Mechanics

Victory conditions

There are two ways to win.

1. Conquest

Take every rival capital. A player whose capital falls is eliminated immediately:

• Their units leave the board.
• Their remaining cities pass to whoever took the capital — but in revolt (see below).

So no ownerless city is ever left on the board, and the scoreboard reads from a single source.

To take a city you must reduce its HP to zero and then move a unit into it. The city you walk into goes through this: its population drops by 1 (never below 1), its production queue and accumulated stores are wiped, its buildings survive, and it changes hands at full HP for its new population — so the conqueror does not inherit the breach it just made, but a city worth defending.

The eliminated player's other cities get no such treatment: they carry their population, HP, queues and stores across untouched — all that changes is the owner, the capital status and the revolt counter.

Neutrals are not part of the conquest condition. What counts is the number of seats still standing, and the neutral side holds no seat (Bandit camp, Neutral village): the match ends the moment you take the last opponent's capital, even with bandit camps left uncleared and villages left untaken. The neutral side has no capital either, so there is no conquest to win against it. The reverse holds too — the neutral side cannot win: it has no row in the score table and it never attacks a city.

A truce stops the conquest clock. You cannot attack a side under truce, and you cannot enter its cities — not even one already at zero HP (Diplomacy and truces). So buying peace does not only protect you, it binds you too: that opponent cannot be eliminated until the truce expires, and the turn counter keeps running.

Revolt

When a capital falls, the distant cities you inherit stay in revolt for 3 turns. A city in revolt:

• Produces no income — no food, no production, no gold; the resource nodes in its region stop working too (Economy).
• Does not advance its production queue. You may queue items, even fund them with gold; the item completes once the revolt is over (The production queue).
• Does not repair at the start of the turn. Gold repair still works (Cities and population).
• Defends worse: its city defense is multiplied by ×0.5 (Combat).

Ownership, however, transfers immediately: the city counts toward your score from the moment it changes hands (Territory and score). So a revolt does not cancel the prize, it delays it.

This has two consequences. Taking one capital no longer hands you a rival's whole economy in the same turn — you still have to feed your army. And while the revolt lasts, the cities of a fallen empire are an open target for a third player: low defense, and an owner who has not settled in yet.

A city you take in battle does not go into revolt; you already paid the price of conquest. For the same reason, if you take a city that is in revolt, the revolt is cleared: the player who besieged it and walked in has earned that city.

2. Score

If nobody has finished the conquest by the end of turn 60, the highest score wins. Formula and tiebreakers: Territory and score.

Losing

Lose your own capital and you are eliminated; the match ends for you.

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