How To Play

DiplomacyRight-click a nation: 3-minute pact or lasting alliance. Nobody can attack, land on, bombard or nuke the other; allies' SAMs and ships defend each other and trade automatically. Bots accept more readily when you're stronger, when they're already at war, and when your reputation is good — and break pacts with soft partners once the neutrals are gone. Declaring war halves your growth for a while and costs reputation.
Allied aidRight-click an ally to send gold or troops (by land if you share a border, else by transport) or to request either from their surplus. Allies under attack ask you for help in the Diplomacy panel.
Air defenseSAM sites and ship SAMs engage missiles passing through their range — flight path, not just target — when the missile is aimed at their owner's or an ally's land, or their owner is at war with the launcher. 96% kill, 2.5 s reload: one site can stop two spaced missiles, not three together. Hover one of your SAM sites or ships to see your whole network (allies' too); enemy coverage isn't shown.
Coast & artilleryShore guns (14 tiles, rapid fire) sink transports and light ships; against armored hulls their damage is divided by 2 (destroyer), 3 (cruiser), 5 (battleship). Guns never fire on merchant ships. They fire at warships of nations you're in conflict with — attacks, bombardment, missiles or ship-to-ship fire in the last minute — plus any transport at all that comes within range (unless its owner is your ally or pact partner — sinking one starts hostilities), and any cruiser or battleship loitering in range. Nothing fires until the progress arc completes. Coastal batteries outrange a battleship's guns (34 tiles) and hit for 3 every 8 s. Both are knocked out while under bombardment, destroyed if overrun, and have hit points (shore guns 3, batteries 6): any armed ship of a nation you're fighting — or one your gun has fired on — shoots back with its main gun, and cruiser and battleship barrages target guns first. Big Bertha lobs an uninterceptable shell every 20 s at the nearest enemy building within 60 tiles — SAM sites, bastions and guns first — cratering and suppressing like a barrage. Ships hunt guns the way they hunt SAM sites, and a level II port's guns count as guns.
AirAirfield 600 gold, 90 s: hangar for 4 aircraft, bought from its right-click menu; spy planes need one within 150 tiles. Stealth fighter 350 gold: right-click → Fighter patrol here — a 25-tile circle for 10 minutes, then 2 minutes refueling. Untouchable by SAMs. Kills any enemy bomber or spy plane in its circle. Overlapping enemy patrols dogfight: every 3 s each fighter risks 1 HP — 85% if outnumbered, 60% otherwise. Recall from the Air panel in the sidebar, or right-click near the patrol; a recalled fighter takes parting shots while it escapes, lands, repairs 1 pip per 20 s, and flies again — or dies en route at 0 HP. Stealth bomber 450 gold: right-click → Bomber strike here — flies to the point and runs a 30-tile strip dropping 8 bombs, each 1/8 of a nuke, cratering and suppressing. Bombs are held over your own or allied ground and the run extends until all 8 have found enemy land. Ignores SAMs and guns; stopped only by fighters and shield domes (1 dome HP per bomb). Big Bertha, batteries, silos and shields shrug off a single bomb 30% of the time. Flight operations 400 gold, 60 s: buys aircraft (2 fighters and 1 bomber per field, keeping a 300-gold reserve), patrols your SAM belts, airfields, silos and guns, recalls fighters at 2 HP or when outnumbered, and strikes enemy targets that aren't under fighters or a dome. Toggle in the Air panel.
Shield generator900 gold, 150 s. A 12-tile dome that stops every missile aimed inside it — the SAMs shoot first, and whatever they miss the dome absorbs at 100% — at a cost of 2 of its 10 hit points per missile. A nuke landing nearby can't reach under the dome either — the ground inside is untouched and the dome takes a hit for it. It never decays; it dies to hits, to barrages (cruisers hunt it first), or to being overrun. Right-click it to repair at 25 gold per pip, one pip per 6 s (pauses for 15 s after each hit; never instant). Naval guns, barrages and Big Bertha pass through the dome, so a shielded strongpoint has to be taken by fleet or by land.
Missiles280 gold from a silo (20 s reload each). A hit craters a 20-tile radius, destroys buildings and kills the troops standing on the cratered ground: a quarter of a big area's garrison if the circle covers a quarter of it, all of a small island's if it covers the island. To get through a defended coast, bombard the SAMs with cruisers first, or salvo.
Engineering command450 gold, 60 s. Keeps up to four repair trucks. Whenever something repairable on your contiguous land is damaged — a shield generator, an airfield II's shield, a coastal battery, shore guns, Big Bertha, a port II's guns — a truck drives out over your own land, repairs one pip every 8 s at 15 gold a pip (keeping a 150-gold reserve), and drives back. Any repair — truck or manual — pauses for 15 s after the target takes a hit. Trucks are lost if the ground under them is captured, and they can't cross water.
Troop command400 gold, 90 s. Each center adds 10% to troop growth, stacking to four (+40%). With Garrisons on it also runs logistics: every 4 s it looks for areas of 40+ tiles that are threatened — bordering a nation it's fighting or a provoked neutral, or under attack — and brings the most threatened up toward 60% of the home area's density (bare areas under 20% get topped up to 20%), counting troops already in transit, one shipment per area per 20 s, never more than 15% of home per shipment and never below a 30% home reserve. Before a convoy sails it checks the route: hostile warships within 20 tiles of the path, subs it can see, and enemy guns at the landing. If the lane is contested it paradrops instead when a troop transport is in range; otherwise it holds the convoy and tells you — except when the destination is actually under attack, when it runs the lane with half the shipment. Toggle in the sidebar.
Command linksCommand buildings draw dashed links to what they control — orange from missile command to the silos in its 45-tile range, cyan from flight operations to airfields, green from troop command to nearby cities and ports — with a pulse running along each, like the gold supply lines between factories and cities.
Missile commandControls silos within 45 tiles and fires them at the most valuable targets of nations you're fighting, waiting to fire the full salvo a SAM site needs. Overlapping centers cut missile prices 15% each (max 45%). Right-click a nation to focus it; toggle in the sidebar.
TeamsPermanent alliances dealt round-robin; a team's combined land wins. Map colors tint toward the team color.
End game72% wins; you can keep playing. If only allies remain you choose between a shared victory proposal and war. 100% ends the match outright.
Music playerOn the site, the mixer gains a player: the site's music library for the start card and for matches, with ◀ ▮▮ ▶, In order / Shuffle / Loop one, and a checkbox per song to choose the rotation (one tick = just that song). Click a title to play it now; [ and ] skip. Victory and defeat stings duck the music; a #1 placement on the site has its own sting. The game's own generative score plays only when a list is empty or the game is played from a file.
MusicThe start card plays a written theme; the match plays a generative score that shifts sections every couple of minutes, never repeats exactly, and swells with percussion while you're under attack. Mixer has a Music slider and toggle.
LeaderboardEvery finished match is recorded in this browser: result, country, map, difficulty, modes, time, land, nations eliminated, peak troops and the seed (click it to replay that map). Score = land% × difficulty × mode bonus (fog 1.25, risky 1.15) × result ÷ minutes. Each class of match has its own board: Standard, Billionaire, Quick start, End game, Risky start, Instant build, No cap, Custom start, teams — and combinations like "Quick start + Instant build". The dropdown opens on a combined view — the top 3 of every class you've played, each with a "Play a random … match" button that sets that class up with a random map, difficulty, country and seed and starts immediately; pick a class from the dropdown for its full board. A match you restart or leave is recorded as Abandoned. Best time per map and difficulty is highlighted in gold.
Map seedThe seed on the start card decides the map, rivers, neutral borders and start positions. Restart keeps it, so you can retry the same opening; type a friend's seed to play their map; press New for a fresh one.
MapsGenerated: Continents, Land (lakes and rivers, no ocean), Large / Medium / Small islands, Atoll. Real: World, Europe, Americas, Africa, Asia, Middle East — real countries in place, big ones split into provinces.