Territory and Ownership

MineWars is a game of territory. Players must expand to claim resources and progress through the game.

Visibility

Areas away from the player's territory are covered by "fog of war". The player can see 3 tiles away from tiles they own.

The entire map's geography is shown to all players at all times, there are no areas that are completely "black".

Mountain tiles are always treated as a cluster. If you can see one tile of the cluster, you see them all.

Within fog-of-war tiles, the player sees:

• Current tile kind (if changed due to harvesting, explosions, etc.)
• Explosions
• Skulls

Within visible tiles, the player also sees:

• The ownership of the tile
• Completed Structures (incl Roads)
• Smokes

On a player's own territory, the player also sees:

• Items
• Pending Structures

Ownership of Territory

Each tile on the map can have an owner: one of the players in the game. The owner is indicated by a color highlight on the tile. Every player has a color. For accessibility reasons, the colors should be customizable client-side. Players do not get to pick the exact colors displayed to others.

At the start of the game, all tiles are neutral, except for the starting cities of the players and all tiles adjacent to them.

Owned tiles provide Resources to the city of the region they are associated with, if the player owns the city.

On owned Land, the player gets:

• the ability to deploy Items on the tile
• the ability to perform various actions on the tile and on adjacent unowned tiles
• the ability to build structures
• the ability to Harvest the tile, if the player owns the region's city
• visibility of surrounding tiles
• a digit (like Minesweeper) indicating how many (if any) items exist on adjacent unowned tiles

("unowned" here means: neutral or owned by another player)

Capturing Territory

Land

Land is captured simply by clicking on it. You can only do it if you own at least one adjacent tile.

After being captured, the land is protected for 2.5 sec, meaning it cannot be captured by another player. This gives the new owner a chance to deploy items to defend it, preventing the game from turning into a clickfest.

If the tile is known empty (there is no adjacent digit), the game will autoexpand. All safe land (up to any tiles with digits) will be recursively captured instantly, like in Minesweeper.

If there is an adjacent digit, that indicates the tile is potentially unsafe -- a risk to the player.

If the tile contains any Items, their respective effects will be triggered when the player attempts to capture the tile (see their respective docs for more detail):

• Mines will explode, giving the player a Death timeout
• Decoys will break / do nothing, and the tile will be captured as if it was empty
• Smoke Traps will "blind" the player

Player strategy: if they think the tile is empty or a decoy, they should capture it, breaking any decoy. If they think the tile contains a dangerous item, they can either Strike the tile to destroy it, or try to safely surround and capture the item.

Autoexpand

When land is known safe, the server should auto-claim it for you. The game should be designed to reduce any tedious clicking around. This should be recursive and happen instantly.

It can account for player flags, to mark tiles to avoid.

Clusters

Mountains and Forests are always owned as a cluster. If there are multiple adjacent tiles of one of these types, the player cannot own them individually; they are captured all at once and lost all at once.

To capture a cluster, surround it on all sides by capturing all adjacent land tiles. If there are multiple adjacent clusters (say, a forest next to a mountain), or if any of the adjacent land contains Items or Structures, all of those tiles are grouped together for the purpose of capturing. The player must surround the entire group (capture all adjacent safe tiles), gaining control of all the clusters, items, and structures, at once.

A player only maintains ownership of a mountain or forest cluster while they maintain ownership of all adjacent land tiles. You immediately lose ownership of the entire cluster if another player captures even a single adjacent land tile.

Note that only land tiles are counted. If there are adjacent clusters (forest next to a mountain), it is possible to lose one while keeping the other.

Items

When there are Items deployed on Land, you can capture the items by surrounding them. Capture all safe tiles around them.

If there are multiple adjacent tiles with items on them, they are treated as a Cluster, similar to mountains/forests.

When the items have been successfully surrounded, all the land tiles are automatically captured by the player. The items are sold for money. See the Economy section for more info.

Player strategy implications: This rewards the player for playing the game carefully and taking the time to treat foreign items as a puzzle to be solved, rather than simply striking the tiles to destroy the items. Striking is quick and easy, but costs money, and destroys the land's resources. Capturing the items is time-consuming and requires mental effort to solve the minesweeper digits puzzle, but rewards the player with money and keeps the land intact. If the digits are ambiguous, you can use Reveal, or Strike.

Cities

To capture a city, the player must surround the city, by capturing every land tile adjacent to the city's tile. The player must then hold all adjacent tiles for a duration of 5.0 sec.

The city remains owned by the player until another player does the same (captures every adjacent land tile and maintains ownership for duration).

See the Economy section for further implications of capturing cities.

Structures

Roads

Road tiles are treated as land tiles for the purpose of capturing.

However, note that cities only count as connected if there is a path that is fully owned by the player. Upon losing even a single tile, the connection is broken.

Barricades

Given that barricades connect mountain clusters, they have implications for the ownership of those clusters. They make it effectively impossible to capture each of the mountain clusters individually. However, each cluster can still be lost individually.

When a player surrounds both clusters together with the barricade between them, they capture the barricade along with both clusters.

Watch Towers

Watch Towers are captured by surrounding them, similar to cities. If they are built adjacent to a cluster, they need to be captured together with that cluster. If they are built between clusters, they effectively work as a Barricade.

Bridges

Bridges are built on water, and therefore have no ownership. However, they allow a player to capture tiles on the opposite side of the water, if they own tiles on one side.