“Hegemonline” – Alpha Model UN Experience!

A while back, I was contacted over Twitter about an upcoming Model UN-like online browser-based “game” in development called Hegemonline (or “Hegemon Online,” basically). The game is fairly early in its development, currently listed by its developers as an Alpha game, and it has come a long way since I was first introduced to it. Early on, the plan was to get the game off the ground and up and running very quickly, however, a few hard-to-fix bugs slowed down the process and it was only about 2-3 weeks ago when the game finally got up and running in full-swing.

I thought about including some screenshots of what the program looks like at this point, but given how very basic it is right now, I decided to hold off on that. I may do so in a future post though, so don’t worry too much about it. But, at its core, the game is played in two ways. First, there is a hexagonal grid-like system that displays your territories and the territories of other nations, each hexagon given a tile location address, such as [25,6]. At start, each state is given 12 of these “territories,” each yielding $700 in daily tax revenue. Each tile must have at least 1 military unit on it at all times to maintain control and to keep this influx of revenue coming, yet each unit of soldiers requires a certain amount of food and other materials for general upkeep, so like with any nation-building game, proper resource management is half the battle.

At the cost of oil and the like, troops can be moved from one area to another, and thus if a player wishes to occupy an unoccupied space, they can move troops to that area. Covert operations will allow the possibility of moving troops over vast distances without the need of travel, though there is only a 50% chance of success. Naturally, there are other mechanics in play, but I don’t feel the need to detail all of them right now.

However, the other major portion of the experience lies in the forums. Here, players take the role-playing status of their nation’s diplomatic corps and discuss trade agreements, judicial matters, and talk about issues of world politics. Players can private-message each other and come up with covert alliances and agreements, and as a whole, this does a decent job in emulating how large-scale politics could work. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!

If this type of thing interests you, you can contact the Hegemonline team on Twitter about being granted alpha and beta access! So, join in – we’d love to see you there with us! 🙂