Ways of History - a Civ-like MMORTS game
Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 10:32 am
Ways of History (rus. Пути истории) is one of the most successful efforts to make Civilization a multiplayer game with concurrent actions. This browser game appeared in 2009 and became rather popular in Russian-speaking Internet in 2011. Differences from Freeciv:
- Full real time game, no turns. Units have speed in tiles per hour, cities collect resources each hour etc.
- That means, being online more time gives considerable advantage.
- One can join the game a while after it has started, but first days are very important and your development will be considerably back.
- Sad but can't omit it, donate. For roubles (converted into "coins of fortune") one can enhanse some city outputs on 20-30%, or have better interface.
- Tribes lead by individual players can join into countries. Embassy is a player-unique building that allows one to found a country and to have diplomacy points that are needed to accept new players into it.
- Country launches a common spaceship that is mandatoey to win the game.
- Joining one country is the only way to share techs. (In the process of joining, some beakers (known as "bulbs" in Freeciv) are spent on aligning the tech levels).
- Adding a player to a country that already has N players costs 10*N*N diplo points. Diplo points are sum of embassy levels of the players, maximal upkeep free embassy level is 4 and maximal at all is 20. If a country loses diplo points beneath its existenve level, it has no science progress.
- Country has government that consists of head of the country (the founder) and some other duties assigned by him and responsible for certain aspects of the country's life (mainly science direction, treasury and war)
- Treasury keeper sets taxes on population and/or different types of operations (but players may smuggle things...)
- Each player selects one of four races, each one has its favourite food resource and other bonuses.
- Buildings have levels that contribute to their upkeep cost and effect.
- A city has finite number of slots where buildings can be put. (There are water, lowlands and highlands slots, depending on local and adjacent terrain, some of them require payment.) Most buildings can be built in several slots of the same city.
- Wonders are not globally unique but have a map radius in which they must be unique (not dependent on if in the same player/country's or foreign cities); some of their effects also have some radius. Each city may have 1 wonder at maximum.
- There is no distributing workers by tiles. Each city has three sliders of what to occupy its population with that go from 20% to 60%. The sliders are Wisemen/Farmers/Workers before you know "Money" tech and Science/Finances/Production after (yup, you have no gold before you know how to use it). Also, it can be controlled if a resource is consumed or accumulated (or sent away by trade means). Mainly city collects resources from its own tile, but also may take resources from bonus deposits opened in 2 tiles radius; irrigating neighbour tile gives +1% growth. Number of resources that a city may use grows with its population (~proportional to square root). Growth is mostly not proportional to population but collecting resources is. Food and Wood are harvested by each city, Marble is harvested by all hill cities but better goes from deposits, totally there is 21 resources 13 of which can be found only in deposits.
- To see a resource deposit, you (for most types of them) must know a corresponding tech; before it the tile is marked to have "unknown" deposit. To open it, you must spend a number of workers equal to squared number of cities of the player. Cities can't be founded on deposits.
- The land terrain has separate climatic zone (snow, grassland, steppe or desert) and relief (plains or hills, mountains are hardly passable and can't have cities or roads). Probability to have some deposit depends on both.
- To explore terrain, you send intelligence units to a non-city tile (number of units depends on distance, the units are spent but the vision is permanent). In 20 tiles radius, attack on non-barbarian city explores the map (to the degender always, to the attacker if somebody survived), also, map is shared to a city in this radius where you send over 200 (250 in other games) resource. A country shares maps in city vision radii (they are expanded by many inventions).
- Most buildings that produce some useful things slow down city growth.
- So military-producing cities have maximal growth and small size with minimum of buildings not needed for troops while science-producing ones have large size and small growth.
- City can't grow more than its culture that is enhanced by special buildings and wonders.
- Units are not locatable when not resting in cities, they are just sent on missions that consume some time (distance/roads dependent).
- Battles (that all are city attacks) are not random. All troops attack simultaneously, but are assigned to different tactical roles (melee, bombarders, flank defense...) that influence who fights whom. If defenders lose, the remaining attacking troops rob the city and bring loot and information to their departure city. War machines can destroy cities but not conquer.
- If defenders resist 8 rounds (first 4 rounds are different due to bonuses and functions of different tactical roles, later ones are uniform) but some attackers survive, then the battle is drown, the city is looted and observed but the population and buildings are intact.
- Aviation strike happens in a single round. Not all units can strike the aviation back, and not all units of the attacking aviation can damage land or sea units. Defending aviation (in the city or in other cities of the country within its operating radius) strikes the attacking one without reciprocal damage. If the attackers win, they destroy buildings.
- If land attackers win, they destroy all aviation in the city, as well as all aviation sent out of the city 3 hours before or later.
- Beakers not yet commited to scientific progress can be also looted. "Cache" building does not hand them, and commiting not full science bar needs a manual action.
- Each land war unit and some small boats have "capacity" of how many loot they can carry.
- "Population killer" and "building destroyer" are features of unit types that have an effect if the army wins. "Wall destroyers" strike each next round of the battle.
- Investigating a city is a battle between intelligence units of the city and a party coming (the defenders don't die or inform their owner on the fact).
- Cities have passive defenses (trap pits kill a specific number of land troops, helioconcentrator and air defenses do the same to ships and aviation, cache reduces loot if defenders lose).
- Producing a unit require a number of population and some other resources. Units are upkept with certain resources permanently.
- City buildings have finite capacity of resources. If you collect more and don't spend immediately, they are lost.
- Roads require a specific number of workers and spending some resources to be built (type of road dependent). Most roads and opening deposits consume the workers involved.
- Resource exchange between cities require building traders and consumes "pack animals" resource (one animal transports up to 50 of other resources).
- Instead of huts, early game bonuses are given by "hermit's quests", the old man asks the player to do things like build some building or found second city.
- "Barbarians" are cities that lost their owner (account blocked or on deletion list, player idled for a time depending on his population, city is destroyed by war machines). The cities lose their wonder and deposits (but still produces usual resources), their population gradually reduces until they disappear. They don't attack, mainly you rob them (but they may have garrison, e.g. reinforcements sent to another cities that auromatically come back when the city goes barbarian).