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Public matches may include AI commanders.
Join a public campaign or create a private room for friends.
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Easy gives you more time to establish your nation. Public games use Standard.
The host starts the match. Share this server’s address and room code.
Revisit a campaign from any angle. Scrub the timeline, follow a nation, or capture your next story.
Unclaimed land. Untold possibilities.
Click inland to place your capital. Nearby land supports your first expansion.
Drag the marker to choose troops for your next attack.
Grow a nation, protect your people, and choose when to fight. Click or tap works everywhere; on touch screens, long-press replaces right-click and Cancel on the mode banner replaces Esc.
Local advantage decides land battles: your troops per tile on a front against the defenders there, made harder by hills, mountains, forts and dense population. Aim for 2:1.
Try Heartland with 12 opponents on Standard. Place your capital inland, away from several rivals. Start with up to 81 populated tiles and a capital that grants +10 stability while held.
Farm → Factory → City → Hospital
Build a defense post first if a neighbour looks threatening. Prices rise with each copy you own.
Capitalists: research Industry, then Mechanized warfare. Select a factory to produce a crewless mech for 600 gold in 20 seconds. Mechs share support across your fronts.
Next: research Logistics and Industry, add a hospital before big wars and a port for trade. Trade pays full value with anyone you are not at war with, +25% with allies and only 10% between your own ports or airfields.
Army upkeep: soldiers above a free allowance (5,000 + 3 per tile) cost 6 gold/s per 1,000, never more than 35% of your income (Communists pay 25% less). The Treasury shows income − upkeep = net. If the treasury runs dry, recruitment pauses, stability slowly falls and a few idle reserves desert.
Navy: right-drag a box around your ships (touch: Select ships, then drag) to select them; loose ships form a fleet with a numbered marker. With ships selected, right-click (or tap) water to move, an enemy ship to attack it, enemy coast to bombard, your port to rearm. Shift queues, A attack-moves, H holds, J returns to port; Ctrl+1-9 assigns a fleet number and 1-9 selects it (twice centres it). Naval rallies stay under W > Naval rallies.
Structures: the same box also selects your silos, rocket batteries, forts, airfields, air-assault bases, air defense, shore batteries and radar (cities when the box holds nothing else). Double-click a structure for every one of its type on screen, again for the whole map. The panel batches auto-reload, paid reloads, salvos, sorties, gunships and city upgrades; right-click enemy land fires the conventional weapons. Nuclear missiles launch only from Launch at target… and a confirmation. In City build mode, ringed cities upgrade with a click (green: affordable now).
Stay out of trouble: offer a non-aggression pact to a stronger neighbour (Q, then W), avoid wars on two borders, and attack only with a clear local advantage. Buy urgent buildings before expensive research. Press P or the Pause button to pause solo.
Attack clicks set a focus point: click or tap wilderness, or double-click an enemy. On touch, choose Attack or confirm Declare war from the nation's card. Automatic reinforcements stop at a 4:1 advantage and never send more than the commitment % you chose.
Play online joins the next public game (FFA 25, FFA 8 or Duel) after a 60-second countdown. Create a private room to share an invite link and launch when everyone is ready, or play Solo practice offline on Easy, Standard or Hard. Reserve an inland spot at least 12 tiles from others. Public games use Standard; private rooms default to Easy. Public matches may include AI commanders.
Click or tap unclaimed land to expand there, or press Z to expand everywhere. The Send % slider sets how much of your available army to commit; keep reserves to defend. Captured enemy land needs a short occupation garrison, larger on densely populated tiles. About 60% of a captured tile's civilians stay and join you.
Civilians live on your tiles: they grow fastest on half-full land and spread from crowded areas. Soldiers are drafted from them, so more people and more barracks recruit faster, and your army cap grows with your population. Conscription + and − set the draft rate: green is safe, amber and red cost stability and income. Very large empires recruit more slowly. Blue guards (at most 20% of the army) never join offensives, but they defend your borders when a nation at war attacks.
Some casualties are wounded. They heal slowly in the field and much faster with hospitals; two hospitals return most battle wounded within two minutes. Hover or tap Wounded for details.
Press E (or Build), choose Economic, Military or Special, then click or tap near the spot: placement finds a nearby valid tile, green means buildable. Factories, mines (ore on hills or mountains) and oil rigs (coastal oil) each employ 10,000 civilians; hold Space or tap the terrain button to see the zones. Foreign warships near a trade route take a 15% toll (40% at war); trade ships are never captured.
Ports build ships, up to 3 queued per port; cancel an unstarted hull for a full refund. Destroyers have guns, 4 missiles for land or ships, and escort air defense, and spot submarines within 6 tiles. Submarines stay hidden unless a destroyer or radar station is near; firing reveals them for 10 seconds. Carriers are Capitalist only. Ports repair and restock ships for gold, and ships fire automatically only at nations you are already at war with.
Press R. Your focus lasts the whole match and opens the Ideology tab: Capitalist adds income, trade, factory mechs, stronger strikes and carriers; Communist the biggest armies and helicopter gunships; Socialist population, hospitals, hard-to-occupy land and integrated air defense. Other tabs: Economy, Military, Navy, Air & Missiles. Queue projects before you can afford them; each is paid when it starts. Rocketry unlocks ICBM silos and submarine tactical nukes.
Double-click a nation to declare war and send troops; on touch, use its card and confirm. The front keeps advancing. Below 0.8x advantage a front captures nothing and bleeds (below 0.5x for 10 seconds it falls back), 0.8-1.2x grinds, above 1.2x advances faster with fewer losses. Hold line stops the advance but keeps the troops defending; Retreat brings 85% home. Buildings have hit points and repair slowly. Airfield sorties cost 150 gold and can be shot down on their route; air defense has 2 ready rounds at 70%. Nothing fires a nuke automatically: select a silo or submarine and a target, or use Nuclear barrage. Silo auto-reload starts on (700 gold per reload, listed in the treasury); switch it off per silo or for a whole selection.
Double-click land near a reachable coast to send 5% of available troops from your nearest ready port. On touch, tap the coast and choose Invade. Landing-craft markers suggest neutral or wartime coasts; hover for the route and troop count. War → Naval landing also selects a coast directly. Hover or tap nations for total population and soldiers.
Press Q to answer offers, or right-click or long-press a nation for diplomacy. Non-aggression pacts are binding for 5 minutes. Peace on a frontline proposes one: acceptance keeps borders and recalls both sides' attacks. Breaking an alliance takes 45 seconds and marks you a Betrayer for 5 minutes. Alliance blocs start at 2 nations. Build a Coalition HQ (2,500 gold) for shared victory at 85% of the land. Upgrade it at minute 10 for a third slot (2,500 gold), then minute 20 for a fourth (5,000 gold); Socialist HQs gain these slots free. Holding 80% wins alone even while allied. No one wins before minute 10, and no new alliances form in the last 3 minutes. At 30 minutes the nation with the most land wins.
On touch screens, tap the Diplomacy, War, Build and Research buttons in the command deck, tap a nation or building for its card, long-press the map for actions (including Expand everywhere) and use Cancel on the mode banner to back out. Save a replay when a match ends, then open Replays to watch or record it.
Solo campaigns pause while this menu is open.
Changes are included in replays. Troop changes affect reserves.