From your first hut to an empire

Getting started

You begin with a single Stone-Age settlement and one goal: grow it. There’s nothing to buy and nothing to sign up for — tap Play, name your people, and you’re a chieftain. Your save lives in your browser; create a profile only when you want a name on the leaderboards.

The screen has three views you’ll move between: your City (where you build), the Field around it, and the wider World map.

The core loop

Every session is a rhythm of four things:

• Gather the five resources — Food, Wood, Stone, Iron, and Gold — plus the Population that everything depends on.
• Build & upgrade the structures that raise your output and unlock the next tier.
• Advance your tier: Tribe → Village → Town → City → Kingdom → Empire, each gated by your Capital Hall.
• Project power: scout, claim land, raise armies, and deal with rivals.

The game keeps running while you’re away — your court governs, your people grow — so a couple of visits a day is enough to stay competitive.

Your city

Your Capital Hall is the heart of everything; its level gates each new Age. Around it you’ll raise Farms, Sawmills, Quarries, Mines, a Marketplace, Barracks and more — buildings stop at Level 10, so growth is about breadth and specialization, not a single maxed tower. Your people’s identity is what breaks that ceiling: Egyptian Farms and Chinese Markets reach Level 12, and that one exception is the whole point of choosing them.

At the right moment you’ll choose a Kingdom Doctrine — the philosophy that shapes your rule — and later raise a Landmark, your empire’s signature Monument. Those choices set you on the path toward one of the twelve final empires.

The Royal Court

You don’t rule alone. A living bloodline of flawed, aging characters runs your nation — ministers with ambition, loyalty, and the odd vice. Seat the right royal in the right office and their skills lift that domain; a corrupt or absent one costs you.

Rulers marry, produce heirs, and eventually die — and any of them, even the Monarch, can ride out to lead an army, keeping their crown while they’re away. Manage the dynasty well and it compounds across generations.

Armies & war

Recruit units at your military buildings, assign a commander, and march. Combat is deterministic and readable: infantry, cavalry, archers, and siege each beat and lose to different things, terrain matters, and walls really hold. Sieging a strong city takes real siege engines and patience.

Fair-play rule: no unit can be bought at all. There is no mercenary market and no real-money path to troops — every soldier you field was trained by your own barracks, and Gems are earned in play, never purchased. Wealth buys time and comfort, never outcomes. Explore every empire’s strengths in the Empires guide.

Trade & tribute

War isn’t the only way to deal with your neighbours. Tap any rival capital and load a caravan with Food, Wood, Stone or Iron — to an ally it’s trade, to anyone else it rides as tribute that buys their goodwill and a lull in their raids. The carrier’s duty is a flat 20% of the goods, paid in gold; the caravan then walks the road, delivers, and returns.

A power that towers over you may demand tribute instead of raiding — pay it in your Reports, or refuse and risk their wrath. And you can set a standing yearly tribute either way: pledge one to keep the peace, or extract one from a weaker rival. The caravans run themselves each year — until someone’s stores run dry.

The living world

The map is one 999×999 world with natural ocean and mountain borders and regions you unlock by charter. Cities project influence in their owner’s colour; allied borders merge, enemy borders meet at a contested seam.

What that means today: the powers sharing your land are AI nations — you can trade, extort, ally with and destroy them — and your nation saves to your own browser. The persistent shared world, real alliances and player-versus-player war are what this is being built toward, and they arrive with the multiplayer server.

That world is designed to run an Imperial Convergence every six months — active clusters compress inward, dead frontier is pruned outward, so the world gets denser but never resets. You can walk through how it works in the Systems Explorer; it isn’t running in the build yet.

Winning & Might

There’s no single win button. Your standing is measured by Might — your account-wide power — your legions above all, then your buildings, economy, wisdom, and conquests. A fresh Village ranks low; a sealed, sprawling, war-tested Empire towers over the board. Earned in-world, never bought. See where you’d land on the Hall of Fame.

Tips for new rulers

• Don’t neglect Food and Population early — they cap everything else.
• Keep your Capital Hall upgrading; it’s the key that unlocks each Age.
• Scout before you march. A lost army is expensive.
• Seat your highest-skill royals in the offices that match them.
• Ally early. Merged borders and shared trade are the strongest force in the late game.
• Still stuck? The FAQ covers the specifics, and the Community is happy to help.