The first hour

A round is thirty days; the first hour decides how the rest of yours goes. Every step below is something the game itself points you at once you're playing — this is the shape of it in advance. In a world, the First steps chip in the top bar tracks these.

Pick a race when you join. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc or Undead — each trades differently and researches a different science cheaply. Human is the safe pick: the first level of every science is free.

  1. Found your first city. Land on one of your homeland's marked hexes. Terrain matters — the hexes around a city set its yields — but any of your landing hexes is a reasonable start.
  2. Raise the Keep to level 2. Every Keep level holds four levels of your other buildings, so it comes first.
  3. Build a Farm. Your troops eat, and the first levels are quick.
  4. Recruit a garrison. A few Spearmen hold the walls while you build.
  5. Raid the nearest bandit camp. Once you have a garrison, march it next to a camp and take its stash — the first fight, at your own pace.
  6. Found a second city. Send settlers from the map onto a hex your sight reaches — two cities build and train side by side.

You're protected from attack for your first day — long enough to do all of the above without anyone marching on you. After that, the guilds and the map are where the game opens up.

How it works

The rules the screens fold away, together — the same words you'll find under each “How …” in a world.

How upkeep and desertion work

Each unit costs one thing an hour: the two lowest tiers eat 4 and 8 food, the three highest are paid 12, 12 and 20 gold. The Undead eat nothing: their two lowest tiers are paid in iron, the three highest in gold, every rate ×1.2.

Troops at home or in a guildmate's city cost half. An army more than 6 hexes from every one of your cities is outside your territory and costs ×1.5. Military science takes its share off all of it.

When the granary runs dry, the troops who eat go unfed; when the treasury or the iron store does, the troops paid from it go unpaid. After 12 h, 5 % of them desert each hour, the cheapest first, until they are fed or paid.

Sell food, wood or iron on the market to fill the treasury; buy food, or raise a Farm, to fill the granary; buy iron, or raise a Mine, to pay the Undead.

How cities are founded

Your first city lands on one of your homeland's marked hexes; landing in an empty homeland founds its guild, and you lead it. Every city after is founded by an army, which becomes its garrison.

Economy sets how many cities you may hold — 2 at Economy 0, one more every 2 levels, 7 at 10. Cities you capture count too: at the limit you can't found, though what you take always stands, and a city razed frees its place.

The newest city you founded must reach Keep 15 before the next — your first city, before you found any other. A founding costs nothing but the army.

How the merchant trades

Buy and the price climbs; sell and it drops. Left alone, every price drifts back to 1 gold in about 24 hours.

The merchant takes a fee on every trade, over the price when you buy and under it when you sell: 10 %, halved by Charters (Economy 7), halved again for Humans, whose people trade most.

How research works

A level has a fixed price in what its track is made of, gold on every track — 2,000 iron, 400 wood and 400 gold for Military's first, 2× more each level after (64,000 iron at 5, 2,048,000 at 10), whatever the other tracks stand at.

One study at a time, across all three tracks, paid when it starts. It takes 1 h for a first level, 12 h for a fifth, 96 h for the top, and the level is yours when it ends. Cancel and 80 % of the price comes back; the time is lost.

Humans research the first level of every track free; every other race pays less for one track and more for another.

How a siege works

A city with a wall and its gates closed stops every army but its owner's and their guild's; an army that marches to it halts at the gates and lays siege. Its owner may open the gates to let others through.

The siege needs hours before it storms at full strength: 2 h and 0.5 h a Wall level, scaled by the square root of the defence over the attack, between 6 h and 24 h. Storm early and the attack strikes with the share served; wait past it and it keeps rising, to ×1.2 at one and a half times the hours. Every allied army at the gates storms together. Siege works cut the hours with wood, up to half of them and never below 6 h. A storm that wins but not by much is repulsed: both sides keep their losses, the armies stay at the gates, and the siege's hours start again with the works spent.

A capital holds out longer: its Keep and Wall defend ×2, and a siege of it needs ×1.5 the hours.

How the score works

Three lines, a war for cities:

  • Land — every Keep level of a city you hold, × 100.
  • Conquest — a capture held a day without losing it, once a city, × 1,000; twice from the reigning winners, twice from the leading guild.
  • Spoils — plunder, × 10 an hour of the victim's income — never less than the world's average seat makes; twice from the leader.

Read now, standing once the round ends. A world's Score is its own table; the Hall ranks players across every world that has ended.

How points work

Finishing 1st in an era of 12 players is worth 12 points, 2nd is worth 11, and so on down to 1. Members of the winning guild score double. The board starts fresh each quarter. It counts every world that has ended; a world's own table, while it runs, is its Score.