Alliances, Schemes and Betrayals: Multiplayer Cooperation and Conflict in Field of Glory: Kingdoms

Field of Glory: Kingdoms provides a lot opportunity for interesting cooperation and conflict between human players. The game is unique in being a simultaneous turn-based game, not alternating. It’s a game system where each player has a certain number of hours to submit their turn, but it will only be executed when all turns are in, and all at the same time. This is both much more realistic and also a source of tension and challenge; you have to guess what the other will do at the same time as you. But it also has another advantage: the game can support up to 16 players at the same time and is as fast as a 2-player game, and it’s really a ton of fun.

Multiplayer games are very different from single-player. Single-player is more relaxed, and you know that the AI opponent won’t quit or exploit. Multiplayer is excellent for an intense experience, with real diplomatic discussions and military campaigns that no AI can yet conceive, but there are drawbacks, however. Notably, you have no guarantee that players will want to play until the end of the game, or that they won’t find an unintended use of the rules that would be totally unrealistic, but which they will use anyway to win at all costs. In short, the two experiences are very different and not exclusive.

Balancing the game and its mechanics for multiplayer has been a lengthy process. We’ve based this on more than a year and a half of testing and admirable feedback from testers, without whom the game would only be a shadow of itself. It’s a humbling lesson for the developer, because even when they think they have done their best, the testers show them how imperfect their initial creation is. So, I take this opportunity to send a huge thank you to all those who participated in the beta test of Kingdoms.

However, balancing factions hasn’t been that much of an issue. Kingdoms does not seek and has never sought to level each nation to the same level. That is part of the experience, and it is obvious that if you take Byzantium and your neighbour is a small power like Georgia, you can make his life miserable. That’s just how it is. It’s up to the players to create a dynamic balance that makes the game a challenge and not an easy road for the winner. Very often, multiplayer games balance out with alliances forming against the leading player.

From experience, multiplayer interactions are more often conflicts than cooperations, unless cooperation is justified! Initially, while you are still organizing your kingdom, you tolerate neighbours managed by human players, but very quickly, as you know they are dangerous, you try to find allies to defeat them. Multiplayer games between testers and with the developer are therefore at least as bloody as any single-player game!

To facilitate player interaction and roleplay, we have made a major update to the inter-turn discussion interface, which now allows, in addition to the old system of a single message to everyone, to create as many secret messages as you want. This fertile ground will enable you to plot many schemes with your allies to defeat your enemies! Ultimately then, there’s plenty of scope for you to make alliances with your friends in Field of Glory: Kingdoms. Or to scheme against them and ultimately betray them…