Players can control agents and wealth in each location, and use them
to increase their influence by gathering more agents and wealth in the
same location, or in other later locations, ultimately building their power
base of agents and wealth in the present to combat rival players. Agents
and wealth in the past can also be used to rob and kill other players'
past agents, and in the present automatically guard the player's survival.
Each opportunity is in a specific location, the one in which the change is made (though its effects may modify the future from that location and in the case of challenges, modify the past directly). The opportunity can only be taken by one player, once taken it is no longer available to anyone, and in game terms is replaced by another unrelated opportunity, probably somewhen else.
Players try to keep all their activities in the past secret, since their agents are vulnerable to attack if they are identified for what they are. However, making changes is unavoidably linked to becoming conspicuous, and taking any opportunity increases the visibility of the player's operations in that location. Increased visibility is bad because attacks are always against the most visible other player. Visibility can only be decreased by the loss of agents, at one point of visibility each.
The six types of opportunity are:
Direct Recruiting - the player makes mental contact with rare suitable people in a location and enlists them as agents. The number of agents shown in the "Benefit" column is added to the player's existing agents in that location.
Direct Acquisition - the player manipulates suitable people in a location to bring wealth under the player's agents' control. As for recruiting, the amount of wealth shown in the "Benefit" column is added to the player's existing wealth in that location.
Indirect Recruiting - guided and helped by the player, agents in a location make a long term change to the timelines in such a way that the player's agents in a future location multiply. The location with the opportunity is not affected, except for the increase in visibility, the extra agents appear in the placed in the "Remote Location" column. The number gained is the smallest of three: agents and wealth in the opportunity's location, and agents in the remote location. This means, for example, that these opportunities give no benefit to a player who doesn't have all three of these numbers greater than zero.
Investment - as indirect recruiting but applied to gaining future wealth. As for Indirect Recruiting, but gains wealth in the remote location equal to the smallest of the agents and wealth in the opportunity's location and existing wealth in the remote location.
Attack - the player commands and supports their agents in a location to directly attack the agents and wealth of the most visible other player in that location. Success eliminates agents and/or captures their wealth, see the Combat section for details.
Challenge - the player deploys their forces in the present directly against another player, attempting to distract and stun them to the point that they lose their link to an historical character, which the challenging player can take over. The challenge resembles an attack but is less damaging to the victim and includes an initial defensive strike back at the attacker: only attacking agents and wealth which survive this strike may attack. In general terms, challenges need an advantage of at least 4:1 of both agents and wealth in the present to be at all safe. See the Combat section for details. Note that if a player takes a challenge opportunity against a charater they already control, the opportunity is simply discarded: i.e. it's a way to defend against letting someone else take the challenge.
In all cases except challenges the benefit is doubled if the player controls the local historical character in the opportunity's location.
Gains from direct recruiting and acquisition can cause gains in the two adjacent later locations, each with one chance in three. These gains continue upwards with the same chances, stopping only when the chance fails or they reach the present day.
The present day location is a special case in many ways. There are no
direct recruit/acquire opportunities there, no attacks there, and no indirect
recruit/investments target it. Present day strength is used for challenges
and to determine who gets eliminated.
For combat in an attack opportunity, the result of each strike is decided
randomly, with these probabilities:
| Result | Probability |
|---|---|
| Kill one Agent | 10% |
| Destroy one Wealth | 10% |
| Capture one Wealth | 30% |
| No Effect | 50% |
It is assumed that the most conspicuous agents are targetted first, so each one killed reduces their player's visibility level by one in that location.
For combat in a challenge opportunity, the defender attacks first with
these probabilities for each strike:
| Result | Probability |
|---|---|
| Kill one Agent | 20% |
| Destroy one Wealth | 20% |
| No Effect | 60% |
Surviving attackers then strike back at the defender with these probabilities:
| Result | Probability |
|---|---|
| Neutralise one agent and one wealth | 40% |
| No Effect | 60% |
If all the defender's strength is reduced to zero un-neutralised agents
or wealth in the present, they lose the challenge and the character being
fought over transfers to the attacker.
This is implemented in game terms by a continuous auction of opportunities
for player-time, or turns. Each player accumulates turns simply by the
passage of real-time, one turn per hour. They can spend accumulated turns
whenever convenient, buying opportunities which are applied immediately.
The cost of each opportunity is gradually reduced (with a 50% chance each
hour of reducing by one) until someone is willing to pay it, so prices
remain competitive (and an opportunity whose price falls to zero is replaced
by a new one). Thus it may be prudent to check the web pages often to see
the effects of other players' actions, but connecting more frequently does
not give a player any more turns to spend than if they only checked once
every few days.
The Opportunity Page is where players make their decisions by taking opportunities. It shows a list of all the currently available opportunities with their current costs in turns and links to their locations. Each has a "select" option for the player to choose it, and the page has a "Confirm Selection" button to actually send the selection to the server. Orders require a password for the player's Trilobyte account number, which is stored in a cookie by javascript (so if you don't have both these features enabled you'll have to re-enter the password for each command). Entering an order with the wrong password causes the correct password to be mailed to the account's email address. Depending on implementation, it may take seconds or minutes for the server to react by rewriting web pages to reflect the opportunity being taken.
The Player Page contains all of a player's specific data, including a diamond of locations showing the player's agents, wealth and visibility in that location and the number of turns available for buying opportunities.
Location Pages, one per location, shows the most visible players for that location and contain historical information about that location, plus links to its immediate future locations, for example, the final days of Constantinople.
The Leader board, rankings players by strength in the present day.
The various TATA games are described and linked from the TATA home page.