Victory
S
1500
Sixteen nations on one sheet of paper
Hold the winning share of the land for 30 seconds, or be the last nation standing. The share starts at half (less in bigger fields) and falls through the endgame. Lose your capital and you're out.
First choose who you are: three of eight personas are dealt and you keep one. The Cartographer sees further and scouts for free; the Merchant starts bigger and richer; the Warlord strikes first and plunders double; the Admiral knows the sea and gets three free boats; the Warden starts with a fortress and builds them at half price; the Prospector knows every deposit and works them from further off; the Pioneer wins the land race; the Steward fills bigger towns and makes more of its food. Each card shows its way through the opening, the middle and the endgame. Then one of that persona's three ambition cards (common, rare, legendary), a secret goal that pays gold or people when you complete it. Your capital is placed for you: nobody knows the map yet, so there's no better spot to pick. You have 30 seconds; press C to hide the cards.
Play with friends on the menu: one of you creates a room and shares its four-letter code, the others join with it. The AI fills the empty nations. Leave mid-match and the AI takes over your nation.
The map starts blank, sea and land alike: everything hatched is uncharted, including where the other nations are. You see your land and a little past it, what your boats pass, and your allies' land. What you've seen stays charted, but borders out of sight are drawn in pencil as you last saw them. Send a scout (S) to chart the way, over land or sea, but it may be caught in someone's land. Build an Observatory to watch a region live. See a capital and you know that nation's exact strength.
Every spot suits a way of playing. Forest ♣ is ambush ground: your attacks out of it cost 20% less. Hills n carry fortresses and Observatories half as far again. Marsh ≈ holds many people but is hard going. Rivers are slow to cross except at a ford =. Deposits are worked by a town (or your capital) within 3 tiles: food ✿ makes room for people, timber ♠ makes building cheaper, gold ¤ pays every second. An ally whose land touches yours buys your goods along the road between your capitals. The map key (K) lists them; hover anywhere you've charted to read the ground.
People are everything: they grow to fill what your land holds, and they're who you send. Click land on your border to expand: your whole border pushes outward, fast through desert, slow over mountains. The slider sets how many go. Take settlements for prizes: villages (people and a town), ruins (gold).
Click a neighbour's land to attack. Defence is thickest near a capital and thin at the edges: aim at the pale parts of the red shading. Taking towns and fortresses plunders gold. Shift-click to sail to another shore. If they push back at you over the same border, the two pushes meet: both lose people until the smaller is spent, and the bigger carries on. Arrows in the attacker's colour show who is pushing into you, and the list under your gold names them. A capital falls when most of the land around it is taken.
Right-click a nation to propose an alliance: a 3-minute pact not to attack each other, and to share what you see. Renew it near the end (Y) or let it lapse in peace. Break one early and you're an oathbreaker for a minute: everyone sees your people, and your land is cheaper to take.
Gold buys a town (room for people) or a fortress (war). Each is always the same price; your land decides how many you can have, one more town for every 220 tiles and one more fortress for every 300. Click your own land for the ring of builds, or use the dock at the bottom.
You always see roughly how strong a nation is against you. Scouts chart the way; an Observatory watches a region live, and any capital it sees shows its exact people.
From minute 8 the endgame begins: the winning share falls, defences wear thin, alliances crack, and the leader is marked with a gold star for everyone, through any fog. Stop them or be them. When someone holds the share, the whole map turns on them; taking their land slows their clock.
H all controls · K map key · D paper or slate · M sound · scroll to zoom, drag to pan.
How your land looks to everyone in the match. Gems come from playing: a few every match, more for the top three, more for a win, and two for each feat. If someone in the match already wears your colour, the nation that picked second gets the nearest free one.