One of the greatest RTS games, Seven Kingdoms 2

I tried out the SOSE demo. It made me think of this old game.

from Sins Forums

Seven Kingdoms 2 - The Fryhtan Wars, often less than ten dollars. Try amazon.
Came out in 1999 and it's still great fun to play. Works on XP. Don't know about the newer operating system. 

Its like Age of Empires with lots of added depth.

It's a bit like Age of Empires. You have the Romans, Persians, Greeks, Chinese and some others. Then you have the Fryhtans, who are monsterous creatures that start off very strong and get stronger the more people they kill. There are resources to mine and factories that employ townspeople to make goods, but each person in the game has numbers for loyalty, combat ability, hit points, leadership and some have spy abilities. If your troop's loyalty falls below thirty, you run the risk of them defecting to other kingdoms. This can happen to generals too. You can adjust the loyalty of everyone by giving honors which cost money or you can keep them in your fort under the guidance of a good general of the same nationality. Your kingdom has a reputation number too. It can go up or down. It can plummet dramatically for a number of reasons, perhaps the most crucial being you've attacked civilians of your own nationality or someone you're at war with. When your reputation drops, it gets harder to bribe other generals and loyalty throughout the kingdom goes down. The most common problem with low loyalty is rebellions. Peasants will leave teh town and start attacking it or other buildings. This can start a chain reaction. It's very difficult to control a rebellion. Killing rebels counts as killing civilians and that makes your reputation go down which lowers loyalty throughout the kingdom causing even more rebellions.

Losing your king in battle causes a drop in reputation and so does losing an important fighter. Lack of work will lower loyalty. In the beginning of the game you'll try to convert independent towns to your kingdom. They have a resistance number which goes down if you connect a fort to the town and put in a general or king. If the general has high leadership and he's the same nationality, resistance will go down fast and soon they'll be part of your kingdom. At that point you can tax them or recruit from their ranks for your army. If you don't have a general of the same nationality, you can still bring the independent town on to your side by giving them grants of money or by giving them jobs in a science tower where they'll do research for you. Or you can put them to work in a factory or war factory, but that last one might get you on the dangerous kingdom list of the fryhtans and they'll attack.

Then there's spying. You can hire them at inns or build an espionage college where you train your own citizens to spy. Spies can change themselves to appear as other nationalities. They can go into enemy forts and show you the troops inside. With research and good spy skills, your spies can steal information about other kingdoms, steal technology, assassinate generals, counter spy in your own villages and forts, bribe and steal forts full of troops, create incidents between other kingdoms that turn them against each other and a few other things.

There's also diplomacy. You can form trade agreements with other kingdoms or reject proposals. You can ask for aid or military assisstance or a cease fire. You can form alliances or break them (breaking them is bad for the reputation). You can trade technology. You get the picture; there's a lot to think about.

You can improve your reputation by killing independent fryhtans or fryhtans from kingdoms. You can avoid breaking treaties or killing civilians. If you start losing money, your buildings will fall apart and if work places fall down, you'll lose loyalty of your subjects and they won't pay as much in tax. You can also hire townspeople to pray to gods and the gods have many different abilities and benefits as well as a general benefit. Some are destructive like earthquakes and some are beneficial like improving the leadership of targeted generals.

It's a huge headache when you start playing, but it's all very well thought out, an incredible game that makes AOE and most every other RTS look shallow. Single player games can easily last ten hours real time, much of it on pause, trying to figure out what to do or just catching your breath. One negative - the game won't tell you why things have gone wrong. It might look like a bug, but there's always a reason, like if your generals disappear - your forts are probably infested with spies. It can be frustrating, but eventually, you'll see the genius of Trevor Chan if you stick with it.

There is a campaign. I haven't finished it. You get choices during the campaign so that it's different every time you play it. It's not that long, but it's somewhat different. Not the most impressive thing about the game though. I've played games with more gripping stories.

There are some nice guides on the internet, but you'll have to look around. 

the 1.20 patch and instructions on how to install...
http://www.the-underdogs.info/tech/techelp_s.html#sevenkingdoms2patchingtover120

The seven kingdoms forum at enlight...
http://59.148.144.50/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=63

I don't know if there's anyplace to play online. The game works well on XP. I've got the 1.20 patch. Some of the tutorials within the game don't work though; I hear it's a problem with service packs.

Video of gameplay at youtube. look up fryhtan wars. Kind of confusing to watch. The graphics are similar to AOE/AOK, but probably a little worse. The gameplay excels!

I had played through Mount and Blade a few times when I heard of the SOSE demo. Both made me long for the features of 7K which I played intensely about six years ago.

 

44,191 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
the review for the latest seven kingdom iteration is horrible. I saw the PC gamer edition of it.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yea. I'm not talking about that game which is called 7K Conquest. I'm talking about The 7K2/The Fryhtan Wars. The reviews said it was one of the best strategy games of all time.
SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I completely concur, Seven Kingdoms 2 was a RTS masterpiece, and its briilance is overshadowing RTS's even today. Amazing game.

Although, Seven Kingdoms 1 had a few bright ideas that didn't make it to Seven Kingdoms 2, but Seven Kingdoms 2 is still the better game. I suggest everyone to try it, its graphics are not horrendous like old games, they're just effective. I really and truly suggest every RTS fan to at least try it and see how a complicated RTS with TBS ideas is carried out, just like Sins. And its diplomacy is amazing for a RTS.

A fair warning, though, the game requires a bit more skill, you won't be able to win initially with standard RTS tactics.

Oh, and Seven Kingdoms 3/Conquest? Ugh. Not even made by the same company, has nothing similar to the Seven Kingdoms games, looks like it wasn't funded at all, and the game is horrible and really mars the name of the series. I'm really sorry this thing was released.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Just won a quick game (1 hour) with the Egyptians, which is the easiest to play with. I simply built a temple (called "Seat of Power" in the game), invoked Isis, the Egyptian god to that magically and greatly bolsters the number of my civilians, so I replenished my towns, built about 10 fully upgraded forts, all packed with tiny angry Egyptians, and easily slaughtered all of my attackers.

Eventually, though, I simply purchased the thrones of all of the neighbouring empires, since 8 towns filled with farmers and workers generate ALOT of taxes. And since they did the math that alot of money + alot of soldiers + alot of everything equals their destruction one time or the other, they chose the easy way out and agreed to be purchased. The smartest thing about the game is that if I only had alot of money, but my military ability was low, I wouldn't be able to easily purchase the enemy empires.

The Frythans, though, were a different story and of course refused to be purchased by a lowly human, so I had to activate my huge army and squashed them, eventually.

I can't believe that this is still such a great game.

One of the highlights of my 7K2 experiences was that I won a few games through espionage only, and incited wars between my enemies, framed each and every one against the other so they left me alone, assassinated the remaining empires' kings, incited revolts in their towns and forts until they crumbled, and eventually simply purchased the tattered remains of these empires and won.

It's really a precious gaming gem. It's a real shame it didn't receive the acclaim it deserved back at its time.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I was playing Mount and Blade (very fun game). You talk to other lords. They give you a dialogue option like the following, "I would like to make peace with the Rhodocks." When I saw that I got excited. I thought M and B had diplomacy like 7K, but every time the dialogue answer is the same, "Go and break your leg. Then we'll all have peace." What a let down. Why do they even put stupid dialogue choices like that in games? The thing I like about 7K is that nothing is there just to add atmosphere. All the dialogue options will produce real actions from opponents if the right factors are in place and all the factors are to an extent under the player's control. It's very unusual in a game. Deus Ex was similar in that way.

And buying out a kingdom is really very cool. Things change so fast in 7K. You can have what looks like a small empire and in a few conversations with other kingdoms you can be the biggest kingdom in the game. People sometimes surrender entire kingdoms to you for mysterious reasons. Which is good and bad because often they're running in the red financially and you have to sell off empty mines and factories or get rid of tons of inns or forts no longer connected to towns that have moved or been wiped out. All of it costs money to operate.

Seven Kingdoms is also one of the only games where you really need to pay attention to the difficulty level you select when starting. They go from 1 to 8. Most games I play I start by playing medium difficulty if not hard. In first person shooters hard just means lots of annoying enemies - healthy, young wrists and fingers recomended. In strategy games medium just means attacks will come sooner and they'll be bigger. In Seven Kingdoms you'll find that medium (about 3) is almost impossible for a beginner. You'll get rebellions because you've run out of food or money and your generals have been assassinated and you won't know why it's happened or what to do. Things will be going fine and then you'll see it on your world map - civies swarming all over everything, soldiers cutting them down and you making money off every one you slaughter. You'll look at your dollars and they'll be going up, but then you'll notice that this is happening in every town, the walls everywhere coming down, all the buildings under attack and you'll rightfully get a very bad feeling because at that point your kingdom is practically doomed. Soon other kingdoms will sense your weakness and they'll almost all declare war and things will get even worse.

There are ways to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but I think most people, acclimated to the type of thing that happens in Age of Empires or Homeworld, they think something is wrong or they feel gyped. Seven kingdoms won't offer any explanation for why things have fallen apart and the players stomped off
in droves, shocked, angry, never to return.

Enlight is a strange company. Trevor Chan wasn't just interested in competing with the giants of RTS. He actually wanted to enlighten people with his games and teach them how the world works. He actually worked on 7K Conquest, but he walked off the project, probably because he had to make deals with people who weren't interested in enlightenment. It reminds me of Warren Specter and what happened to the latest Deus Ex. The corporations have taken over and the geniuses of gaming have lost control of their projects.


Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I seriously doubt that people didn't pick up the game just because of that. It had something to do with it, sure, but the the main problem was that its production value was lesser than the Age of Empires series, the sounds were weird, the graphics were simply decent, and to top it all, it was addressed to a niche crowd. The TBS guys didn't like it because of its fast pacing (although I pause every two minutes just because of that), and the RTS guys wanted RTS, without having to deal with taxes, rebellions, diplomacy, economy, research of food gathering and production, moving caravans around the map, soldier' battle and leadership skills, special items and all that. Like I said, a real shame.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Yea. There was a lot of whining that it wasn't turned based and that it required too much pause and think to be real time strategy, but then real kingdoms aren't real time either. I'm sure real world leaders spend a lot of time thinking and scheming. 7K is in sort of a category of it's own. One of those unusual games that takes risks and tries to change genres and introduce more gameplay.

I'm guessing they were working with a smaller budget than AOE since AOE has always been a huge seller and able to bring in big dollars. Look what Chan was trying to do in comparison to other RTS - Essentially he was building a game that was several games in one. He had RTS and diplomacy and spying and Role playing and some other things. It's no wonder they didn't have time for snazzy graphics. They were trying to get all that gameplay to work and be accessible and no one had ever done it before. He also had to get his customers to understand and see the value of what he was doing, something I think he failed at. He also failed to make the game easy enough which helps sales. The vast majority don't go looking for games with huge learning curves. As cool as it is, they don't want to see their armies walk off and their civillians rebelling for what they think is "no reason" or "unfair spying skills" on the computer's part.

So here's the problem... Some of us like the complicated games that don't treat us like idiots, but that doesn't seem to result in gaming company success. Look what happened to Looking Glass Studios. I must admit that even though I have 7K2, I bought long after release and only because it was dirt cheap and the reviews touted it's genius. My ten dollars isn't going to make Enlight a powerhouse gaming company.

Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
I've set up a fansite at 7k.drupalcafe.com

Its pretty basic, just started and there is only forums at the moment.

Get on and meet some people to play against!
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
never heard of this game I feel sad now...