Strategy! Geometry! Polytopia!
Identifying interactivity and choices within Midjiwan’s Battle of Polytopia
At points, playing Battle of Polytopia reminded me of spending late nights absorbed in the never ending strategy of games such as Civilization V or XCOM: Enemy Unknown. As a kid, I remember being so absorbed in these games that I would end up completely caught up in their turn-based action and pass hours (not to mention entire nights) without realizing. These games sucked me in with their approach to meaningful play and had me deadlocked in a state of Lusory Attitude.
Funnily enough, similar things happened during my experience playing Battle of Polytopia.
During my first play sessions, I decided to try the game’s default Perfection game mode. It is a restricted, 30 turn-limit game mode, where as one of the tribes you must collect more points than the other tribes through expanding your set of villages and cities. The game incorporates easy to understand versions of typically broad and complex mechanics such as, unit movement, attacking, turn-based production, and expansive tech/upgrade trees. The best part about Perfection is that it clearly holds value in appealing to both hardcore and casual players. The mode itself has a range of difficulties (that vary from easy to incredibly difficult) and won’t take much more than 20 minutes to complete. On top of that, the game itself constantly provides a plethora of suggestions and information for both casual and hardcore players to make use of while they play.
However, Battle of Polytopia truly felt like it provided the most choice, the most interactivity, and the most rewards when I took the time to play through it’s Domination game mode. This mode is more akin to larger strategy games in terms of scale, with the only caveat being that it focuses on being the only tribe left in Polytopia (the game world). Although this game mode can take up to an entire hour to complete, it was through playing this mode that I came to terms with how Battle of Polytopia incorporates so much strategy and player interactivity in its simplicity.
Interactivity
For it’s offline game modes, Battle of Polytopia is played at the pace of its players. No matter the player’s pace, they’ll always be thinking, reacting, or otherwise engaging with the events of the game. In practice, this means that the player will constantly be interacting with the game or be involved in some way. Below, I’ve outlined a few forms of interactivity that Battle Of Polytopia either succeeded or could use work in constantly stimulating within it’s players.
Cognitive Interactivity
This form of interactivity is where Battle of Polytopia succeeds the most. In particular, I loved that from my first play session I constantly felt like I wasn’t thinking fast or hard enough to win. As I alluded above, players are rewarded by constantly thinking while in game and will only get better high scores and ratings should they be consistently interacting with the game at a cognitive level.
One core example of this interactivity is strategizing an appropriate order/path to pursue tech tree upgrades in. Within the game, the tech tree has a plethora of different paths and rewards that can aid various aspects of your tribe. These aspects are crucial to game progression and can either set you far back from other tribes on the map or excel you ahead of them. Not to mention, a majority of these paths also favor different player needs, styles, and game states.
For instance, the ‘Climbing’ tech provides additional movement and defense bonuses when moving units through mountains — making it less effective should players not be surrounded by mountains. However, this upgrade does unlock other tree options such as ‘Smithery’ that provides access to valuable new units and buildings. With this in mind, players have to measure purchasing each tech upgrade against their current game state and carefully consider their options before using their resources to research them.
One of the other interactions that stems from Battle of Polytopia’s ability to constantly engage the player is in the intensity of battles, conflict, and enemy engagements. Lets set the record straight — the AI of this game on the higher difficulties are bloodthirsty and war-seeking by heart. Early on, I realized that having to mount last-second defenses was a common occurrence and I quickly became familiar with feeling rushed in order to save some of my weaker villages from the wrath of the AI. However, even with these defenses being intense — the reverse is also true. Simply put, nothing within this game compares to the mental intensity of orchestrating ships, catapults, knights, and warriors in a final war against an AI tribe that’s been fighting you all game. These are the game’s most cognitively dense but also most cognitively rewarding moments.
In turn, players will also find themselves cognitively interacting with Battle of Polytopia when they dedicate large amounts of time to conquering the game’s most challenging game modes and difficulties. This can include trying to have a flawless run of the Perfection game mode (which is incredibly hard — on ‘Normal’ difficulty I couldn’t surpass a 2/3 star rating) or by conquering the board as fast as possible in the Domination game mode. In either case, putting the mindset forth to overcome the game’s most difficult challenges is one of the easiest ways Battle of Polytopia engages the player — simply because once you start trying to conquer it, you won’t want to stop.
Functional Interactivity
Although Battle of Polytopia completely succeeds from a cognitive perspective of interactivity, I believe that some of the functional interactions could have minor improvements.
Immediately upon loading into a game, I found the arrangement of some of the UI’s icons, text, and menu items to be clunky. When I first cycled through the menus, I didn’t quite understand why almost all of the UI backgrounds are slightly transparent. Personally, this made some of the text and UI difficult to read (especially things like game mode details).
In terms of UI size I felt that playing the game on a small phone screen was a major handicap. This is most certainly the model of phone I’m using (currently using an iPhone 6s) but I wish there was a way to reduce the UI to smaller — or somehow more readable elements that could improve the experience for people with smaller screen sizes. To be honest, playing through Battle of Polytopia without the information about tech upgrades, tribes, and enemies is a major setback so persevering to read it was essential. On top of that, towards the end of long games with 50+ units on the map, having a small phone screen made it challenging to discernibly understand which units occupied which tiles across the map.
In addition to units being difficult to differentiate during the late game, I generally felt like the board became cluttered during long games of Battle of Polytopia. I’m unsure if this comment stems from my small phone screen or inexperience but I certainly felt that by the end of a game I had to make educated guesses as to what certain tiles or buildings were doing in order to progress the game. Perhaps over time this will cease but I would encourage using larger representations for each building/tile type. During my play sessions, some buildings (like temples or forges) were almost impossible to see on tiles unless I manually zoomed in. Perhaps these couple seconds spent zooming could be avoided if larger buildings were used or icons were implemented above buildings to differentiate them more.
Although that was quite the list, there are some really great (positive) examples of functional interactivity in Battle of Polytopia.
Firstly, the buttons and overall ‘feel’ of the UI is incredibly snappy which makes interactions with the UI feel quick and intuitive. Clicking around through tech trees, units, and menu items feels incredibly natural and I never felt like the gameplay was delayed because of the actual feel or responsivity of the UI.
Additionally, the tile system within the game felt impressive and intuitive to use. By my third or fourth game, it felt incredibly natural to click between units, tiles, and any associated tile actions. Perhaps most impressively, coordinating units and performing actions on the tiles they simultaneously occupied felt smooth. In a game where so much about timing matters, being able to quickly access a tile a unit occupied and then manipulate the unit again felt great.
Explicit Interactivity
A majority of the explicit interactions each player has with Battle of Polytopia will be through pressing and tapping on the screen’s UI. These presses and taps are the key to producing units, creating buildings, unlocking tech upgrades, and forcing units to move and attack.
Battle of Polytopia is full of variations of these explicit actions — which I never felt was a negative thing. Throughout my play sessions, I found that the amount of cognitive interactions I made prior to explicitly interacting with the game made these taps and presses much more rewarding. Whether it was tapping on units to spur a long attack sequence with an enemy, tapping on tiles to move units, or pressing buttons to research tech upgrades I consistently felt like I was in control and a full participant of the game.
Making Choices
In general, the anatomy of a choice can be analyzed by asking the following questions:
- What happened before the choice was presented?
- How was the possibility of choice presented?
- How did the player make a choice?
- What was the result?
- How was this result discernible to the player?
I’ve selected the following significant choices from Battle of Polytopia to breakdown using this model.
Selecting New Tech from the Tech Tree
The ability to purchase tech in Battle of Polytopia is quintessential to how the game approaches strategy. With how much the tree diverges in cost, reward, and upgrade type, this also proves to be pivotal in defining player strategy across each game.
Before selecting new tech from the tech tree, players are ideally capturing villages, building new units, and expanding their control over the map. Additionally, a plethora of actions could have happened to encourage a player to make this choice in the first place. For instance, in the case that it is the beginning of a player’s turn (when your production replenishes the number of resources you can spend) they might choose to research a tech upgrade they’ve been saving or purchase one that may be useful in the current game state.
For instance, if over the course of a turn a handful of weak enemies ambushed a city, researching ‘Chivalry’ will allow the player to produce a knight unit in their town. As a choice, this could allow the town to be defended from the impeding assault. Other game states that might encourage a player to research tech include being behind, wanting to extend a lead, or (in the off chance) a player has nothing else to spend their resources on.
The possibility of researching tech is frequently presented within the game as it is extremely important for progression. For instance, if the in-game ‘Suggestions’ are turned on then players will be suggested to research new and/or particular tech upgrades when they have the resources. This suggestion will especially appear when the player has no other available actions during their turn. On top of this, when tech is available to be purchased the ‘Tech Tree’ UI icon at the bottom of the map turns blue — ensuring that players can quickly understand whether they have enough resources for at least one of the upgrades.
Players actually make this choice by tapping the ‘Tech Tree’ UI icon. Within the UI, unavailable tech options are blacked out, previously researched tech are highlighted green, tech that cannot be afforded are highlighted red, and tech that can be afforded are highlighted blue. Once a tech option is tapped, the informative UI allows players to navigate and understand each tech option and its resulting effects on the current game. By combining a clean, consistent, and understandable UI with detailed information — Battle of Polytopia deliberately encourages it’s players to fully understand and strategize between the tech options available to them.
After making a selection from the tree, the player receives the tech upgrade. Within the context of the game, this can mean gaining an attack advantage on particular tiles, being able to build new types of units, or having access to additional building types. All of the following are conveyed to the player by being available within the UI and being sometimes suggested by as actions from the game itself. Furthermore, after every researched tech a ‘New Tech!’ pop-up appears on the screen, exclaiming and broadcasting the new discovery.
Moving a (single) Unit
Deciding how to advance units in Battle of Polytopia is another (possibly even more important) decision that players are constantly faced while playing. Unit movement is a core mechanic of the game — and without it, a majority of the game’s other mechanics and dynamics would cease to engage the player.
Prior to moving units, a player may be in a couple different situations. If it is the very start of the game, the unit being moved may be the first originally spawned unit. As well, it could be the middle or late stages of the game and a player has freshly built units that can be moved. In both of these scenarios, the player may be winning, losing, or neither (if the game just started) and their movements will most likely be to advance their progression and get them closer to winning.
The choice of movement in Battle of Polytopia is presented incredibly well through the game’s UI. Even during the later stages of the game, when hundreds of units occupy the board, Polytopia always outlines units with moves left in blue. As well, with ‘Suggestions’ enabled, the game frequently reminds players if they have moves available before the end of their turn. Additionally, upon clicking these highlighted units, players are also presented with a series of targets that indicate the spaces they can move to or attack with the available unit. These two options are also color coated (similar to the tech tree), with movement tiles being blue and attack tiles being red. For attacking, Battle of Polytopia also makes clear the state of an enemy’s unit prior to a player deciding to attack it. Above the unit in the top left corner is always it’s health and when a unit will die upon a player’s attack the unit has water droplet icons form over itself. All of the following give players multiple sources of information that can better inform their decisions to move and/or attack with their units during a turn.
After interpreting the UI, players make their choices by tapping on a combination of their units and available tiles/attacks. Within the game, these results are interpreted as either friendly units being moved to different tiles (where next turn they will have additional options for either movement or attacks) or as an attack/battle between two units where either one unit will be the victor or both will survive. This is conveyed to the player by sliding moved units to their new positions on the board or by having two units in battle attack each other. For attacking, if a non-friendly unit died from the player’s attack they will disappear and the player unit will proceed to move onto the tile. However, if the attacked unit survives then it will proceed to attack back and damage the player’s unit. Regardless of whether units live or die, their health is updated within the UI accordingly.
Conclusion
Battle of Polytopia excels at engaging its players and encouraging them to continuously interact with what it presents. Although there are some functional interactions that are difficult to navigate, Polytopia more than makes up for it with exemplary cognitive interactions that perfectly compliment how players explicitly interact with the game. The resultant deep interactions with the game state also lead to multiple integrated choices that players must continuously make while playing. Although selecting tech upgrades and moving units are pivotal choices, consider things like deciding units to build or deciding which tile actions to pursue during a turn (and in which order). Overall, Battle of Polytopia provides an experience that is both rich in interactivity and dense in its consideration of player choices.
Want to check out Battle of Polytopia? Download it on Google Play or the iOS App Store. While you’re at it, also check out what the developers are up to!
