Game Guide

From Harbinger Wiki

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Statement of Fairplay 2 Getting Started 2.1 The Environment 2.2 Timeline 2.3 Game Objective 3 Planets

Introduction

Nice that you are interested in playing Harbinger! This guide gives an overview to the handling and rules of the game, to help you to understand how things work. You will see many coloured words, these are links to other pages offering more detailed information about the corresponding topic.

To learn about the basics of the game, read the Quick-Help before you start. If you want a deeper insight into a specific part of Harbinger, you are invited to visit the FAQ and Glossary, where you may find more details than here.

Statement of Fairplay

Harbinger wants to achieve: fair play. communication between players. social interaction between players. epic battles in the end. a game requiring strategic and diplomatic skills to win. easy to learn and interesting in the long run.

Harbinger does not  want to achieve: Multiaccount-players and cheaters/bug-abusers. gameplay without communication/interaction. a single player game where the only interaction is to compare points. a game where a single player with perfect build up skills can win with no contacts. difficult to learn and become boring.

Don't forget, this is a game! Even someone is an oppennent douring one round, he may be a friend for the next. So always stay friendly to each others and enjoy the game. If you loose, take it as a chance to learn to handle it. Also in the real-life you cannot always win...

Getting Started

The Environment

The action of the game takes place in space. The universe is made of many solar systems randomnly located on the map. Each solar system contains from 12 to 15 planets. A planet can be free (no player on it) or occupied by one (and only one) player at a time.
During the round, players will conquer many planets. At the creation of a regular solar system, there are only 3 players and each one controls one planet. Because all free planets will be conquered quickly, there are special solar systems with no players assigned to them. Of course, another way of conquering planets is to take them to another player. That is even the most common way to do so ;-)
The special inactive player Unknown (also ironically referred as Mr. Unknown) is a caracter played by nobody. He is the result of the resignation of a real player. All planets and fleets controlled by the resigned player will be noticed has belonging to Unknown. There are special caracteristic for Unknown but it is not covered in this introduction.

Timeline

The game is organised in rounds.
When a round starts, everything is reset : systems are emptied, players get one planet, their fleets, science levels and player levels are reset to 0, etc...
The condition for the end of the round is usually announced on the forum : at a fixed date (about 3 months after the start, in general) or a fixed number of days after someone reaches a certain amount of points.
When the round is over, there is a little period of free time before another one begins.

Game Objective

To dominate the universe, expansion of your own space-empire and/or the supremacy of your alliance by means of war, diplomacy and planet development is the way to do it. The ranking takes into account population, culture, sciences and player level.

Planets

Controlling planets is the base concept of the game.
The raw ressources in the universe are the Building Points (BP). These are produced by the population on your planets. With PP you can improve your planet infrastructures, build ships and buy Ethereal Crowns (the money for trading in the market). We will see here how to use them to improve your planets.