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 (scaled by the population multiplier) + resource nodes inside your region + Workshop.
• Gold — resource nodes inside your region + Market + 1 per turn.

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).

Pool or store

Production and gold collect in a global pool: it all sits in one purse. 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.

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 every city you found moves the recipient. 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.

A city at the 5 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.

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. In practice that means "the unit you just built goes, the veteran at the front stays".

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.

Rushing

A rush completes the item at the head of the queue, 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.

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?

Gold's other doors

Rushing and repairing 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 sixth door is diplomacy: a truce is bought with gold too (Diplomacy and truces).

All six say the same sentence: what you pay is time. A rush buys a turn of waiting, a repair buys a turn under siege, 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.