Seven Kingdoms 3

1. Seven Kingdoms Decennium 320
2. 5 Kingdoms 3

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros were (from the North to the South, roughly), and after the Targaryen conquest were controlled the controlling families: The North, ruled by House Stark. The Riverlands, ruled by House Tully. The Vale, ruled by House Arryn. The Westernlands, ruled by House Lannister. The Stormlands, ruled by House Baratheon. Jan 16, 2008  • 7 Human civilizations to choose from, each one containing 3 different nations • 7 Demon races to choose from, each with unique units and buildings • A Campaign spanning 4,000 years. Seven Kingdoms was the finalist for GameSpot's 1997 'Best Strategy Game' award, which ultimately went to Total Annihilation. The editors wrote, 'Even in light of fierce competition from this year's other top-notch strategy releases, Seven Kingdoms stands tall as an inventive, enjoyable product destined to be remembered.'

Seven Kingdoms
Developer(s)	Enlight
Publisher(s)	Interactive Magic
Designer(s)	Trevor Chan
Platform(s)	Windows, Linux
Release	Ancient Adversaries EU: June 8, 1998 NA: 1998 WW: January 19, 2012 (Linux)
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Seven Kingdoms (Chinese: 七王國; pinyin: Qī Wáng Guó) 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 2007, Enlight released a further title in the Seven Kingdoms series, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest [it].

• 1Gameplay
• 3Reception

Gameplay[edit]

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-basedstrategy game 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. Inns 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 one's 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.

Cultures[edit]

The original game allows players to choose seven different cultures to command (see below for cultures added at a later date). Players can choose between 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 may attack human 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 8, 1998 under the name Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries with this patch included.^[1]

Loyalty[edit]

Villages within each kingdom have taxes 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 one's 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 killed, a replacement king with the same skill in leadership is needed. Otherwise, military and peasant loyalty can drop. 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.

Raw materials[edit]

Raw materials are harvested from mines and then transported to factories. The resources are copper, iron, and clay which can be sold to the surrounding kingdoms. Mines and factories have a maximum capacity of eight 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 eight 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 workers must also be paid wages.

Open source project[edit]

Seven Kingdoms Decennium 320

In August 2009, Enlight released the game under the terms of the GNU General Public License and has provided a website at www.7kfans.com for the community.^[2] In 2010, the game was ported to the Simple DirectMedia Layer version 1.2. which allows it run on other operating systems such as Linux.^[3]

On May 19, 2015, the open source project released version 2.14.5. Among other changes and bug fixes, this release brought with it a migration to SDL2 and the return of networked multiplayer with enet.^[4]

On September 4, 2016, the project released version 2.14.6. This version included basic multiplayer lobby support for both LAN and online matchmaking. The online matchmaking service runs on 7kfans.com and is tied to existing user accounts from the website's forums. Numerous other QoL changes and bugfixes were delivered with the release.^[5]

Reception[edit]

Sales[edit]

Commercially, Seven Kingdoms was overshadowed at launch by competing real-time strategy titles such as Age of Empires, Total Annihilation and Dark Reign.^[6][7] Writing for CNET Gamecenter, Allen Rausch reported that the game was 'buried' by the large number of releases in its genre at the time.^[8] The game was particularly dwarfed by Age of Empires, according to T. Liam McDonald of PC Gamer US, who placed part of the blame for Seven Kingdoms' sales on its 'indifferent ad campaign and weak graphics.'^[6] However, both Rausch and McDonald noted that Seven Kingdoms had attracted a dedicated fan following by 1999,^[8][6] at which point Rausch wrote that it had sold 'fairly well'.^[8] In the United States, the game sold roughly 35,000 units by November 1999, according to PC Data.^[7] Global sales of Seven Kingdoms, its expansion pack and its sequel surpassed 200,000 units by 2000.^[9]

Seven Kingdoms[edit]

Seven Kingdoms
Aggregate score Aggregator Score GameRankings 85%[10] Review scores Publication Score CGW [11] Game Revolution C[12] GameSpot 9/10[13] PC Gamer (US) 90%[14] PC Zone 68%[15]

The game received 'favorable' reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings (though almost all of them belong to its sequel rather than the original).^[10]

Seven Kingdoms was the finalist for GameSpot's 1997 'Best Strategy Game' award, which ultimately went to Total Annihilation. The editors wrote, 'Even in light of fierce competition from this year's other top-notch strategy releases, Seven Kingdoms stands tall as an inventive, enjoyable product destined to be remembered.' However, it won the publication's 'Best Game No One Played' award.^[16]

In a 1999 retrospective, Computer Games Strategy Plus named Seven Kingdoms as a runner-up for its '10 Essential Real-time Strategy Games' list. The magazine's Steve Bauman wrote, 'Its combat is nothing to write home about, but few RTS games have a better build-up phase, with a slick visual representation of trade and economy.'^[17]

Ancient Adversaries[edit]

Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries
Aggregate score Aggregator Score GameRankings 75%[18] Review scores Publication Score AllGame [19] PC Zone 75%[20]

The Ancient Adversaries expansion pack received 'favorable' reviews according to GameRankings.^[18]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

5 Kingdoms 3

1. ^'Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries for Windows (1998)'. MobyGames. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
2. ^'Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries Returns'. Enlight. Archived from the original on December 15, 2009. Retrieved July 27, 2017.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
3. ^the3dfxdude (July 20, 2010). '7KAA ported to SDL'. Seven Kingdoms.
4. ^the3dfxdude (May 19, 2015). '7KAA 2.14.5'. Seven Kingdoms.
5. ^the3dfxdude (September 4, 2016). '7KAA 2.14.6'. Seven Kingdoms.
6. ^ ^abcMcDonald, T. Liam (December 1999). 'Reviews; Seven Kingdoms II'. PC Gamer US. 6 (12): 159, 160.
7. ^ ^abSaltzman, Marc (November 16, 1999). 'Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars'. IGN. Archived from the original on August 8, 2002.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
8. ^ ^abcRausch, Allen (January 26, 1999). 'Sneak Peeks; Seven Kingdoms: The Fryhtan Wars'. CNET Gamecenter. Archived from the original on November 27, 1999.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
9. ^Saltzman, Marc (May 18, 2000). Game Design: Secrets of the Sages, Second Edition. Brady Games. p. 396. ISBN1566869870.
10. ^ ^ab'Seven Kingdoms for PC'. GameRankings. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
11. ^Chin, Elliott (March 1998). 'Fit for a King (Seven Kingdoms Review)'(PDF). Computer Gaming World. No. 164. pp. 193–94, 196. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
12. ^Gies, Daniel (April 1998). 'Seven Kingdoms Review'. Game Revolution. Archived from the original on February 14, 2004. Retrieved July 27, 2017.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
13. ^McDonald, Tim (December 12, 1997). 'Seven Kingdoms Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
14. ^'Seven Kingdoms'. PC Gamer. 1998.
15. ^'PC Review: Seven Kingdoms'. PC Zone. 1998.
16. ^Staff. 'Best & Worst Awards 1997'. GameSpot. Archived from the original on February 8, 2001.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
17. ^Bauman, Steve (November 15, 1999). '10 Essential Real-time Strategy Games'. Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on March 1, 2005.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
18. ^ ^ab'Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries for PC'. GameRankings. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
19. ^Smith, Nick. 'Seven Kingdoms Ancient Adversaries - Review'. AllGame. Archived from the original on November 16, 2014. Retrieved July 27, 2017.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
20. ^'PC Review: Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries'. PC Zone. 1998.

• Seven Kingdoms II Strategy Guide, M. Knight, Prima Games, ISBN0-7615-2208-5

External links[edit]

• Official Website (archive 2009)
• Enlight Software - (archive 2008)
• Seven Kingdoms at MobyGames
• Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries at MobyGames

Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seven_Kingdoms_(video_game)&oldid=914563450'

Five years ago, Brian Reynolds arrived on the real-time strategy scene and broke the rules with Rise of Nations, a deep but manageable game that put the S in RTS. But five years before that, when Reynolds was just getting warmed up on turn-based strategy games, a fellow named Trevor Chan was already breaking those rules and putting that S into RTS. Chan's Seven Kingdoms series did things you just didn't do in real time strategy: diplomacy, espionage, hiring neutral units from the map, mixing fantasy with history, and the sort of depth you weren't supposed to do in real time. Unfortunately, the games had the dubious honor of being 'cult hits,' meaning they didn't sell well enough to spawn imitators. It would be another five years of Command & Conquer and Warcraft clones until Reynolds showed up.
So here we are now with a new Seven Kingdoms. The first red flag is that Trevor Chan's name nowhere to be seen. The second red flag is that you're going to have a hard time getting it to run. The third red flag is the lack of helpful documentation. The fourth red flag is that it looks awful. The fifth red flag is that it's hard to tell what's going on. And on and on it goes, red flags piling up relentlessly until there's no denying that you've got a real stinker on your hands.

If+you've+seen+one+demon+city,+you've+seen+them+all.

Seven Kingdoms: Conquest has almost nothing in common with the previous games. The developers at Enlight have completely lost sight of what made the series special. There are a few minor nods to the previous games. For instance, you can use diplomats to try to 'buy' neutral sites instead of conquering them. The major combatants are humans and demons, but Enlight opted to call the demons 'demons' instead of 'fryhtans', which might make more sense, but it just goes to show they couldn't care less about Seven Kingdoms' distinctive mythology. Not that I even know what a fryhtan is after all these years, but if Enlight can't be bothered to recall the terminology, it's a safe bet it's not concerned with tradition.
On a certain level, reboot wasn't necessarily a bad idea. As a design, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest is promising. Someone in Enlight's China studio knows the genre, and there are some clever concepts here. The peon-less economy is based on a simple but strategic resource system based on cities, which are also used to control the map and customize your faction. There's a bit of Rise of Nations in how each city allows a certain number of buildings, which in turn determines your economy, which units you can build, and how many units you can build.
The size and composition of your army depends on expanding out onto the map by either capturing or 'buying' new sites, and then developing them. Villages can support a few limited structures, but they can be upgraded to cities, which support more and different types of structures. Humans can build units from other cultures by capturing their villages. Your army causes a constant drain on your food supply (or blood supply, for demons), so bigger armies will need more farms (or blood totems), which will take up more valuable building slots.
The dynamics vary a bit between humans and demons, and each has several sub-factions. There's a variety of units, and many of them have special abilities you can purchase with 'reputation' or 'fear', which is each race's global pool of experience points. Furthermore, different units have different special abilities that can be researched. Each faction has powerful hero and god units, which can buff your armies and give you even more powerful spells. When it comes to armies, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest is varied and generous.

Formation?+What's+a+formation?

There's even a sort of 'sub-economy' based on creeps scattered around the map. They're useful not just for experience points (i.e. 'reputation' and 'fear'), but they also guard pools of a unique resource called demon essence. Only certain types of units can harvest this stuff, which is the sole resource for 'demon powers'. You can call up a menu to spend your demon essence on these powers, which range from additional resources, to buffs and debuffs, to taking over enemy units, or to calling in your heroes or gods. In the hands of a competent developer, many of these features could make for an exciting and deep RTS.
But no such luck here. The first and biggest problems are technical. This is a primitive 3D engine with fancy effects slathered on top of dated graphics. Do these blocky polygonal units really benefit from HDR lighting? Is bloom going to do any good with a palette this muted and artwork this uninspired? Seven Kingdoms: Conquest has the look of a five-year-old game dug out of the attic and repainted in the hopes that you'll mistake it for something new. The sound is also horrible, featuring screams and clangs you've heard elsewhere, presumably drawn from some cheap sound library.
But even more damning is the game's instability and utter lack of QA. On three completely different computers, I was unable to get it running until I dialed the graphics way down, turning an ugly game even uglier. Somewhere in all the settings are some seriously broken features that cause black screens, permanently opened windows, hard locks, and rampant graphical corruption. Given the variety of hardware and drivers I tried, the problem seems to go much deeper than some isolated hardware incompatibility.
Even if these problems were fixed, the interface falls far short of what this level of complexity needs. To the game's credit, there's ample information available about each unit, and you can even right click on the 'train unit' button to find out more info about the unit before you actually spend money on it. But for the most part, this is an awful interface. There are hotkeys that don't work, clicks that don't take, and pathing AI that falls apart, making messy unit management even messier. There are no formations, which is a dire problem with larger armies. Features like customizable hotkeys for unit powers are all but useless when there's no easy way to specify which unit is going to use its power.

The+orange+stuff+coming+out+of+the+dragon+is+supposed+to+be+fire.

There's no handy way to get to various buildings, which makes for a lot of scrolling around the map, hunting for where you built that demon haunt. Or was it a demon portal? No, that's one's a demon void. The generic building graphics do very little to stand out from each other, which is a problem considering how unit training, base building, research, and upgrades are scattered to the five winds, living variously in several different buildings. The bottom line is that the scale of the game quickly outstrips the interface. At this point, it's a bit silly to complain about the AI, the lack of map variety, or the sluggish pacing, all of which aren't that big of a problem in a game you won't want to play in the first place.