How to Play
The goal
Every hex is a tiny state, and you swallow your rivals until one remains. You win by being the last player still holding a capital — or seize 75% of the board and you're offered an instant victory.
Your turn
Move and place units, then press End Turn to hand play to the AI. When the board returns to you, do it again.
- Inspect — tap any hex to see what's on it.
- Place — tap one of your regions to open the buy bar, pick a unit or castle, then tap a tile to drop it.
- Move — tap your unit, then a destination tile.
- Cancel a buy — tap the highlighted button again, or the Cancel chip.
On a keyboard, you never need the buy bar: 1–4 grab a unit and 5 a castle, then click the tile to drop it. WASD or the arrow keys move the map, and Q/E or -/= zoom out and in.
Each connected group of hexes is a region, ruled by a Capital that holds its gold. Regions spend separately — see Economy.
Units
Four soldiers, each stronger, pricier and hungrier than the last. Strength is used both to attack and to defend; upkeep is paid every turn from the region's purse.
Your cheapest soldier. Clears trees, claims open land and holds a light line — but any real defender stops it cold.
A dependable frontline. Overruns lone peasants and unguarded capitals.
Cracks castles and spearman lines. The upkeep starts to bite.
Almost unstoppable — strength 4 breaks nearly anything. But 54 gold a turn will bankrupt a small region in a heartbeat.
Merge to upgrade: move a unit onto a friendly one and their tiers add up — Peasant + Peasant = Spearman, Peasant + Spearman = Knight, and so on. The total can't pass Tier 4 (Baron).
Buildings & terrain
A region's seat and treasury. Break a region into pieces — or capture the capital hex itself — and any piece left without the original capital grows a fresh one with an empty treasury (a leftover single hex gets none at all). Splitting an enemy region is how you wipe out their savings.
A cheap, permanent guard. Shields itself and every adjacent friendly hex at strength 2, and costs nothing to keep. Can't be walked over.
Inland tree. Sprouts on an empty hex ringed by three or more pines, and earns no gold on the hex it sits on.
Coastal tree. Creeps along the shoreline from a single neighbour. Also earns no gold.
A fallen unit, left when a region can't pay its upkeep. At the end of the round every grave grows into a pine.
Clear any tree or grave by moving a unit onto it — that spends the unit's action for the turn.
Economy
Income. At the start of your turn, each region earns 1 gold for every hex it holds that has no tree on it. Capitals, castles, units and graves all count — only pines and palms earn nothing.
Separate purses. Every region keeps its own treasury, and gold can't cross between them. One big connected territory is worth far more than the same hexes scattered apart.
Upkeep. Units drain gold every turn — Peasant 2, Spearman 6, Knight 18, Baron 54 — paid from their region's purse.
Combat & defense
Capturing. You take a hex only when your unit's strength is strictly greater than that hex's defense. A tie is not enough.
Defense. A hex is defended at the highest strength among the defender on it and any adjacent hex of the same owner. Protection reaches one hex out, and only the strongest defender counts — two side by side don't add up.
Open ground. An undefended hex has defense 0, so even a Peasant can take it.
Rivers. A river adds +1 defense to a hex when every approach to it crosses water — but only where a defender already stands. Rivers never block movement.