The Battle of Polytopia is a 2016 4X Turn-Based Strategy mobile game, which later got ported to Steam, developed by Midjiwan AB.
The concept of the game involves the player controling one of the game's various fictional tribes.
To win, the player must conquer every other tribe on the map or the "square" as it is known in the game.
This game provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The world of Polytopia has quite a bit of lore regarding the flora, fauna, and the traditions of each tribe. However, this can only be read about in the online store or the Tribe Moon announcements.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Knight's Persist skill enables it to do this - if it is able to One-Hit Kill an enemy unit (at full health it can do this to unprotected Warriors, Riders and Catapults) it can immediately attack another adjacent enemy.
- Badass Adorable:
- Every unit as a whole. Despite their cute appearance, they have entire wars against each other.
- If you tap a tile in your territory 10 times a pink bunny will appear. Cute right? Until you realize it has 20 HP and the same amount of attack as a Giant.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": All of the fruits in the game have fantastical names, despite being based on real fruits.
- Colbert Bump: Invoked by Elon Musk's attempts to promote it, but according to the game's creator, it hasn't led to anything.
- Critical Existence Failure: The game averts this by having injured units deal less damage than healthy units.
- Command & Conquer Economy: The player must build units or improvements themselves. Cities will not generate units or improvements on their own.
- Cosmetically Different Sides: Save for some units of three tribes. Every unit of each tribe works the same. A warrior for example may look different depending on which tribe it belongs to but they have the same stats.
- Counter-Attack: Units that survive an attack will strike back at the attacking unit if the attacker is within its range (and not hidden by fog). The Defender unit relies on this trope, as attacking normally will lower its attack and defense.
- Enemy Exchange Program: Mind Benders can switch the allegiance of a unit of an opposing tribe to yours. This happens instantly, regardless of how much health the target unit has. The catch is that the Mind Bender cannot move and convert at the same time, so it needs a way to get close to a target without getting killed. Riders and Knights are a Mind Bender's worst enemy due to their ability to move again after attacking.
- Easter Egg: Several:
- If you tap on hold on the game's sky for a few seconds it will turn from night to morning.
- Tapping a tile in your territory 10 times in a row will summon a nature bunny.
- Purchasing the ∑∫ỹriȱŋ tribe unlocks it's language in the settings.
- If two tribes have 3 stars on them, you can fuse them together by tapping and holding on both of their icons. You can also do it in the PC version by left clicking the first unit and holding left click on the secound, all while holding the Alt key.
- Flatworld: The game takes place in a world known as the "square".
- Fantastic Racism: The Vengir are a victim of this by the other tribes.
- Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Played straight with ∑∫ỹriȱŋ.
- Fog of War: All tiles except the immediate vicinity of the player's capital are covered by white clouds. The player has to move around their units in order clear the fog. You can increase a unit's vision by moving it onto a mountain.
- Four-Legged Insect: The Exida is the only unit in the Cymanti tribe to have four legs.
- Geo Effects: Forests slow down cavalry units, but this can be negated by building a road. Mountains increase a unit's vision, but slow down units and cannot be crossed without researching Climbing. Water and ocean can only be crossed by naval units, and ocean can only be crossed after researching Navigation. All terrain types except plains can increase unit defense if you research the right tech.
- Glass Cannon:
- Catapults are among the most powerful units in the game, but are utterly useless in close quarters due to their poor defense and lacking counterattack.
- This can also be the case if you transform a low-health unit into a Battleship.
- Hexapods have a lot of attack and movement, but only 5 HP and 1 defense. Most units can kill them in one hit.
- Similarly, Knights have some of the highest attack in the game and lots of movement, but only 10 HP and 1 defense.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics:
- The Rider's Escape skill allows it to move again after attacking, allowing it to charge in, strike, and retreat all in one movement, though it will take damage if the enemy counterattacks it.
- Archers are able to shoot after moving. As long as the Archer has room to move, it can easily whittle down any non-Rushing melee units (such as Defenders and Giants) without giving them a chance to retaliate.
- Head Swap: Every tribe's people share the same body type. The only difference between them other than color is their heads.
- Home Field Advantage:
- Units in allied territory can heal themselves faster, and units in enemy territory cannot benefit from roads. In addition, each tribe's native terrain tends to complement that tribe's starting bonus. For example, the Bardur start the game with Hunting, so their homeland has a lot of forests.
- Polaris and Cymanti in particular have this, with the former being able to move certain units further due to it's ice tiles, and the latter having fungi that only poisons enemy units that walks on them.
- Immune to Mind Control: The Nature Bunny is the only unit that cannot be converted by Mind Benders.
- Leitmotif: Each tribe has their own theme which plays whenever the player visits the tech tree interface.
- Lightning Bruiser: Battleships have the strength of a Catapult, the armor of a Swordsman, and the speed of a Knight (without roads, anyway). They're also the most expensive unit, costing more than 20 stars each.
- The Medic: Mind Benders can heal other units.
- Microtransactions: Tribes aside from the free four tribes (the Xin-xi, Imperius, Bardur, and the Oumaji) are unlockable for a small fee each.
- Mighty Glacier: The Giant. Has 40 health, the highest in the game, and hits like a truck, but incredibly slow.
- No Recycling: Averted. Units can be disbanded to get partial refunding of stars. Additionally, the Cymanti tribe have a technology unique to them called "recycling", which destroys a building but returns all the stars it cost to build it.
- One-Gender Race: Apparently, the friendship between the Quetzali tribe and their Qui-Qui birds stems from the fact that both Polytopians and Qui-Qui are genderless bipeds that lay eggs.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: If you upgrade a city to level 5 or more you can create a super unit, which for all regular tribes is a giant version of their normal selves.
- Meaningful Name: Goes for most of the tribes, especially the special ones.
- Primitive Clubs: Warriors and Riders are both depicted wielding wooden clubs, and are both available in the very early stages of the game.
- Regenerating Health: If a unit hasn't done anything by the end of it's turn, it will recover some of it's health (assuming it isn't at max).
- Self-Duplication: If a Centipede segment is killed, and there's another one is behind it, that segment will turn into a new Centipede, complete with full health.
- Splash Damage: Dragons deals smaller damage to units in tiles adjacent to the main target. Exidas do the same, but also poison adjacent targets.
- Starting Units: All tribes start with a single unit. Most starts with a Warrior unit.
- Stone Wall: As their name suggests, Defenders are hard to kill. However, because they deal little damage when attacking and cannot attack after moving, they fare very poorly on offense.
- Suicide Attack: Raychis and Doomuxes have the ability to explode and poison all adjacent enemies. Centipedes can also do this to their segments.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The standard infantry-cavalry-archer dynamic is present here. In general, melee infantry are well-defended and can block cavalry charges, cavalry units are fast and can close in on ranged infantry without getting shot, and ranged infantry can whittle down slow-moving melee infantry from a safe distance.
- Tanks, but No Tanks: Despite looking like a tank, the Ice Fortress is stated to be...well, a fortress.
- Take Over the World: Or rather take over the square. This is your goal in the game even in Perfection Mode, you try to do this as best as you can in 30 turns.
- Tech Tree: Each tribe can research technology which would allow them to exploit certain resources or build particular units. Some tribes have their own unique tech trees.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Downplayed with poisoned units. Recovering cures them of the poison but at the cost of not healing them. However, they can heal from recovers like normal after removing the poison.
- Units Not to Scale: A unit visually covers the same size as a city.
- You Have Researched Breathing: You have to research the relevant tech to be able to disband units. You can't just fire your extra warrior unit at the early stages of the game.
