Revenge of the Pharaohs!

What is this?

Apart from this paragraph, this is the web-based trading game created as my group project in the second year of my degree. It isn’t very playable, but the code and methods we used to write it were good so we got grade A. If you want to look, you’ll need to make an account and join a game (or make a new game, if there’s none available to join when you look). See what colour you are (highlighted in the bar on the left) and find the site and camel of that colour on the map — you might need to drag the map around. You can click on the camel and site and produce food and so on. To complete a turn, either drag your camel to a different place on the map, or click “Do Transaction”.

The game works in Firefox and Opera. It used to work in Konqueror and Safari, but no longer works in the current versions. It hasn’t been tested in Internet Explorer.

Introduction

Welcome to our game, Revenge of the Pharaohs. This is an innovative game designed to test your cunning, negotiating skills, and quick thinking. Can you outwit all the other players in a fast paced real time trading game?

The game takes place in Ancient Egypt, along the banks of the River Nile and the surrounding lands. There are thirty sites representing places suitable for a settlement. Sites are only suitable for a specific type of settlement: a farm, a mine or a city. More about each site is explained in the rules below.

You start the game with a limited amount of resources, and the aim of the game is to increase the amount of resources you have and trade these resources with other players while inhabiting as many settlements as you can. You are constrained by the number of each resource you can produce on a turn, or how far you can travel with your camel trains so it’s not all plain sailing, but if you get the tactics right — the rewards are boundless!

Can’t wait to start? Proceed to the game below!

Rules of the game

The game takes place in Ancient Egypt, along the banks of the River Nile and the surrounding lands. There are thirty sites: these are places most suitable for a settlement. Sites are only suitable for a specific type of settlement: a farm, a mine or a city.

All settlements (occupied sites) consume five food per turn. Settlements with less than five food at the end of the turn are ruined, that is, the player loses control of that settlement. Settlements produce goods depending on their type:

Farming settlement
This can produce up to fifty units of food per turn. To do this requires a plough, after producing one hundred units of food a plough wears out and must be replaced.
Mining and forestry settlement
This can produce up to fifty units of gold and copper ore and one hundred units of wood per turn. This requires an axe, which wears out after producing three hundred units of ore or wood.
City
Cities produce up to five ploughs (costing two units of ore), five axes (three units), five slaves (three units), twenty gold offerings (one unit) and one camel train (ten units) per turn. After producing twice this amount of goods, a slave dies (or is freed) and a new one must be found.

Camel trains transport goods between sites, they consume five units of wood per journey.

Players start with some resources: a random farm or mine, twenty units of food, twenty units of wood, one plough (for farming), one axe (for mining and woodcutting), one slave (to work in a city) and a camel train (for transporting goods).

Goods can only be traded between a settlement and a camel train, rather than two camel trains meeting in the desert.

An unoccupied site can be settled by a player with enough resources. They must take a camel train containing the necessary resources (including at least five food) to the vacant site, and then unload some resources to the site in order to occupy it.

When trading, prices aren’t fixed. Players must barter in order to trade resources. Bartering can be done with the use of the in-game messaging system.

For a player to own a site, they must have enough food stored at the site to keep it sustained.

Each game can have up to 15 players, and each player can be a part of several games. A player can leave, join and create new games as they see fit.

A “turn” comprises all active (logged in) players making a move. In a move, a player can produce as many resources as they wish (up to the maximum for each site, limited by raw materials etc). The player can transfer goods to and from camels as he wishes, including with enemy or unoccupied sites. He may only move one camel train on each turn, but doesn’t have to. Moving a camel train ends the turn.

Players can unload resources to sites from camel trains, and load resources onto camels located at settlements they own.

Proceed to the game!