Mechanics

Getting started

Regnarium is a turn-based 4X strategy game: explore, expand, produce, fight. You choose the match length at setup: Short 60, Standard 96 or Long 120 turns. A Short match takes roughly 30–45 minutes; Standard and Long have not been timed yet. Details: Match length.

The goal

There are four ways to win:

1. Conquest — eliminate every rival: a seat is eliminated when it loses its last city.
2. Science — complete the Observatory.
3. Dominance — hold your share of the seats' total cities at 75 percent or higher for 8 turns in a row.
4. Score — hold the highest score when the last turn ends.

Losing your capital is not elimination on its own: the cities near it pass to the rival; if you have cities farther away, they stay with you and one of them becomes the new capital, and if you have none, you are eliminated. What counts for elimination is having no city left at all. Details: Victory conditions.

Dynasty: the one lasting choice of the match

On the setup screen, alongside the number of opponents, their personality and the difficulty, you can also pick a dynasty for yourself. A dynasty is a rule modifier: chosen once, it stands for the whole match and carries two effects; it also puts its own variant in place of one building (Yurt for the Farm, Citadel for the Walls, Inn for the Market).

Playing with no dynasty is a first-class option and the default — that seat gets no dynasty effect. The match plays the balance without asymmetry only if the Rivals have dynasties switch is off as well; while it is on (the default), rivals still carry a dynasty.

The Rivals have dynasties switch decides whether rivals carry a dynasty too, and it is on by default on the setup screen. While it is on, each rival takes its dynasty from its personality (which personality carries which line is on The AI opponent); your own dynasty is independent of that, and is your choice. With it off, rivals have no dynasty. The switch is part of the match's identity: the result code carries it too, and the same code builds the same rival dynasties. Details: The AI opponent.

The first field on the setup screen is the number of players: the default is one, but several people can also take turns on the same device — each of them then picks their own dynasty. Details: Hotseat: taking turns on one device.

The seed: a match's identity

Every match is built from a seed, and the seed is the match's identity: the same seed and the same map type give the same map, the same starting positions and the same opponent roster (Map types). The setup screen shows the seed, lets you type one, and offers two ready choices — random and today's seed.

Today's seed comes from the date and follows the UTC day, so everyone playing on the same day sees the same map. Being timezone-independent is deliberate: with local time, the clock difference between two players would drop them onto different maps and make their results incomparable.

The result code. When a match ends the screen shows a short code carrying the seed, the setup and the result. Paste that code into the seed field on the setup screen and the same match is rebuilt: same map (map type included), same opponents, same dynasty, same "Rivals have dynasties" choice. The code is not proof — the game is serverless, so it cannot verify that a score was really achieved; what the code says is "this was the match". A code describes a solo match; a match played in turns on one device produces none.

The third way to play the same match again is the replay same seed button on the end-of-match screen; to watch a replay, see Replay and score curve.

The guided first match

In your first match a guide strip sits at the top of the screen and walks through the game's five strands: explore, settle, produce, the turn report and fight. Each step has a line telling you what to do and, below it, a line telling you why. The guide advances only on your moves: an opponent's move, a city it founds or an attack it makes does not close a step for you.

• The target is marked on the board. On the explore, settle, produce and fight steps the guide points at a single hex and the camera goes there once; the marker is a separate indicator from the range and attack highlights — those say "you can go here", this says "go here". The turn report step shows no hex on the board.
• Explore, settle and produce are unordered. You do those three in any order you like; the guide is a broadcast, not a gate. The turn report step, though, closes only after all three are done: pressing "End turn" and opening the report counts then.
• Fight steps forward when an opportunity appears. The fight step opens only while there is an opponent within range of one of your units; the moment it opens it moves ahead of the other steps and the marker shows the hex you can attack. When it will come depends on the map and on the opponents' moves, which is why the step comes last.
• With no opportunity, the guide shrinks to one line. If the other four steps are closed and there is no opponent to attack yet, the strip says "Fight: this shows up here once an opponent comes within a unit’s range" in a single line, and the hint strip returns beneath it. When an opportunity appears the fight step opens on its own. If you do not want to wait, you can skip the strip.
• The finish card stays for one turn. Once all five steps are closed the guide ends with a congratulation card; you can dismiss the card yourself, and if you do not, it closes when you finish your next turn and the guide never opens again. After that the hint strip keeps showing you the way.
• It can be skipped, and skipping sticks. Dismiss it from the strip itself; you can bring it back from settings — but only before your first match is finished.
• The first match's seed is fixed, so the guide runs on a known map. You can change the seed on the setup screen — the guide still works, the map just is not the familiar one.
• The guide does not open in a match played in turns on one device (Hotseat: taking turns on one device).

What to do in the first five turns

The "How to play" card writes only the first five moves in a single sentence each; the detail is below and on the linked pages.

• Walk the Pioneer. At the start of the match it is your only scout in the field; it lifts the fog and shows you resource nodes and neighbours. See Fog of war.
• Head for the ruin. A Ruins pays out once; you have to stop the unit on it, passing over is not enough. If an opponent gets there before you, the ruin is spent for you too.
• Then hand exploration to the Scout. Keeping the Pioneer in the fog costs you a city you never founded; the Scout is cheaper, sees further and walks further — but it cannot attack.
• Found your second city early. City count multiplies both production and score; the cap is 6. A new city has to be at least 4 hexes from every city on the map; each city you own after your first raises the cost of the next Pioneer by 1 production (Cities and population).
• Pick the building to fit the place. The income of the Farm, the Workshop and the Market depends on the matching hexes in the city's territory; the same building does not yield the same in every city. The dynasties' Yurt and Inn carry the same location shares. See Economy.
• Never leave a queue empty. A city draws only its own production each turn; if its queue is empty, its production turns into gold (6 production = 1 gold). The gold is not lost, but a unit or building you choose is usually worth more. See The production queue.
• Spend your science points. Points build up every turn on their own, and research is bought instantly with points in the Research panel, not in a city queue. The "End turn" box reminds you when your points are enough for a node. See Research and the tech tree.
• Do not queue a unit whose resource you lack. Units such as the Raider and the Siege need a strategic resource node in the territory of any one of your cities; if you lose the resource, the item waiting in the queue is not deleted but it stalls, and blocks everything behind it. See The production queue.
• Upgrade the aging unit. A unit standing in your own territory or next to your city can be upgraded to its next generation for gold; its identity, experience and morale are kept. A unit you do not need you can disband. See Economy.
• Watch upkeep. Every unit eats 1 food per turn. Run a food deficit and units disband. See Economy.
• In combat, trust the preview, and mind range and morale. A ranged unit hits a distant target it can see; the combat preview shows morale and experience too. See Combat, Morale and rout and Experience and promotion.
• Fortify the unit. An entrenched unit defends at 1.5 times; in your own territory wounds heal every turn (2 HP; if fortified, 4 HP). See Combat.

The starting seat shifts every turn. You open turn 1, the first opponent opens turn 2, the next seat opens the turn after that, and so on until every seat at the table has opened a turn and it comes back to you (in a match with one opponent you open turn 3 again); so on some turns the opponents play before you. Detail: The turn cycle.

Saving a match and moving your data

The game saves an unfinished match by itself: the record is refreshed after every move, and the next time you open the game the menu asks Continue. The save is not a photograph of the match but a recipe: the seed, the setup and the commands given so far. Loading replays those commands — the same seed produces the same match, so the result is identical (Replay and score curve uses the same record).

When a match ends that record is cleared; the slot holds an unfinished match, not an archive.

The settings screen has two more buttons: export to file and import from file. The exported file carries your unfinished match and your statistics; settings are not included — volume, language, the motion preference, the opponent turn speed (Off, Normal, Fast; see The turn cycle) and the web text size belong to the device. On the web you pick the text size from settings among preset steps; the mobile app has no such setting and follows the phone's system text size. The exported file is plain JSON and reads fine in a text editor: the data is yours, and you can see what is in it.

If your settings cannot be saved, the settings screen tells you with a warning: the change stays in effect for that session but may revert when you close the game.

Nothing leaves the device on its own (the game is offline and contacts no server); where the file goes is up to you.

Importing never fails silently. If the file is not a Regnarium file, comes from a different version, or is corrupt, the game says why and changes nothing — a half-written import would mix your old statistics with a new save. After a successful import the open match is dropped and you return to the menu: otherwise your next move would overwrite the record you just imported.

Where to go next

• The turn cycle — what happens in a turn?
• Combat — how exactly is damage computed?
• The AI opponent — how does the opponent decide?

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.