The base game of Vijayanagara is a raucous three-player event set in medieval India. But we all know the feeling of not having the right player count in a given moment to pull a particular game off the shelf. Or maybe a player has to leave the game early, or you prefer to do your interactive history exploration alone over a cup of tea, savoring the decisions at precisely the right pace.

If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you may be pleased to hear that we have been very hard at work on cutting, sanding, and polishing three Non-Player Factions (bots), capable of running each of the player Factions in the game when you need them to step in. The bots are card-driven, similar to the Arjuna system for Gandhi, the Tru’ng system for Fire in the Lake, and the upcoming Calixto system for Cuba Libre, but streamlined and tailored for Vijayanagara.

Chief among the design goals for the bots was to retain the overarching narrative of the game in any configuration, while also seeking to create a streamlined interaction. After a lot of great playtesting efforts from the community and continual improvements, we are feeling pretty excited about where things stand.

Non-Player Faction Action Cards and Player Aids

The Non-Player Factions play by the rules of the main game. Each Non-Player Faction has a small deck of “action cards” which guides its decisions. As an example,

When the NP Bahmani Kingdom needs to select a basic Command and/or a special Decree, it draws such a card. Here, the NP Bahmani Faction first rolls a die to see if it has at least that many Amirs available. If so, for its Decree, it will Conspire if it can replace two Delhi Sultanate Governors; or, if it cannot, it will Build a Fort; or, if it cannot build a Fort, it will Trade. Then, following the arrows to the next box, we see that the basic Command selection will be to Rebel, if possible, or otherwise to Rally. Returning to the top of the card, if there are too few Bahmani Amirs in Available (because they are out on the map), the card is flipped to its back side for a different set of action selections and priorities. Rather than Conspiring and Rallying, the Amirs on the map will be happier to Build and to Migrate, especially into Provinces containing Vijayanagara Rajas where they can spend an additional Resource to enhance their Influence in the Deccan.

Sequence of play choices, space selection, and decisions about the effectiveness of events are then provided on a single page Non-Player Aid—there is no need to look anywhere else while running the bots! For example, the Non-Player Vijayanagara bot uses this aid sheet:

If the Non-Player Vijayanagara Empire is instructed to Place a Temple by an action card or an Event card, working down the chart we see they they will prioritize placing one in a 2 Prosperity Province (Provinces have either 1 or 2 Prosperity in the game), then among those Provinces they will build where there are the most Rajas, and then the fewest opposing pieces. Naturally, familiarity with the main game helps to improve the overall experience; since bots do not break any rules, a player will have to decide whether a selected action would be legal or not (for instance, only one Temple may be built in each Province).

In addition, each Non-Player Faction has different difficulty settings, achieved using different initial setups (e.g. starting Qasbah placement) and starting ‘Deccan Influence’ values. This is particularly helpful when there are two human players and only one Non-Player faction.

The solo player configuration (human against two bots) has seen a lot of playtesting, refinement, and balance and can act as tricky opponents for beginners and experts alike. Playtesters have found the narrative arc of the game preserved—just what we hoped to hear. Examination of the two-player game (two humans and one bot) continues, but the tests are going well, and development is close to wrapping up.

Eight games?

One three-player game, three two-player games (one with each Faction as the sole Non-Player Faction), and three solo-play games (one with each Faction controlled by the solo player) in the box. Seven distinct games down, one to go.

Included in the box is a board for Aadu-Huli aata, the Goat-Tiger game, an ancient asymmetric ‘hunting game’ found etched onto the side of temples near Hampi, India (where the city of Vijayanagara once stood):

This game and its variants were played at least as early as the 14th century in southern India. It is elsewhere known as Aadu puli attam, Huli gatta, and Pulijudam. The game has much in common with other such asymmetric ‘hunting games’ of the distant past as Rimau-rimau (Malaysia), Bagh-Chal (Nepal), Halatafl (Scandinavia), Komikan (Chile/Argentina), Catch the Hare (Spain), and Hare and Hounds (France).

In the Goat-Tiger game, Player 1 controls 15 small Goat pieces, while Player 2 controls 3 large Tiger pieces. All three tigers start on any three vertices at the beginning of the game, while goats are added to open vertices one at a time, only able to move (to adjacent vertices) once they have all been placed. Tigers can leap over to “capture” goats unless they are protected from behind (as in checkers/draughts).

So who are the ‘hunters’ in these ancient asymmetric games? The answer is not what you’d think! The goats are the hunters. They must trap the tigers so that they cannot move. But naturally this cannot be done alone, so they must work together as a band of brave and clever tiger-hunting goats. Such games open a window to human needs and experiences in distant places and times, and even the broader themes of surviving in a dangerous world inherent to all living things. For an illuminating and cost-effective book on ancient games see Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations by J.C. Bell [2], or for a deeper dive take a look at The Oxford History of Board Games by David Parlett [3]. For a peek at some of the modern techniques being applied to study these ancient games, see the article by Cameron Browne [4], who runs the Digital Ludeme Project at Maastricht University in the Netherlands (http://ludeme.eu/).

So while we continue to toil with great motivation on this passion project, we are very happy with how things are looking right now and excited to get all of the Eight Games of Vijayanagara onto your tables.

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[1] Rangachar Vasantha, “Board games from the city of Vijayanagara (Hampi), 1336-1565: a survey and a study.” International Journal for the Study of Board Games, 2003.

[2] J.C. Bell, Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, Dover Publications, 1979.

[3] David Parlett, The Oxford History of Board Games, Echo Point Books, 1999.

[4] Cameron Browne, “Modern Techniques for Ancient Games”, 2018 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG). IEEE, 2018.

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