This short guide will teach you everything you need to know to start playing the eponymous territory toppling game. If you ever need a quick refresher on something, don't forget to check out the Reference!
Basic Layout:
Territopple is played on a grid of tiles. Each tile will have one or more pieces on it, either belonging to a team or unclaimed.
Turns:
Players take turns in order. On their turn, each player must place a piece onto either a neutral space, or a space owned by their team.
If a player has no valid moves, they lose. Play continues until one team owns all the tiles.
Toppling:
If the number of pieces on a tile exceeds the number of neighbors that tile has, the tile will topple. Toppling resets a tile to having one piece, and adds a piece to each of its neighbors. This can cause chain reactions.
Any tile that is toppled onto will become owned by the team that just played their move.
Toppling is the only way to claim tiles that are already owned by other teams.
Rules
This section has a complete set of information about optional rules.
Scoring Options
Elimination (Default)
This is the default scoring option, and assigns players scores based on when they were eliminated. The last player standing wins.
Tiles
This mode calculates score as the sum of the number of tiles owned by the player after each move.
Pieces
This mode calculates score as the sum of the number of pieces owned by the player after each move.
Reference
This section has a more complete set of information about Territopple.
Topology
2D Grid Topology (TGrid2D)
This is the standard board topology, and is recommended for play.
2D Single-Edge Wrap Topology (THWrap2D, TVWrap2D)
These topologies have no corners, but do have edges.
Tiles on the left and right, top and bottom are adjacent for THWrap2D and TVWrap2D, respectively.
2D Edge Wrap Topology (TBWrap2D)
This topology has no corners and no edges.
Tiles on the left are adjacent with those on the right, and tiles on the top are adjacent with those on the bottom.
Board Rendering Options
Original
This is the classic rendering mode, it's a legacy mode way back from when the game was played in the terminal!
In this mode, the number of pieces on tiles are represented by symbols, a '-' is one, '+' is two, 'W' is three, and '█' is four.
We keep this mode around because it has an important advantage, while it takes time to get used to, it's very easy to understand large (larger than around 11x11) boards with this mode, and we recommend it for that purpose.
Concentric
So named because this mode displays tiles as a grid of concentric squares, this mode makes it very easy to grasp the basic concepts of territopple, which is why it's recommended for beginners.
It's easy to tell when a tile is volatile as it will be completely filled. However, with the mode consuming all the space within the tile, it can be harder to see and notice the various highlights.
Spherical
This poorly named mode is not, in fact, meant to display spherical boards (coming soon-ish!). It's a 3D rendering option that displays tiles as spheres in 3D space.
This mode is currently difficult to use on mobile, as there is no way to rotate the view without a right click or keyboard inputs, this mode also does not provide any significant advantages over the others, and exists primarily as a test that the 3D rendering worked.
Due to this, we do not recommend the spherical rendering mode to anyone for serious use, but it might be cool to play around with it and see how it looks. Also, keep an eye out for the next rendering mode that will be added: '3D Towers'!