Guide · Getting started
  1. Contents
  2. Getting started
  3. Races
  4. Units
  5. Buildings
  6. Economy and upkeep
  7. Combat and sieges
  8. Magic
  9. Map and movement
  10. Guilds
  11. The round and scoring
  12. Glossary

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. The races →

You start with 2,000 food, 2,000 wood, 2,000 iron, 500 gold: enough for the three producers and the Keep in any order. While you're protected, a city's first upgrades take 25 seconds each.

  1. Found your city. Found your first city on one of the marked hexes. They are your homeland's. The hexes around a city set its yields — water feeds a Farm, forest a Lumbermill, rock a Mine — but any of your landing hexes is a reasonable start.
  2. A Farm. Queue a Farm: your troops will eat. The first upgrades take seconds; later ones take real time. Food feeds the two lowest tiers of every race but the Undead.
  3. A Lumbermill. Queue a Lumbermill: wood raises every building. Wood is the bulk of most buildings' price.
  4. A Mine. Queue a Mine: iron arms your troops, and the queue's 3 slots are full. With all three producers queued, the city makes food, wood and iron from its first minutes.
  5. Keep to 2. Raise your Keep to 2 once a slot frees — every Keep level holds 4 levels of the other buildings. It is the room: the 4 levels a Keep level holds are what your three producers rise in. A Keep level costs gold, the first thing your tax buys.
  6. Recruit a garrison. Recruit a few soldiers to hold the walls. A few of your race's first-tier soldiers hold the walls while you build.
  7. Raid a bandit camp. Raise an army and march it next to a bandit camp to raid its stash. The first fight, at your own pace: a camp never marches on you.
  8. Found a second city. 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.