How To Play

Start small, eat the neutral countries around you, build an economy and a navy, hold 72% of the land. Matches run 15–25 minutes.

Controls

Left-click a bordering countryInvade along the whole shared frontier with the share of your army set by the Send into attack slider. The advance stops when that country falls; click again to reinforce.
Right-click your landBuild menu (or cancel a construction site).
Right-click enemy landSend a transport, launch a missile, diplomacy, missile-command focus.
Right-click waterSend a ship from your nearest port, or a port on your own coast.
Click a ship · Shift-dragSelect ships. Right-click water to move them, an enemy port to blockade. Esc deselects.
Scroll · drag · SpaceZoom · pan · pause.
HotkeysC city · F factory · P port · S SAM · M silo · D bastion · K missile command · N missile.
Economy sliderShift growth between troops (1.6× at the end) and gold (1.6× at the other end).

Rules of thumb

DensityTroops ÷ tiles. Land costs more to take the denser its defender; a thin army is cheap to invade and invites neutrals and allies to turn on you.
NeutralsNever attack first. Once hit they mobilize and push back for ~40 s, but only against an attacker spread thinner than they are. Conquering one pays plunder — tripled in the first minutes.
LandmassesOwn every tile of an island or continent for a one-time troop windfall and a lasting growth bonus. Rivers block land attacks; cross them by transport.
NukedWhen a missile lands on your land, a red card at the top of the screen names the attacker ("NUKED BY EGYPT"), an air-raid siren sounds, the launching silo flashes red rings for as long as the siren sounds (about 9 s), and if the silo is off screen a flashing red arrow at the screen edge points toward it with the attacker's name. Right-click their land to concentrate missile command on them.
Fallen nationsWhen a named nation is wiped out, a banner takes the centre of the screen for a few seconds — its flag struck through, "EGYPT — FALLEN, killed by France", the killer's flag at the right — without interrupting play, and a short bugle call sounds (quietly if you weren't involved). Fallen nations stay at the bottom of the sidebar list, struck through, with who killed them. The same banner in gold announces a continent unified — by anyone — or any landmass you unify yourself, with the windfall and the hold bonus it now pays, and a short fanfare.
CollapseA nation whose army hits zero while you're taking its land falls at once — the rest of its territory is yours without painting it tile by tile. The same happens to anyone reduced to under 25 tiles.
Unclaimed landCraters and burnt ground cost nothing to take — the troops you commit set the speed and come home in full when it's done. Fighting a nation costs troops per tile — more the denser the defender, up to 8 per tile — and never more in total than about 1.5× what the defender has left, plus attrition of 10% of what the fight cost. Everything you didn't spend comes home.
Force and speedAn attack that can afford many sweeps of its front advances up to 3× faster; one that can barely pay crawls.