Seven Kingdoms Conquest Q&A

Steve Fawkner spills some beans.

Those of us who have played the latest Warlords games know Infinite Interactive, a spin-off created by SSG (Korsun Pocket, Battles in Normandy and other wargames). It sounds like a good choice for a group to take on the Seven Kingdom series, don't you think? Well, just ask Steve Fawkner, lead designer over at Infinite. In fact, that's exactly what we did, and we even got some juicy nuggets you haven't seen before. If you're a fan strategy games that put the emphasis on strategy, we invite you to read on.

IGNPC: So it's been a good five years since the last Seven Kingdoms game, in which time we've seen a fundamental shift away from the design model you worked with back then. From what we've heard, you don't plan on going with a classic feel.

Steve Fawkner: Five years is a long time in terms of game design; everything moves so fast. The most obvious thing is that the bar for visual quality seems to double in height every year. The more subtle changes can be the tricky things though, such as the expected length of individual portions of the game, or certain interface conventions within a genre.

Our aim with Seven Kingdoms Conquest is to take the classic RTS paradigm of Harvest / Build / Produce / Destroy and add some fresh gameplay to each element. So in one sense, we do have a classic feel because all of those elements are in place. But in another sense, we have something quite evolutionary, because each one of those elements has had some new and interesting twist added to it.

We've also identified the elements such as Espionage, Trade and Diplomacy that made the original Seven Kingdoms games unique, and then upgraded them to fit within a game and interface design that lives up to current standards.

IGNPC: Thematically, of course, you don't stick with a standard fantasy or sci-fi approach, with this demons-versus-human battle taking place across thousands of years. And the demons gain resources through destruction, while the humans gain theirs through creation. What else can you tell us about what's it's like to play the demon faction?

Steve Fawkner: Superficially, it may sound like the Demons are a very vanilla race--quickly crank out some big nasty creatures and go rush your enemy. But this would be a mistake!

Although the Demons have plenty of firepower in their big units, they have trouble fielding enough of them early in a game to get a quick victory. Creating these huge brutes requires much Blood and many Souls, and these can only be obtained by enslaving human villages and cities. Usually, it is best to pick on a couple of small neutral and isolated villages early in the game and slowly bring a big army of demons into play over the course of time. Here is where the strategy lies for the Demon player--exactly how he chooses to use his minor troops such as Succubi, Gorgons and Leeches will directly affect his resource income (Blood, Stone and Souls), and this will determine how well he fares later in the game.

Demon Players also have a choice between magic and military power. Should they build portals to learn new spells (an investment for the late game), or should they build troops and rampage around the map? If they build enough portals then they gain a special Elemental Spell that is very nasty, and this is quite a powerful incentive for them to split their efforts between offense and base-building.

The final thing to know about Demons is that they can immediately begin using Demons from enemy Lairs if that Lair is captured. This gives them potentially more variety than the humans, since it is much more common to find a battle with multiple types of Demon Races than a map with multiple Human Ages (except for a few special fun skirmish maps where you can tanks vs. Egyptian Gods!)