Mechanics

Economy

There are three resources, and each one turns a different crank.

Income

• Food — city base 2 + resource nodes inside your region + Farm.
• Production — (city base 2 + resource nodes inside your region + Workshop) × population multiplier, rounded down.
• Gold — resource nodes inside your region + Market + 1 per turn + the conversion of idle production (see "Flow or store" below).

A timed event multiplier can also apply on top of these three incomes: an event card raises or lowers the chosen resource's gross income by a percentage, for as many turns as the card says (Mid-game events). The multiplier applies to the gross income before upkeep.

Three buildings earn by location: a fixed share plus one share for every matching tile in the city's region (at most 2 tiles). The Farm counts fertile land, the Workshop forest, mines and iron, the Market caravan routes and water — the same building does not earn the same in every city.

The dynasty variants carry the same location shares: the Yurt works with the Farm's share, the Inn with the Market's. The Yurt also gives a fixed production income, and the Inn a fixed gold income higher than the Market's.

Which node yields which item is spelled out in the table above; it is not listed again here, because such a list would be a copy that goes stale with every node added. Two of the nodes are also a unit prerequisite (Map and terrain).

Flow or store

All three resources are calculated at the start of every turn, but they are not kept in the same way:

• Gold is a stock that builds up in the purse; it stays until you spend it.
• Production is not a stock. At the start of the turn it is built as an empire-wide pool, cities draw as much as their caps allow (The production queue), and the part that is not drawn turns into gold: 6 production = 1 gold. A remainder too small for one gold joins the next turn's pool; no other production is held back. This is why the Production cell in the header is not an accumulated number but that turn's production.
• Food is different — net food (income − upkeep) is written each turn into the store of a single city, never split. The food figure on your bar is the sum of all city stores.

Idle production

The production of a city with an empty queue, and the cap that a full queue does not use, are what this conversion is about. The conversion is divided once over the whole empire's remainder; gold is not calculated city by city. As a gold income item it appears separately in the header ("From idle production") and in the turn report ("Idle X production → G gold"). Events that give a production reward or raise production income also reach gold along this path (Travelling masters).

The converted gold is spent like any other gold — rushing, repairs, upgrades, tile purchases and diplomacy costs — and it is also written into the score at the close (Territory and score). Still, an item you choose is usually worth more: leaving the queue empty is a loss of production, which is why the "End turn" box lists cities with empty queues as unfinished business.

You choose that city: the growth focus button in the city panel redirects the food there. With no focus set the recipient is the least populous eligible city — so a newly founded city usually becomes the recipient (city id order breaks ties). The detail lives on the Food page; what population turns into is on Cities and population.

A city in revolt is outside this table (Victory conditions): it yields nothing and it cannot receive the surplus food either — even if you focus it. So the cities you inherit from a fallen capital take no part in the economy until the revolt ends; the one exception is the owner of Law, whose revolting city produces a share of its normal income — and still cannot be the recipient.

A city at its population cap cannot receive it either, focus or no focus: a capped city no longer grows, so the food would sit dead in its store. The rule falls back to the default on those turns, which means leaving a fully grown capital as your focus does not stall your economy. The cap's base is 5 and buildings and techs open it step by step. When no city can receive, surplus food goes to your empire's granary (Cities and population).

Upkeep and deficit

Every unit costs 1 food per turn. If food goes into deficit, units disband until the deficit closes: the highest-upkeep unit first, ties broken by the newest unit — the one that entered the board last. In practice that means "the unit you just built goes, the veteran at the front stays". Stored food does not cover a deficit: if a turn's income is below upkeep, a unit disbands that turn.

Seeing the deficit coming is on you: the army panel prints your total upkeep per turn and the turn report gives you the net food. When a unit does disband, the report says so on its own line — nothing vanishes quietly.

You don't have to leave the choice to the rule: disband removes one of your units from the board whenever you like. Disbanding has no conditions — it asks for no territory, action or gold — and once the unit leaves the board its upkeep leaves with it. It returns no production; if there is a gold refund, the button shows it. When a deficit is coming, pick the old, weak unit yourself instead of letting the rule pick the one at the front.

Rushing

A rush fully funds the item at the head of the queue (the item comes out at the start of your next turn), and the rate depends on the category: 3 gold = 1 production for units, 2 gold = 1 production for buildings. Buying an army costs more than buying infrastructure — gold should not be the shortcut to winning a war.

The price covers the remaining production: a Raider with an empty store (6 production) closes for 6 × 3 gold, and every production already banked in the city comes off that price. If you cannot pay it the button stays disabled; there is no partial payment.

A rush writes straight into that city's store and is not subject to the per-turn draw cap — this is the one door through which gold becomes production.

One item cannot be rushed: the Observatory. It has no price and the command is rejected; gold cannot turn directly into a science victory (Victory conditions).

The item's cost is re-read at the start of every turn with that turn's city count, which matters for Pioneer, the one item whose cost depends on how many cities you hold. If you found or take a city after the rush and before the turn ends, the Pioneer's cost rises by 1 production per new city; the gap is drawn from that turn's production, within the city's draw cap. If the cap or the pool cannot cover it, the item waits one more turn and the banked production is not lost. Conversely, if you lose a city in between, the item still comes out but the overpaid production is not refunded.

City repair

Gold's second door does not pass through production at all: you can fill a damaged city instantly for 1 gold per missing HP. A city also repairs itself at the start of the turn, but not while under siege; gold repair ignores the siege (Cities and population).

Because both doors are paid from the same purse, every turn poses the same question: rush the unit that will lift the siege, or keep the city standing and buy one more turn?

Upgrading units

You don't have to rebuild an ageing unit: a unit whose generation has a successor is upgraded with gold: Spearman → Janissary, Raider → Sipahi, Siege → Artillery. The target and the price are on every unit's spec card, in the Upgrade row. The price is the cost gap between the two units × the unit rush rate (3 gold = 1 production): an upgrade buys the missing production at rush prices and is no cheaper than rushing.

The conditions are the target unit's build conditions, plus place and action:

• You know the target's technology and own its strategic resource (Iron, Horses) in your territory.
• The unit stands in your territory or next to one of your cities.
• The unit has not spent its action this turn — the upgrade is that turn's action; the unit cannot move or attack that turn and loses its fortification.

It is the same unit: its identity, experience, promotion rank and morale are kept. Its health ratio is kept — a half-health Spearman becomes a half-health Janissary; full health comes from healing, not from the upgrade. When a condition fails, the button stays disabled and the reason is written under it.

Upgrades and disbanding cannot be undone: undo only covers moves that trigger no combat or discovery.

Gold's other doors

Rushing, repairing and upgrading spend gold on your own empire. There are three more doors and all three buy something off the board:

• Buying a tile — you add an unclaimed tile next to your territory for gold (Territory and score).
• Buying a camp — you hire the units of an adjacent bandit camp, and the camp leaves the board (Bandit camp). This is the only door through which gold buys soldiers: a rush buys production, this buys the roster directly.
• Annexing a village — you invite an adjacent neutral village to join and it becomes your city (Neutral village). The only door through which gold buys a city; because the price follows the village's remaining health, it can be combined with war.

The seventh door is diplomacy: a truce is bought with gold too (Diplomacy and truces).

All seven say the same sentence: what you pay is time. A rush buys a turn of waiting, a repair buys a turn under siege, an upgrade buys a unit's rebuild, a tile buys a Pioneer's march, a camp buys an attack turn, a village buys several, and a truce buys turns outright.

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