I stumbled across Antiyoy by Yiotro quite by accident. In a sea of games requiring micro-transactions and adds, Antiyoy is a truly free, no ads, delightful turn-based strategy game with smooth graphics and simple mechanics, but offers depth in terms of strategy and difficulty. In some ways, the game has a lot in common philosophically with Othello, a game whose tagline was “A Minute to Learn, a Lifetime to Master”.
The game itself has four units: peasant, spearmen, baron, and knight. Each has an upkeep cost and can defeat units of lower class than itself (With the exception of the knight which can defeat other knights). The higher the class, the higher the upkeep. Income is generated from expanding and claiming hexes.
As pictured, the map is hex based and in the mobile game, they are randomly generated. The random maps I’ve found have been quite robust. Choke points, access to resources, and proximity to other provinces varies each time. Each player gets two starting provinces and you can attempt to expand/merge from there. I’ve found a good strategy is to merge your provinces as quickly as possible as it provides a larger pool of income. That said, there are usually other AI players in the way. To counter that, there are two types of towers available to defend your territory as you expand. In Antiyoy, towers are great but nothing is safe from knights. However, they are very expensive and become far more common in late game situations.
Anityoy also has a simple map editor if you want to create your own maps and games. There is also an option for local multiplayer, so those AI players can be replaced by multiple people playing on the same phone. There’s also a reddit page for Yiotro games where players of Anityoy congregate.
I do not play many mobile games, but Anityoy was a great accidental find, and one I imagine I’ll keep coming back to. No ads, no micro-transactions, and a surprisingly robust map generator and editor keep the experience enjoyable and engaging. Antiyoy is available in the Google Play Store.
Headcanon: How Avengers Infinity War is an RPG where the DM said F*** It
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