Build a nation. Hold the world.
Start with one small country. Grow through nearby neutrals, build an economy, then use land, sea and air power to hold 72% of the map.
Your opening, in five moves
Read the neighborhood
Zoom in. Look for weak neutral neighbors and a route to the coast. Compare troop density, not just country size.
Expand without emptying your army
Set Send into attack, then left-click a bordering country. Keep a reserve: a thin army makes you an inviting target.
Turn land into income
Right-click your land to build cities and factories. Place them close enough to connect supply lines; build a port when the sea becomes your next front.
Protect the next crossing
Scout the coast and escort transports. A fleet or bomber strike can weaken defenses before your troops arrive.
Consolidate, then push again
Hold connected territory, repair key defenses and finish a landmass for its bonus. Watch your borders while you work toward 72%.
The controls you will use most
Left-click · attack
Click a bordering country. The attack uses the share selected by your attack slider. Click again to reinforce.
Right-click · give an order
Your land opens construction. Foreign land opens attacks and diplomacy. Water opens naval orders.
Scroll & drag · explore
Scroll to zoom and drag to pan. Zoom closer to read terrain and pick your landing.
Space · pause
Pause without covering the battlefield: pan, zoom and inspect. Space or Esc resumes. Enable Paused orders before a match to build and give orders while time is stopped. Opening this guide pauses a running single-player match; closing it restores your previous state.
Keep this handy
Open a topic for controls, timings and the detailed rules.
Learn to play & new matches
Choose Learn to play on the opening menu, read the introduction, then start the guided lesson. It pauses for explanations and teaches camera controls, construction and territory capture. Tutorial and free practice do not save matches or submit scores. Use Back to menu to exit. New match walks through mode, map and difficulty, country, and Ready; Random match lets you review and Shuffle before starting.
Left-click a bordering country
Invade 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 land
Build menu (or cancel a construction site).
Right-click enemy land
Send a transport, launch a missile, diplomacy, missile-command focus.
Right-click water
Send a ship from your nearest port, or a port on your own coast.
Click a ship · Shift-drag
Select ships. Right-click water to move them, an enemy port to blockade. Esc deselects.
Scroll · drag · Space
Zoom · pan · pause.
Saves and replays
Logged-in players get saves and replays on their account. The game autosaves every 30 seconds; Save & quit on the pause card (Space or ⏸) keeps a named copy and returns to the site; 💾 saves without leaving. Every finished match is kept as a replay. Games & replays on the start card lists them: Resume picks a match up where you stopped on any device, Watch plays a replay at 1–8× with a Take over button, and Download keeps a .state copy.
Hotkeys
Press a key, then click a tile. Each key is shown as a badge in the build menu. C city · F factory · P port · S SAM · H shield · M silo · K missile command · D bastion · G shore guns · B coastal battery · T Big Bertha · A airfield · O flight operations · U submarine base · Y troop command · E engineering command · R radar · L long-range radar · J jammer · I satellite site · N missile · Space pause · Esc cancel · [ ] previous / next song.
Economy slider
Shift growth between troops (1.6× at the end) and gold (1.6× at the other end).
Density
Troops ÷ 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.
Neutrals
Never 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.
Landmasses
Own 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.
Nuked
When 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 nations
When 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.
Collapse
A nation whose army hits zero while you're taking its land falls at once on the landmasses you're fighting on — the rest of its territory there is yours without painting it tile by tile. The same happens to anyone reduced to under 25 tiles. Holdings across water are not touched: the nation survives there as a rump state until someone lands on it.
Unclaimed land
Craters 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 speed
An attack that can afford many sweeps of its front advances up to 3× faster; one that can barely pay crawls.
Choose your approach and landing
Right-click the destination and choose Send troops here from an area you click, then select your source holding. A bordering source attacks by land; a sea crossing lands on the reachable coast nearest your destination click. Garrisons uses that area's troops; regular mode uses your global total. Regular mode has no reinforcement order.
Animated red rings show an invasion landing and yellow rings show reinforcement. Select your inbound transport's ring, then drag it to another reachable shore to preview and redirect the route. Its troops remain aboard and the ship turns from its current position. Each of your transports reserves a separate landing point; nearby free coast is selected when needed. A captured reinforcement shore becomes an invasion destination, while peace agreements still protect allies.
Bank victory or risk total conquest
At your first victory decision, scoring time freezes. Finalize to bank the available result, or confirm continuation and commit to total victory. Extra time coordinating islands or local armies does not reduce the score. Losing or abandoning forfeits the available victory; you cannot later bank a partial win. When only temporary allies remain, propose shared victory or confirm war. Permanent teammates stay allied.
Score uses your personal land percentage, difficulty, Fog (×1.25), Garrisons (×1.50), and the result multiplier, divided by frozen scoring minutes. Total victory uses ×2.00, ordinary and Team victory ×1.00, Shared victory ×0.70. Risky start has no extra bonus. Team territory determines a team win, but your numerical score uses your own land. Reports retain actual duration separately.
Compete through named seasons
The overall season board lists each player once. Qualifying total conquerors rank first by their cumulative Total-victory scores; other qualifying winners follow by their cumulative victory scores. New seasons begin with a blank board. Lifetime qualifying wins, nation unlocks and career achievements carry forward, and completed-season trophies remain on profiles. Assisted settings keep their class boards.
A competitive attempt belongs to the season in which it begins. Saving preserves the attempt, checkpoint and victory commitment. Taking over a replay or reloading an already completed attempt is practice and earns no competitive score, qualifying win or career award. Start from the beginning for a new competitive attempt.