Talk:The Battle of Polytopia

Remove tribes table

The table I am talking about currently looks like this and has 15 entries:

Name	Technology available	Name of starting technology	Free?
Xin-Xi	Regular	Climbing	Yes
…	…	…	…

The table is only useful for Polytopia players but Wikipedia is not a WP:GAMEGUIDE. Non-players don’t know what starting technologies such as Climbing are and what in-game effects they have. Explaining that would be out-of-scope, see https://polytopia.fandom.com/wiki/Tribes instead.

But the Free? column shows the reader that four tribes are free and 11 require purchase.

That is already in the article’s prose. The table additionally provides the names for the free and non-free tribes but these names don’t tell non-players anything.

But isn’t the Technology available column useful?

It can simply be replaced with “Three tribes have special technology trees”. The names don’t matter.

The table should be quickly removed before the article gets translated to other languages. —Dexxor (talk) 15:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't know I feel like we should bring it back. People could check the wiki for that info, but it's nice to have it all here. I do agree with the 4 tribes have special technology trees. JackNotFound333 (talk) 02:02, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

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Sourcing for Game History

I'm having some trouble finding a "good" source for Polytopia's Android release, which was not at the same time as the iOS release. I've added links to Midjiwan (game dev)'s Instagram for the time being, but it'd be great if someone could find a better source.

This article is great for reference. Note that I currently maintain that page.

Happy New Year, all! Eisthefifthletter (talk) 22:37, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I found a better source using WP:WikiProject Video games/Search engine and the search query "The Battle of Polytopia" android release before:2017. Happy New Year! —Dexxor (talk) 15:03, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Release timeline

Per WP:VGSCOPE rule 10 and WP:NOTCHANGELOG the release timeline must be removed. Advice for the future: When someone reverts your edit, head over to the talk page and do not start an edit war. —Dexxor (talk) 12:27, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Elon Musk's mentioning of this game in a biography

would it be appropriate to mention Elon Musk's connections to this game, as described in this article: Elon Musk's Intense Obsession With A Video Game Influenced His Business Strategies, Caused Fights In His Relationship And Served As A Reminder Every Move Matters: 'You Only Get A Set Number Of Turns In Life' (yahoo.com)

If so, where would this mentioning fit in this article? Hambulance (talk) 14:39, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

free

Is this game free to play? It would be nice to be able to find such information at a glance. Benjamin (talk) 03:26, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Battle of Polytopia/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Fathoms Below (talk · contribs) 02:29, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Vacant0 (talk · contribs) 19:43, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi. I'll review this as part of the ongoing GAN backlog drive. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

@Vacant0 Thanks for opening up the review. I may or may not be busy from May 6-14 or so with a bunch of upcoming assignments, but just wanted to let you know if I'm a little tardy with addressing your comments. Also, forgot to say this earlier but congrats on your work with Smash Hit and Terraria. I love both games, and I appreciate your contributions! Fathoms Below (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate it! I'll begin working on the review tomorrow. If you're going to be busy, that's okay, I'll have the review open as long as it takes you to address the issues. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 19:55, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks good now. Promoting. Good job! Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 21:48, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Summary

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable, as shown by a source spot-check. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
· · ·

Comments

• From a quick view, the article does not look like it is a long way from the GA criteria.
• The nominator is a major contributor to the article.
• There is unlikely any copyright violation in the article. Earwig's Copyvio Detector has reported only 5.7% in similarity.
• There are no cleanup banners, such as those listed at WP:QF, in the article.
• The article is stable and has not seen recent edit warring.
• There are no previous GA reviews.
• Prose:
  • Lede looks good.
  • Players take control of various tribes – So, the player controls several tribes at a time? If not, I suggest changing this to Players take control of a tribe

Changed

• • their all of their units, first "their" is a typo, remove it

Done

• • Suggest changing these special structures to the buildings for consistency.

Done

• • Midjiwan added five tribes → Midjiwan added another five tribes

Done

• • Others criticized the game's technology tree I don't see anyone praising this feature so it can be changed to Reviewers also criticized the game's technology tree.

Done

• MOS:
  • "A new version of the game called Moonrise..." could be moved to a new section, "Sequel"? If you choose to not do this, I then suggest altering the beginning of the next paragraph from The game was released to Polytopia was released.

Changed to "Polytopia was released"

• • Wikilink Nintendo Life.

Done

• • The article complies with the MOS:LEDE, MOS:LAYOUT, and MOS:WTW guidelines. There are no embedded lists within the article, so I am skipping MOS:EMBED.
• References:
  • All references are reliable.
  • There are no referencing issues.
  • Copyvio already checked.
  • Per revision Special:Diff/1289161901 Spotchecked Ref 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (gameplay), Ref 9, 10, 12, 14, 17, 23, 15, 28, 21, 38 (development and release), Ref 40, 2, 8, 7 (reception). Most looks to be good, however, see comments below.
    • ref 2 - which is based on the civilizations of East Asia and begins with the ability to climb mountains, fails verification, I see that this is backed up by ref 4 so I'd recommend just removing it

Done, good catch. Thank you Vacant0

• • • ref 3 - I only see "Resources can be spent on additional units or upgrades." related to stars, have I missed something?

It says in the "Playing Poly" subsection of the source that you need to manage the resources/stars to win, saying that you have to balance investing them to research new technologies, collecting materials to expand your cities etc. The majority of the information is in the first two paragraphs of that subsection. I also added ref 5 which states that the stars can be used on the first turn to buy a unit or invest in technologies.

• Broadness:
  • "single upgrade" should be explained

The "single upgrade" is different for each of the tribes, such as the Xin-xin starting with the climbing upgrade or the Bardur starting out with the hunting upgrade. Is there anything in particular that you need me to clarify?

OK, makes sense. I think that this just needs to be clarified in the text. When I'm reading I'm left confused, what are you upgrading? You should mention that you're upgrading your abilities.

I reworded it a little. Does this version work?

Yup. Looks good now.

• NPOV:
  • Looks good.
• Stability:
  • As noted above, the article is stable.
• Illustration:
  • Both images have appropriate fair use rationales.
  • Gameplay caption looks good.

Vacant0, quick follow-up above. Fathoms Below (talk) 17:01, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

@Vacant0, quick follow up ping :) Fathoms Below (talk) 18:32, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy lately. I'll finish this up today. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 18:20, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Competitive Play and World Championships

Yasminswiki, regarding your edit here, Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable sources, and we should only include material that is reported on by said reliable sources. The websites that you cited appear to be unreliable sources such as citations to a press release site (Hype News), the official website for the game, and a website called Challenger Mode that seems to have no editorial oversight or any other indication of reliability. While the official website could be used since self-published sources can be used as a source of information about itself, it is clearly not the best source and WP:ABOUTSELF says that we should make sure that articles are not based largely on such sources. Also, this is a good article that has gone through an assesment to give it as high-quality sources as possible. I'm sorry, but unless there are a lot of reliable sources covering this event, we shouldn't include an entire subsection on it and use unreliable sources to support its information. I did check the search engine here and it did appear that there were some reliable sources that mentioned the World Championship, and I plan to add information about it to the article hopefully sometime tomorrow (it is late for me right now). Fathoms Below (talk) 07:25, 17 December 2025 (UTC)