Home | Swarming With Dwarfs
Swarming With Dwarfs is a Play By Mail style game that I've written for a little fun over my summer break. The goal of the game is pretty basic: You have thirty dwarfs and a series of caves to explore. You need to establish your Kingdom of Dwarfdom and there are other groups of dwarfs trying to establish their kingdom somewhere else in the caverns. You must build your forces, keep them fed, and conquer the caves. To do this you need to find your opponents, stop them from their dynastic tendencies (which of course they are trying to do to you), and control every dwarf in the caves.
Pretty simple huh? The game is turn based and every game turn constitutes about 1 day for the dwarfs, meaning they got to eat. You don't have to consider individual dwarfs, although you can, but you work with Platoons of dwarfs. You start with three platoons of ten dwarfs each.
Currently the game processes one on one scenarious. Opponents can be other players, myself, or one of the AI's I'm programming to run games. (See below for infomration about programming the AI's.) To start a game, just email me at english@spiritone.com with an email with the following information:
You can also specify if you want to have play against me or another player, or if you are willing to test one of my AI's or you have one you want me to test, I can do that.
Here is what you see when you start the game:
Swarmng With Dwarfs Game Report Player Name: Josh Player ID: M806 Player E-mail: english@spigot.com Game: B0 Turn: 0 Total Points: 30 Game Name: Hrothgar, Hewer of Stone, of The Underground Empire Activity Since Last Game: ------------------------- No Activity Reported Report on Platoon Diggers (P048) Currently in Cave C4 Cave Resources: 28/41/16 Connected Caves: C7 C6 C0 Resources Stored in Cave :0/0/0 Resources Owned by Platoon: 150/0/0 The Following Dwarfs are with the Platoon: Hrung(74) Thorin(75) Grim(76) Thorin(77) Borin(78) Dopey(79) Borin(80) Borin(81) Grumpy(82) Fror(83) Report on Platoon Hewers (P556) Currently in Cave C4 Cave Resources: 28/41/16 Connected Caves: C7 C6 C0 Resources Stored in Cave :0/0/0 Resources Owned by Platoon: 150/0/0 The Following Dwarfs are with the Platoon: Thor(84) Goldlover(85) Nori(86) Fili(87) Fror(88) Bain(89) Thorin(90) Doc(91) Hrung(92) Fili(93) Report on Platoon Brewers (P441) Currently in Cave C4 Cave Resources: 28/41/16 Connected Caves: C7 C6 C0 Resources Stored in Cave :0/0/0 Resources Owned by Platoon: 150/0/0 The Following Dwarfs are with the Platoon: Dis(94) Gror(95) Frung(96) Rocklover(97) Balin(98) Kumdur(99) Dain(100) Grimm(101) Thror(102) Dorin(103)
The first block of information is the basic game information. The Game Code and your player code are important. They are assigned by the game itself and these cannot be changed. The Activity Since Last Game section will tell you what happened in response to your previous turn. This being the first turn, there is no activity. I suppose the activity should be "welcome to the caves" or something like that. The next three sections are about your first three platoons. The name and ID code of the Platoon are listed, you'll need that code to issue commands. The next line tells you the resources that the platoon has. The first number is the amount of food the platoon has. Every dwarf uses 1 unit of food per day. You have 50 units of food to start with, so five days worth assuming your platoon maintains its size of 10 dwarfs. The second number is the amount of Iron you have, which you'll need to bolster the weapons and armor on your dwarfs, as well as building Fortesses. The last number is Gold, because that's what Dwarfs do. They mine gold. They hoarde Gold. Right now Gold doesn't do much in the game except give you a good chunk of points (see scoring, below).
The next line is the current cave position, where the platoon is. Since all three platoons are together at the beginning of the game, all three platoons show the same information. The Cave Resources line tells you how much you can gather in one day, again the order is Food, Iron, Gold. The next line tells you where you can travel to from this cave, and any Food, Iron, or Gold left lying around in the cave by previous platoons. Platoons can only carry so much Food, Iron, and Gold. The amount depends on the number of dwarfs in the platoon. When a platoon moves to a new cave it will drop any excess that it can't carry. Any platoon that comes into the cave will automatically pick it up.
The next section is one or two lists: The dwarfs that are with the Platoon and the dwarfs that are on special missions. Again, since this is the first turn, there are no dwarfs on missions. What is a mission? You can send dwarfs to join another platoon, carry food, iron, or gold to another platoon, and kamikazee another platoon. Each dwarf has a name and a number. Use these numbers when sending specific dwarfs on specific missions. Most of the time commands will go to Platoons, such as "Platoon P441 send 4 dwarfs to carry 40 units of Gold to platoon P556."
So now you know what the game will tell you what is going on, now you have to tell the game what to do next. Commands are grouped into four categories: Cosmetic Commands, Mission Commands, Movement Commands, and Harvesting Commands. This is also the order in which commands take place.
Cosmetic Commands. You can change the name of any dwarf or platoon, as well as your character, title, and empire names.
Mission Commands. Sending dwarfs onto missions is the first thing that gets taken care of after cosmetic changes are made. Every mission order from all players are grouped together and executed in a random order. Essentially all mission orders happen at the same time but the game processes them one by one. It is possible to tell a platoon to send 2 dwarfs on a mission and also tell a particular dwarf to go on a mission, but if the platoon order is processed first and the dwarf you sent the order to is chosen to fulfill the platoon order, then the specific command sent to the dwarf will not be done. I may change this in future revisions of the game.
Missions are processed. The dwarfs you send on a mission and dwarfs that are currently on a mission do their stuff. Dwarfs on a mission can move through two caves in one turn, so their targets cannot outrun them, since platoons can only move to one cave away in a turn.
Movement Commands. Platoons that are told to move will move as long as they are not in combat. Again, all movement commands are grouped together and exectued in a random order. Since two platoons controlled by different players will automatically go into combat, it is possible that your movement command cannot be executed because an enemy platoon entered the cave before your platoon left and combat started. It is equally possible that you platoon will move and an enemy platoon will then enter the cave you just left, and they could only surmise that you've been there if you left supplies behind.
Combat is processed. The details of how platoon combat are still being worked out. One method spread the combat damage evenly across platoons and that would be fine except after a few days of fighting (retreat is not an option yet) an entire platoon could be wiped out while the other platoon was not scratched. This doesn't seem fair. I am working on a combat method that can incur losses on both sides. Remember that dwarfs can be sent on missions before combat is processed, so you can have dwarfs escape combat and join other platoons, carrying supplies. If that dwarf makes it then the supplies are safe, otherwise they could be lost. Currently there is no way to kidnap dwarfs or conscript them.
Harvesting Commands. Platoons that are not engaged in combat and have not moved in the current turn can harvest supplies. There are three limitations to harvesting: A dwarf can only harvest a set amount of food, iron, or gold per day; the cave can only be harvested for a set amount each day; and each cave has a limited amount of each supply in total that can be harvested, so eventually the food supply will run out, there will be no more iron to mine and no more gold to collect.
Eating. Every dwarf uses one unit of food each day. As long as the platoon has more units of food than dwarfs, you are fine, but if there is not enough food to go around, one dwarf will die of starvation each turn that
Commands are sent in plain text, with one command per line. Commands should be a single string with no spaces in them, unless those spaces are between quotation marks. Anything after a pound sign is a comment (Just more evidence that SWD was written and is processed in Python).
Here is the first set of commands that were sent in for the game report:
Player M806 Turn 1 StartCommands P441N"Tunnellers" # Rename "Brewers" D79N"OrcKiller" # Rename Dopey P048F3 # Gather Food P048I4 P048G2 P556M0 P048J3P441 D94J048 EndCommands
The first two commands are cosmetic. Deciding that "Brewers" was a silly name for a platoon I changed their name to "Tunnellers" and I do think Dopey is a silly name for dwarf D79, so I've given it a name better suited to dwarfs, even though there are no orcs in the game (yet). Next I give the order for Platoon P048 to have three dwarfs harvest food. Each dwarf can harvest five units of food per day, so I should get 15 more units of food. Platoon P048 should also have four dwarfs mine iron and two dwarfs mine gold. I am sending platoon P556 to explore cave C0. Note that 'M0' stands for 'Move to Cave C0.' Caves have identifiers that begin with C but the 'C' is not part of the command. Platoon P048 should also send three dwarfs over to P441, and finally dwarf D94 (Dis, in Platoon P441) should join Platoon P048.
The order these turns are processed is as follows