingdom Game;
 * Free - funded by advertisements on screen.
 * Ad free - at a cost of $1.50 per month, this removes the advertisements from the screen.
 * Premium - at a cost of $3.00 per month. In addition to removing the advertisements, this gives the player additional advantages. The developers have indicated that their intent is not to give those who pay a material advantage in game, so it is not possible to buy food or other resources in game. Instead, a premium account gives the player small out-of-game advantages, such as customizable menu options and improved handling of in game messages, such as email alerts once logged off.