Seven Kingdoms II (PC)

Have you ever heard hard-core history nerds start debating which civilizations could have kicked which civilization’s butt? It starts with military technology and tactics but inevitably spills into what someone saw on Deadliest Warrior that one time. This game is the end all be all of which civilizations could have kicked with civilizations’ butt. Complete with war machines certain civs never discovered and playable monstrous races. I’m certain this game will put all those arguments to rest!

History

Seven Kingdoms II was developed by Enlight Software, designed by Trevor Chan, and published by Ubisoft. Trevor Chan was a programming consultant for an airline sales system when he started his game development career with Capitalism and Seven Kingdoms. Chan and Enlight are still making games today, with a new Seven Kingdoms being planned and a new Capitalism game in development right now.

Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars was released on July 31st, 1999. It’s competition was Dungeon Keeper 2 (PC), System Shock 2 (PC), and Croc 2 (PS1).

Experiences

It’s difficult to imagine a world before commercialized sequels. Where sequels were meant to represent the success of a good product instead of an inevitability of the industry. I adored the first Seven Kingdoms when it came out and the idea that there would be another game that was bigger and better blew my mind. The only sequel series I had experienced was through Super Mario All-Stars pack, I didn’t even know that Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros looked that different. In short, I was completely unprepared and surprised by the graphical update between Seven Kingdoms games and the idea that games could be refined and improved for generations to come… yaaaay…

What is this sequel wizardry!?

Gameplay

Seven Kingdoms II is a real time strategy game in the vein of Ages and Empires. Your goal is to vanquish your enemies via conquest, diplomacy, and/or cloak and dagger spying. To this end you manage resources such as food, gold, people, and reputation — and hoo boy, is reputation important. If you run out of any of those then you’re gonna have your bad time. Human civilizations can also discover new technologies to improve soldier stats, create war machines that take less time to train than soldiers, espionage abilities, and industrial capabilities. Your goal is to be the last kingdom standing, in most circumstances.

The big innovation for this game over the previous installment is that the monstrous Fryhtans are no longer simply marauding creatures, they’re now playable kingdoms or Kwyzans. If all that diplomacy and spying junk didn’t interest you then you can Conan this shit and crush everyone. In ways including but not limited to, sapping natural resources, killing civilians, and enslaving towns — I did mention they were literal monsters right.

With giant spooky lairs, and bizarre structures the Fryhtans offer a completely different way to play.

Shockingly, the latest editions being offered by Steam and Good Old Games still have functioning multiplayer so it’s totally possible to comp stomp with your friends or go toe to toe with them.

The Gush

The learning curve in this game is pretty steep — it’s not Dwarf Fortress or anything — but the tutorials, hints, and scenario editor give the player enough room to experiment and learn. It takes some time but you’ll get the hang of it.

You can actually deploy your spies now! In the original Seven Kingdoms if you tried to infiltrate an enemy kingdom with spies they’d typically get apprehended and executed before they even took their first step… somehow. Now they’ll get as far as the gates of the enemy fort before there’s even a chance of them being discovered. So have fun bribing and backstabbing your way to victory.

The bizarre Fryhtan tech might seem unwieldy at first but once you learn how it works you can unleash your inner monster. Fryhtans don’t engage in diplomacy they only extort and destroy. Playing them is a total rush.

The Kvetch

The campaign for this game is overall unenjoyable. Every campaign is randomly generated with randomly generated scenarios. You have to face down a bunch of Fryhtan Kwyzans and a rival human empire. The effect of randomness can change things immensely and it makes the campaign feel arbitrary. I just wish my actions could snowball my empire and give me mounting power. It certainly doesn’t help that it’s super freaking hard.

Some Fryhtan missions can begin and end with getting completely overpowered and crushed.

I don’t know what’s wrong with the Fryhtan pathing but it’s a huge problem. Your monstrous armies will generally meet defeat because half of them were back at the lair picking their nose or just bumping harmlessly into each other.

These pathing problems are alleviated by ranged attacks but not all Fryhtan species can attack from a distance.

A minor quibble but why do my counterspies dying count against my reputation? It makes sense to be disreputable for infiltrating an enemy kingdom but having some secret police-men keeping an eye out for enemy spies dying in an earthquake should not mar my good name — I mean, I do have 11 assassins ready to kill the enemy’s king but no one needs to know that.

The Verdict

It’s an older game but it was state of the art for 1999 and it’s cheap now. You can get it on Steam or from Good old Games for $10 — GOG even offers a bundle for both Seven Kingdoms games. I started playing this game around 2004 and I’m still playing it today so I would say that it’s worth a look-see if you’re into this sort of thing.

Next Week: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Afterbirth.

Seven Kingdoms (PC)

Introduction

There have been many cultures in the world but this game only cares about seven of them– ten in the expansion patch. Your kingdom begins small, your king and 40 villagers but your empire will grow. Make treaties, research weapons of war, then build said weapons– that would be the next logical point, train armies, fight monsters– wait what happened the historical accuracy thing we had going?

History

Seven Kingdoms was developed by Enlight Software with a team of Trevor Chan– who’s name merits being on the front of the game box. That’s top billing for someone that was doing consulting for programming of airline sales systems. Actually, that sounds shockingly complex. As far as I can tell he was the only designer for this game, but obviously not the only programmer. Enlight Software would go on to publish another of Chan’s games, Capitalism.

Fun Fact: It’s one of the few games from the 90s that was made to be Linux compatible.

Seven Kingdoms was released on November 30th, 1997. It released alongside Total Annihilation (PC), Fallout (PC), Diddy Kong Racing (Nintendo 64), and Megaman Legends (PS1).

Nostalgia

This is the first game that I ever beat on the highest difficulty setting. It was a harrowing gamble with enemies on all sides. I relied on manpower to supply my military but researched weapons of war and sold them to the highest bidders. Soon, my enemies turned on each other with vast armies made of machines. When there was only one left standing the tax on his coffers lead his weapons and kingdom into disrepair. He killed so many civilians that his people despised him. The rampant rebellions left his army without food and when the dust settled there was nothing left of him. Conquer? I have people to do that for me.

Something like this but with less cohesion. There were little pockets of encroaching people all over.

 

Gameplay

The beginning of the end. Watch that reputation plummet.

Unlike other strategy games of the time this game is not about resource management. The only resources are money, food, and reputation. Food is produced by villagers that don’t have other jobs, money is produced by taxing villages and mining and selling resources that are randomly placed on the map, and reputation is gained slowly over time and by killing monsters and lost by breaking treaties, killing civilians, and getting your spies caught. Low reputations can cause rebellions which lead to more civilians getting killed– which creates a viscous cycle of civilian death and reputation loss.

The seven kingdoms are the Normans, Greeks, Japanese, Vikings, Chinese, Mayans, and Persians and Deadly Adversaries introduces the Egyptians, Mughuls, and Zulus– all other civilizations go home. Each of these civilizations has their own stats and gain combat abilities as their combat score gets higher. Some races have shields that can protect them from ranged attacks, some races have ranged attacks, some unlock berzerker attacks that do intense amounts of damage, some attack quickly or start with higher damage than others. They feel really different from each other and I think that’s interesting.

So many people to destroy, so little time.

The kingdoms also interact differently with each other, each kingdom is more agreeable to its own. If you want to take over a Mughul village you’d best send a Mughul general to convince them to join.

The monsters on the map come in over 20 varieties with slightly different stats. The design of these monsters are really cool. Some are the basic giant rock people, rat people, and skeletons. But some are weird reptilian creatures.

Look at these guys. They’re man things with giant whip arms. What more could you want?

This game has a really in depth espionage system. You can bribe other people, steal technology, start wars, create unrest, assassinate generals, and claim forts out from under enemy noses. Unfortunately it’s handicapped by a weird AI bug– at least I think it’s a bug. Most of the time when you send a spy into an enemy kingdom they get found out immediately. So, the system is really interesting even though it’s just working against you. The AI will send scores and scores of spies at you and most of them will fail in their missions.

I assume those are friendly counterspies otherwise I call shenanigans.

Maps can have different goals. You can destroy all kingdoms or see who can get an economic score of 1000 the highest. Set a time limit, how many kingdoms there are, how many independent villages there are and how resilient they are to attack.

The Gush

I mentioned the Fryhtans before but I’ll mention them again. Their designs are just so cool. I used to use them as monsters in my dungeons and dragon’s campaigns, I don’t know why I stopped. They also create more lairs. I spent one game destroying my enemies and seeing how many fryhtans it would take to overwhelm me.

There’s something mindlessly fun about setting the game to the highest speed setting and just waiting to see what happens, hoping that you can slow it down in time to deal with whatever issue comes up.

Even if you get eliminated you can keep the game going to see how the rest of the campaign unfolds. You can also interfere with certain activities but it might cause the game to crash.

The cheats in this game are so fun. Turning the enemy civilization into a melting pot by adding different races to his villages causing revolt is silly fun.

The Kvetch

It’s just so annoying that the touted espionage system doesn’t seem to work. The sequel doesn’t have the instant elimination problem so you actually get to play with the system. But that’s the sequel not this game– the sequel that came out 11 years after the original.

The naval mechanics in this game are needlessly complex. Performing sea trade or getting men across oceans are giant hassles. I usually play on large land masses to counter this.

You see that little fort and village on the other side of the ocean. It can rot for all I care.

The game AI isn’t spectacular. Sometimes your soldiers won’t react to enemy units until they’re uncomfortably close. Unless your units have ranged attacks which creates a dominant strategy for units with range.

The Verdict

This game holds up surprisingly well if your machine can run it. It’s also abandonware so it’s free. Sometimes it gets a little micromanaging heavy but I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

Next Week: Final Fantasy VI