Vedran Kajić, a bitcoin entrepreneur and founder of the exchange Bspend, has developed Etherization, a strategy game inspired by the Civilization series and based on the Ethereum platform.

Just like in Civilization, you are supposed to develop an economy, build cities and buildings and create units, while everything is paid for in ether. Starting the game costs 1 ether, building a city – 0.8, a building – 0.5, creating a unit – 0.2, maintaining a unit – 0.02 ether. A spam prevention service costs 0.1 ether a minute. Taking into consideration current price of the Ethereum’s “crypto-fuel” exceeding $12, the game might prove quite costly. But it also gives the user an opportunity to profit. 

The money spent on buildings and units of any type goes to other players who have corresponding means of production. There are five types of buildings (quarry, farm, woodworks, metalworks, stables) and three types of units (pikemen, swordsmen and horsemen). To build a pikeman you will need woodworks. Thus, the 0.2 ether a player pays for the unit is equally divided among all the players in the world possessing woodworks. Similarly, to build a swordsman you will need metalworks, for a horseman you will need stables. To erect buildings quarries are necessary, therefore, every player possessing a quarry receives income from any building created in the game’s ecosystem. 

Unlike Civilization, this game does has no graphic interface and works in the text-based mode. Every city has an index. Thus creating a unit or a building, the player specifies the index of the city where it is happening. Indexation substitutes topography. For example, the game rules prescribe to move units only between neighbouring cities. With no map, it means that city indexes cannot be more than three apart: for instance, one cannot attack a city with index 7 from a city with index 2.

Kajić admits that creating the game he was driven by his interest in developing Ethereum-based applications. According to him, the platform gives users wider opportunities than bitcoin. Although both systems can be compared with the Internet, “the difference is that the bitcoin technology is being used in a way the internet was used before the dynamic websites appeared, while Ethereum at the same time opens up the possibility for users to do what is possible on the internet of today.”

Andrew Levich