Real networks, redrawn as a game board
Every map in Subway Warriors is built from open geographic data: the real stations, the real lines and the real connections between them, with each station placed from its GPS position. A converter turns those positions into a schematic diagram, with lines running at 0, 45 or 90 degrees, a widened city centre and squeezed suburbs, the way printed metro maps are usually drawn. The result is not a copy of any official map, and the data sources are credited on the game's How to play screen.
Rivers come from public domain data too: the Seine, the Thames and the Spree. Madrid and Tokyo have none, for lack of usable data. The tutorial runs on a sixth, fictional network with 15 stations on 3 lines.
The five cities in numbers
- Paris: 16 lines, counting the two short lines 3bis and 7bis. 321 stations, 87 of them playable in CORE.
- London: 11 lines and 270 stations, 110 playable in CORE, the largest CORE map in the game.
- Berlin: 9 lines and 170 stations, 39 playable in CORE, the smallest.
- Madrid: 12 numbered lines plus a two-station branch, 241 stations, 48 playable in CORE.
- Tokyo: 13 subway lines and 215 stations, 70 playable in CORE.
The campaign visits them in that order, and the opposition grows with it: one Easy rival in Paris, two Normal rivals in London, two Hard ones in Berlin, three Hard ones in Madrid and three at Boss level in Tokyo.
CORE and FULL
CORE mode keeps the quiet stations between hubs on the map but makes them unplayable. A station is playable in CORE if it is on two or more lines, if it is the end of a line, or if a line splits there. Squads still follow the real track through them, so a long run between two hubs takes longer to cross.
FULL mode makes every station playable, and the board grows a lot: Berlin goes from 39 stations to 170, Madrid from 48 to 241. The campaign and the daily challenge always use CORE. Skirmish and local versus let you choose, and the game recommends FULL on a computer. In the test runs used to tune the game, matches between CPU gangs on CORE maps had a median length of 2.5 to 4 minutes, and FULL matches took 5 to 10.
Lines are shorter in CORE
Holding every playable station of a line claims it. The rule is the same in both modes, but the lines are not. Paris line 7 has 38 stations in FULL and 13 in CORE. Madrid line 12, a loop, has 28 in FULL and a single playable station in CORE, so taking that one station claims the whole line. A few other lines are two or three stations long in CORE: Paris 3bis, Madrid line 11 and the Madrid branch, the shortest London line, and Berlin's U4.
A claimed line pays 400 points, and every station on it recruits 50 percent faster. The bonus does not stack: a station where two of your lines meet still recruits 1.5 times faster, not 2.25. Lose any station on the line and the bonus is gone until you take it back.
Interchanges and HQs
There are three kinds of station, each with its own numbers:
- Ordinary station: recruits 0.5 troops per second, holds up to 40, defends at x1.
- Interchange (two lines or more): recruits 0.8, holds up to 60, defends at x1.15.
- HQ: recruits 1.2, holds up to 90, defends at x1.3.
A station defends with its troops times its multiplier. A larger squad takes it and keeps the difference. Troops above a station's cap drain away at 1.5 per second.
Neutral stations start with a garrison of 5, plus 2 for each neighbouring playable station, plus 6 if they are an interchange, plus 0 to 3 at random. A terminal on a single line holds 7 to 10. The big hubs cost far more: Tokyo has a CORE station with 9 neighbours, which works out to 29 to 32 troops, and London has a station served by 6 lines. Neutral garrisons regrow toward their starting value at 0.15 troops per second, so a station weakened by a failed attack does not stay weak for long.
Each gang starts with 20 troops on its HQ. The game spreads the HQs apart by counting stops between them and prefers the ends of lines, so you usually start on a terminal with a single way in. Losing your HQ does not knock you out. A gang is only out when it has no station left and no squad on the move.
Rush hour and blackouts
Rush hour first comes at 45 seconds, then every 65 seconds, and lasts 12 seconds. It doubles recruitment for every gang at once. Blackouts start at 75 seconds and return every 55 seconds: one line, picked at random, closes for 12 seconds. A closed line blocks new orders on any stretch of track that only that line uses. Track shared with another line stays open, and squads already on their way keep going. In the campaign, blackouts begin in Berlin. Skirmish, local versus and the daily challenge always have them.
Gang powers
Each gang has one power. The bar fills by 1.2 percent per second, about 83 seconds from empty without any fighting, plus 12 percent per capture and 25 percent per enemy HQ taken.
- Rail Rats, Swarm: for 12 seconds your squads move 70 percent faster and hit 15 percent harder.
- Neon Vipers, Venom: every enemy station next to your network loses a quarter of its troops at once. Neutral stations are not affected.
- Iron Moles, Fortify: your stations defend at 1.35 times their normal value for 10 seconds.
- Ghost Conductors, Ghost Train: squads sent during the next 12 seconds pass through any station without stopping to fight, move 50 percent faster while it lasts, and cannot be stopped head-on in a tunnel.
The balance is checked with 80 matches between four equal Hard CPU gangs, one of each, rotating seats across the five cities. The current split is Rats 30 percent, Vipers 21, Moles 31 and Ghosts 18, with about 5 points of noise either way. The test fails if any gang leaves the 12 to 38 percent band.
How the CPU gangs decide
A CPU gang thinks in short cycles. In each one, it first defends a station that is about to fall, if one of its neighbouring stations has enough troops to help. Then it attacks. Then it may move troops from safe stations deep inside its network to the nearest border.
Attacks only target a station one stop away on the playable network. Each possible target gets a value: 10, plus 8 for an interchange, 14 for an HQ, 25 for each line the capture would complete, 4 if another gang holds it and 5 more if that gang is the current leader. The value is divided by the troops needed, with some random noise, so a cheap interchange that closes a line usually ranks above a big HQ. The leader gets picked on.
The four levels differ in speed, caution and recruitment:
- Easy: thinks about every 2.4 seconds, gives 1 order at a time, wants 1.6 times the troops it needs, recruits at 0.9 times your rate and never defends.
- Normal: every 1.5 seconds, 1 order, a 1.35 margin, the same recruitment as you.
- Hard: every second, up to 2 orders, a 1.2 margin, recruits 8 percent faster than you.
- Boss: every 0.7 seconds, up to 3 orders, a 1.12 margin, recruits 18 percent faster.
From Normal up, powers are timed. Swarm goes off when the gang has squads moving, Venom when at least 3 enemy stations touch its network, Fortify when 15 or more enemy troops are heading for its stations, and Ghost Train when its largest garrison holds 25 or more. During Ghost Train it sends up to 4 deep strikes at the most valuable enemy station that 90 percent of that garrison can beat. Easy fires its power at random once it is charged.
So stations deep inside your network are safe from everything but a Ghost Train, and an empty border station is the cheapest target the CPU can see.
The 20-minute cap
No match lasts longer than 20 minutes. If nobody has won by then, the gang holding the most stations wins by domination, and a tie goes to the gang with the most troops, counting garrisons and squads on the move. The winner still gets the 2,000 point victory bonus, but the speed bonus is 4 points for each second under 15 minutes, so a win at the cap gets none of it. The total is then multiplied by your toughest rival's level: x1 for Easy, x1.6 for Normal, x2.3 for Hard, x3.2 for Boss.
A match against the CPU can also end early the other way: if your gang is knocked out, the match stops at once and the CPU gang with the most stations takes it.
The daily challenge gives everyone the same city, gang and starting position for the day, counted in UTC. It cycles through the five cities in turn, always on CORE against three Hard rivals, and its time star needs a win in 7 minutes or less. Campaign par times are 5 minutes in Paris, 7 in London, 6 in Berlin, 7 in Madrid and 8 in Tokyo. More games built around planning are in the strategy category.