Farm Hex

I · The muster

Seven pieces. The gate column is the real tech tree — there is no castle level, only keeps you have raised and prizes you have taken.

II · Arms carried

Weapons are real meshes parented to the KayKit rig's handslot.l and handslot.r bones through a BoneAttachment3D, so they follow the hand through every clip. Nothing here is faked or drawn on.

• Knightsword_1handed · shield_badge_color
• Bruteaxe_1handed · mug_full
• Roguedagger · dagger — dual wield
• Rangerbow (left hand)
• Druiddruid_staff
• Magestaff · spellbook_closed
• Giantaxe_2handed_Large

The handslot bones need a 180° yaw (_weapon_tweak()), confirmed by an A/B render at 0° and 180°. Without it, bows arc away from the grip and axe heads face the wielder.

III · Attack styles

Melee — the weapon swings, and that is the whole effect

on_attack_started() draws nothing for a melee strike. The piece is holding a real weapon and the attack clip swings it; only the impact spark remains.

Swing clips are arrays, so each strike picks a fresh variation:

Ranger — an arrow

Built geometry, not a sprite: a tapered shaft, a steel head and two fletchings, flying point-first along the travel vector. Travel time equals the attacker's windup, so the arrow lands exactly as damage resolves. It was a spinning box, which at close zoom read as a tumbling stick.

Mage — a bolt, down a line

A bright core inside a saturated shell that grows as it flies. Both projectiles have to read on albedo alone: emission does not bloom without glow post-processing, and the compatibility renderer — required for the web build — does not provide it. Saturated and opaque beats emissive and hopeful.

IV · The Mage's V

The Mage is a line piece. It may only strike along the six hex rays, out to two — standing off-axis is genuinely safe, which is what makes it positional rather than a splash blob. On impact the blast opens into a V across the ray it flew down and the next ray round, both to full reach.

V · Counters & retaliation

Anything you strike hits back. If the defender could reach you from where it stands, it returns half its damage immediately. The counter does not use up the defender's own action for its turn, and it cannot be countered in turn. Structures never retaliate.

This is what makes standing beside something a cost, and therefore what makes zone of control, screening and body-blocking matter. Reach also decides it: a Ranger struck from beyond its own reach cannot answer a melee attacker it cannot reach, and the Mage can only counter along its lines.

infantry → archer → flanker → infantry

Attacking into your counter is ×1.5; attacking against it is ×0.7. Shown live beside the damage number, so you can read a trade before you commit to it.

VI · Special verbs

What makes a piece more than its stat line.

Any piece can damage a farm — farms are ordinary targets. Only Knights and Mages take gold for it, and only if the owner does not hold the Grove's staff. A warded farm still falls; the raider just gets nothing.

V-b · How a match ends

The moment either house farms 40% of the board, a final four rounds begins, announced on screen. Then the realm is judged — farmland weighed first.

So a lead is a signal rather than a guarantee: crossing the threshold tells your opponent exactly how long they have to come and break your fields. It also caps the tail, which is the failure this genre is most prone to — under half of Civilization VI games are ever finished.

You may also concede from the menu. A decided position with no way to close it is the worst thing a strategy game can hand you; chess resigns, and so does this.

A turn clock is available as a mode — Untimed, Rapid (45s) or Blitz (20s). Untimed is the default for solo play; a clock matters when a human is waiting on you.

VI-a · The frontier pays

A farm on their half of the board — nearer their castle than yours — earns +2 on top of everything else, and a keep past the midline earns +4.

Building backwards into your own corner used to be strictly safer and pay exactly the same, so there was no reason to contest the middle until you already wanted to win. Now expansion points at the enemy: the ground that pays best is the ground they can burn.

VI-b · Feeding an army

Your first two soldiers are the levy and cost nothing. Every one after draws 6 gold a turn. On eight farms that curve runs:

So a large army is paid for by farmland: at 14 farms an army of eight still nets 24 a turn. You cannot muster one every turn, and losing your last soldier is not fatal — your castle raises a free Rogue.

VII · Bars & numbers

The health bar is one quad drawn by shaders/healthbar.gdshader. The fill is a UV comparison in the fragment stage — nothing is scaled, offset or layered — which is what makes it correct under any camera orientation, and why rotating the camera is now only a question of input handling.

• Yoursgreen → amber → red as it falls
• Theirsalways red — never work out whose bar you are reading
• Shownwhen wounded, while selected, and a beat after any hit

Damage numbers spawn on the piece, pop from 0.55 scale with a back-ease, drift sideways so a flurry stays readable, and fade in 0.42 seconds. Crits and pillage gold carry their own colours.

VIII · Verifying any of this

None of the above has to be taken on trust. Each mode renders a windowed screenshot: