General RulesEach turn is a year in-game. You direct city production, research, and military units, and may provide as much detail as you like. Turns last for a week, or until everyone has made their choices, whichever comes first.
Order of Events on Turn
Start Turn
(0. Any tributary arrangements are conducted, unit move is reset etc.)
1. Pick projects for turn.
2. Allocate labour for turn.
3. Set luxuries to be consumed on turn.
Mid-Turn
4. Work land, buildings etc. Goods generated/consumed, work done.
5. Taxation of settlement. (req. Trade)
6. Research is compiled for the turn. Breakthrough checks made.
7. Any work performed on projects (construction etc) is done. Project completion is checked.
8. Any soldiers are paid. (req. Trade)
9. Food is consumed.
10. Food is wasted/assigned for use as a luxury.
11. Completed upgrades/buildings are created (effects thus not calculated this turn).
12. Any conscripted units are recruited. Unit equipping takes place.
13. All unit-related actions take place (raiding etc).
End Turn
13. Morale for the next turn is calculated. (All next turn's calculations based on this morale.)
14. Growth is calculated.
15. Any perishables (food, spirituality etc) are destroyed if insufficient storage.
16. Population growth takes place. (Pop. number is updated.)
17. Labour available for the next turn is calculated.
Each 1000 people generate 1 point of labour and consume 1 food. There is a chance of bonus labour in a turn, but it comes with a bonus food cost. Labor points may be used to work the terrain surrounding your city, producing resources, or used in the city to build or staff buildings. The primary resources are food, wood, and stone, along with various ores. Other resources exist, but you won't know about them at the beginning of the game.
Your city is surrounded by 20 tiles of varying terrain types. Rivers and special resources (like ores, luxury foods, or magical reagents) can be fonud in some tiles. Each tile can be fully worked by one labor point, providing the appropriate resources for the terrain type and any upgrades there.
Labor may also be spent on construction (in or out of the city) or on manning buildings.
All resources but food can be easily stored in your city and used later - but they can also be used in the same turn they are produced. Excess food is wasted unless you have a granary or some other way of storing it.
Bonus labour can be generated by 'spending' units of slaves or beasts of burden (horses), but beasts of burden are only half as effective as slaves at doing work - 2 units must be spent to produce 1 labour.
Some buildings are made in the city itself, like a smithy, library, or shrine. Some of these have modest staffing requirements and provide a constant benefit. A generic shrine, for instance, produces the 'spirituality' luxury, which helps raise Morale. Others allow new types of labor to be performed in the city. A smithy allows ores to be processed, for instance, and a hall of learning allows labor to be spent on research.
You may also construct terrain upgrades. These generally increase the resource output of the tile they are built in. Plains, for instance, can be irrigated to raise their food output from two to three. Most upgrades are mutually exclusive - you can't build a quarry and irrigation in the same tile - but a few, like watermills, are 'free'.
The attitude of your citizens is very important! The happier your people are, the more immigrants you attract and the faster your population grows. What's more, at very high and low morale, their productivity is affected. Morale ranges from one to ten, with a base of five, and can be adjusted by many factors. The effects of morale are as follows:
Morale:yearly population growth
1:-4%, -30% production
2:-2%, -20% production
3:0, -10% production
4:2%
5:4%
6:5%
7:6%
8:7%, +10% production
9:8%, +10% production
10:10%, +20% production
Luxuries can usually be consumed for a morale bonus. Each luxury generates 10 luxury points per unit consumed (to a maximum equal to the amount of labour in the city). The final luxury point total provides a morale bonus to the city equal to the number of luxury points divided by the amount of labour (rounded down).
Rule of thumb: 1 unit of luxuries will keep 10,000 people happy.
Food can also be consumed as a luxury good, but only grants 2 luxury points per unit.
The most common 'luxury' good is clothing, available by refining wool produced by hills. Your people can scrounge for furs and such to keep themselves dressed, but they're happier if they don't have to.
Every civilization has a few citizens with unusual skills and aptitudes. They may be great military leaders, ingenious engineers, wise sages, or any number of other things. Leaders can provide bonuses to appropriate activities - a sage can lead research efforts in your hall of learning to speed your research, for instance. Possibly more important, however, many buildings cannot be built or operated at all unless you have an appropriate leader available. Without a skilled alchemist, for example, you can't build an alchemist's lab, and you won't be able to do much with it if he's busy elsewhere. Other structures only require a leader to be built - building a huge castle requires a skilled engineer, but once it's done he can move on to other things.
Leaders of the same class have the same basic abilities, but each also has their own special ability. You may not initially know what this ability is, however; it must be discovered either by putting the leader in an appropriate situation or through a random event. Alduf the Sage might be a brilliant teacher of magic, giving bonuses to your wizards, but you might not know it if you never put him in charge of a magical college.
As noted earlier, each 1000 people consume 1 food a turn. If extra food is available, it provides morale bonuses - each unit of excess food generates 2 luxury points.
Famine can easily be disastrous. If there is not enough food, your city's population drops by 1000 every turn and morale is reduced by two until the situation is resolved.
Initially, your people don't use money much. This changes once you research Trade. Money is used mostly for upkeep of military units and for trading. Each 2000 people produce 1 gold in tax income, and each military unit requires 1 gold in upkeep costs. Before trade is researched, you may only support three military units.
Research points are produced primarily with labor spent at the Hall of Learning. You may tell your researchers what you want them to work on, but they may surprise you from time to time. Plus, there is a large random component to research speed, so don't assume much.
The 20 tiles surrounding your city are available for production, but tiles being used for production may need to be protected. Enemies can keep you from working tiles, and may also destroy improvements in them. Units in your city may be ordered to defend terrain tiles, or not, as you prefer. Walls improve the strength of your units when they're defending any tile they enclose, but are of no use outside them.
Your tiles may be referred to by number as follows: The tile directly above your city is tile 1, and the remainder of the inner ring is numbered 2 through 8 clockwise. The northmost tile is letter A, and the rest of the outer ring is lettered B through L clockwise.
Civilizations with an appropriate technology can produce settler units by spending 5 labor, 5 food, and 5 wood. This also reduces the city's population by 5,000. Settlers move like military units, and can be expended to produce a colony or town, depending on the technology used.
Colonies take 10 money in startup costs, and represent relatively small settlements dependent on their parent city for most production. They grow slowly, and require steady upkeep costs (2 money a turn for starting colonies), but send resources back to their parent civilization based on their location. Colonies with little or no farmland may require steady food shipments, as well. Colonies have no ability to raise military units, and rely on their parent city for protection.
Towns are larger and more independent. Essentially a smaller city, the number of towns a civilization can have is sharply limited. Towns may have another player governing them. Towns always share money and technology with the rest of their civilization, but resource trading is at the discretion of the player or players involved. Migrants may be sent from cities to towns and back, as well.
Exploration of the unknown is dangerous and lucrative. Exploration of new territories can only be done once and has a good chance of uncovering several boons for the successful party in the form of resource deposits, travelling merchants or villages and communities to raid/trade with/enslave. It also risks running into bandits, so exploration should only be accomplished by military units. If an exploring unit is killed by bandits, no further boons will be discovered, but there is a small chance that new villages or bonuses will appear in a territory on new turns.
Exploration of a new territory takes six times (three times with an explorer) the movement cost of moving from the previous territory to the new one, as time is spent thoroughly combing the location. A territory 100 LI distant from the capital will thus take 600/300 LI's worth of movement allowance to explore, plus an additional 100 LI if the unit returns to the capital after exploration is completed. Moving through that territory again in the future will only cost the standard 100 LI.
If the explorer were to then explore the region another 100 LI beyond the first territory, the unit would spend 100 LI getting to the first territory, 600/300 LI exploring the second territory, then 200 LI in returning to the capital. As units explore further and further away from their origin city, it is possible for them to take more than a year to successfully complete the exploration and then return home.
Raiding villages is initially profitable, as most villages have a few units of goods and food in storage when you discover them, however one or two raids can exhaust these resources quickly. Sacking a village will net the aggressor an extra 2 wood and 1 stone, at the cost of destroying the village entirely. Enslaving the village will get 1 unit of slaves instead (which will be 'used up' for bonus labour in cities) and will also destroy the village. Any goods remaining in a village's stores will 'drop' into the territory on destruction and can be looted by anyone. This is fortunate as raiders may have to make several trips back and forth to successfully loot everything in a territory. If left alone, there is a 50% chance each turn that a village will restock its supplies with one of the goods produced by the territory's dominant terrain type (e.g. in hilly territories, food or wool).
Remember that units have a limited looting capacity. Equipment such as backpacks can enhance this, and sending multiple units to loot a region will allow you to commit more raids. Raiding, sacking, slavery and crucifixion all cost a unit movement equivalent to marching 100 LI.
Communities are closely-knit groups of villages that band together for protection and survival. They always produce goods on their turn equal to their size (to a maximum of 3). Sacking or enslaving communities will not destroy them automatically, but will reduce their size by 1. Sacking a community yields 4 wood and 2 stone, and enslaving it yields 3 units of slaves. Communities very slowly regrow over time.
Very fortunately for raiders, villages do not possess any defences (or at any rate, any defences capable of fighting off a hundred armed soldiers) and can be pillaged at will. Communities can produce and support their own units in response to attacks. These are set to patrol the territory and will fight any raiders that come into the region.
For those looking to produce their own dark empires, be aware that your raids and other depredations will make villages and communities hate you for what you have done. They will also fear you for your actions, and if they fear you enough (and more than they hate you) they will beg you to take them as tributaries rather than wipe them out completely. Crucifixion is an excellent way of inspiring fear and hatred (more fear than hatred) in a populace without significantly decreasing their numbers, although repeatedly raiding them will achieve much the same effect.
Tributary villages will provide tribute to their masters whenever their stores reach their full capacity, so raiding masters may have difficulties with the patience this requires (full capacity may take as long as ten turns to achieve). Tributary communities will also provide more regular tribute once their stores are full but as an added benefit will produce 1 wealth in taxes each turn (if their masters have the Trading tech). Each turn they remain under the control of a specific master, tributaries slowly accrue respect for their overlords.
Regardless of whether villages and communities are owned, the level of fear, love and hatred they feel for a civilisation will decrease over time (fear faster than hate and love). If tributary states hate their masters far more than they fear or respect them, they may revolt and become neutral again.
Sufficient respect can also win over the loyalty of villages and communities. This function has not yet been scripted in, but will relate to trading and diplomacy.
CombatThere are eight combat statistics that units use:
A/D/M/N/R/S/F/H/L
0/0/1/0/1/0/1/3/2
Attack is pretty self-explanatory; the ability to penetrate the enemy's defences.
Defense is equally self-explanatory; the ability to resist physical insult.
Movement is again simple enough; the relative movement speed of a unit. Infantry have 1 move, cavalry (usually) have 2.
Nerve represents the steel of a unit; how far they are willing to fight before making a retreat. Conscripts will run screaming after the first blow, trained soldiers may very well fight to the bitter end.
Range defines the range of weaponry the unit has. A unit with a range advantage (such as archers or spearmen) over an opposing unit will always try to retreat to a favourable position rather than duke it out from standing.
Stealth - All warfare is based on deception. Stealth is both a unit's capacity to commit deception and its capacity to perceive it. Even conscripts can (if conditions are fortunate enough) launch a surprise attack, but trained units and veterans have a particular eye for underhanded tactics. On a surprise attack, units automatically hit and deal a bonus 50% damage.
Force represents the unit's ability to deal out damage on a hit. Steel-tipped arrows, jagged blades, anything that wrecks and ruins a foe regardless of its ability to actually hit them.
Health is a unit's ability to survive physical insult. Once this is out, the unit is completely destroyed and any survivors flee, never to be seen again.
Loot is a unit's carrying capacity, rather valuable for looters ferrying goods back from hauls but also for units sent out to trade with foreign parties.
During combat, units can optionally be led by one of your Leaders (potentially risking the Leader). This may give advantages to the units in the field.
Units gain experience from fighting (more experience against equal or greater opponents) and may gain stat bonuses as a result. Only deadly battle counts for this sort of experience; training can improve stats as well, but costs the player resources instead of lives due to its (relatively) non-lethal status.
Attack, Defence, Nerve, Stealth, Force and Health can all be levelled up (at random) as units learn new tricks to killing people and staying alive and become hard enough to press through to the bitter end and shrug off more pain than their lessers before giving in. Mobility, Range and Loot require better equipment or else some sort of terrible enchantment to improve.
Veteran advantages are independent of the equipment they are bundled with, so it is possible for a highly experienced team of spearmen to ruthlessly slaughter a team of rookie knights in platemail armour. It is equally possible to take the weapons and armour from said knights and equip the veterans with them, producing a far deadlier fighting force.
Military units are drafted directly from the population. The simplest unit is a battallion of 100 conscripted citizens. For humans, they will have base stats of 0/0/1/0/1/0/1/3/2; other races may have special bonuses. Thereafter, units will only increase their stats through battlefield experience or by being equipped with weapons, armour, mounts or training. These will have to be produced by the city to equip them.
The simplest weapon is the wooden spear, which costs 1 wood and 2 labour to produce, raising attack by 1.
The simplest armour is the wooden shield, which also costs 1 wood and 2 labour to produce, raising defense by 1.
(Military workshops halve the production speed of both.)
Weapons
Wooden spear
+1 attack
1 wood, 2 labour to produce
Wooden javelin
+0 attack, +1 range
1 wood, 2 labour to produce
Armour
Wooden shield
+1 defence
1 wood, 2 labour to produce
Other
Backpacks
+1 loot
1 leather, 1 labour to produce
OtherTaken from Age of Restoration
Construction
Build stone walls, quarries, granary
Animal Taming
Build Pasture, Horse Farms
Horseback Riding
Build Stables, Horsemen
Farming
Build irrigation
Clear forest (3 labour)
Mining
Requires construction
Build mines
Fishing
Build fishing villages
Slavery
Build labour camps
Engineering
Requires construction
Build watermill
Build fortress (with Engineer)
Metalworking
Requires mining
Build smithy
Archery
Build hunter's camp
Build archery units
Literacy
Build library
Trade
Enables money
Build marketplace
Throwing Weaponry
Construct hunting camps
Construct javelins (+0 att, +1 range)
Druidic Magic
Attune: Earth
Construct Stone Circle
Also taken from Age of Restoration
Hall of Learning
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
No tech required
Allows up to three labor to be spent on research
Stables
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
Horseback riding
Allows production of mounted units
Dockyard
3 wood, 3 labor
Sailing
Allows production of ships
Granary
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
Construction
Allows storage of up to 20 food
Shrine
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
No tech required
+1 Spirituality (luxury)
Tombs (Ceremonial Burial)
2 wood or stone, 2 labour
+1 Spirituality (luxury)
Marketplace
2 wood or stone, 3 labor
Trade
+50% tax income
Library
3 wood or stone, 4 labor
Literacy
Requires Hall of Learning
Increases max researchers to five, unlocks more advanced technology
Military workshops
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
No tech required
Doubles production speed of weapons and armor (Normally 2 labor for each)
Clothier's workshops
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
No tech required
Doubles production speed of clothing (Normally 1 labor for each)
Military school:
2 stone or wood, 4 labor
No tech required
Requires General to build and operate
Train up to 2 units/turn
Alchemist's lab
2 stone or wood, 4 labor
Glass
Requires Alchemist to build and operate
Provides research with no labor
Mechanic's workshop
1 wood, 1 stone, 1 wood or stone, 6 labor
No tech required
Requires engineer to build and operate
+33% to all construction
Watchtower
2 stone, 3 labor
Construction
Requires engineer to build
+1 surprise to defenders within city radius
Stone Circle
(Attune: Earth)
2 stone, 3 labour
Halves time it takes to irrigate land (1 labour instead of 2)
I am patently just ripping Vanigo off by this point.
Plains (Yellow)
2 food
Hills (Brown)
1 food, 1 wool
Forest (Green)
1 food, 1 wood
Mountains/Cavern (Grey)
1 stone
Ocean/lake (Blue)
2 food
Tundra (White)
1 food
River (Blue line)
+1 food
Terrain improvements (and technology required)
Irrigation (Farming)
Plains or hills
Requires river or lake present or adjacent
no resources, 2 labor
+1 food
Quarry (Construction)
Hills or mountains
no resources, 2 labor
+1 stone
Pasture (Animal taming)
Hills
1 wood, 3 labor
+1 food OR +1 wool
Horse Farm (Animal Taming)
Plains
1 wood or stone, 1 horses, 2 labour
+1 horses
Labour Camp (Slavery)
Any
1 wood or stone, 1 slaves, 2 labour
+1 slaves
Woodcutting village
Forest
2 wood or stone, 2 labor
+1 wood
Fishing village (Fishing)
Ocean/Lake
Requires land adjacent
2 wood, 2 labor
+1 food
Mine (Mining)
Mountains or hills
Requires ore present
1 wood, 3 labor
Production depends on ore type
Palisade
Any land, including city tile
2 wood, 2 labor
+1 defense to defenders within wall
Stone wall (Construction)
Any land, including city tile
3 stone, 3 labor
+2 defense to defenders within wall
Hunting Camp (Throwing Weapons or Archery)
Forests or Swamps
2 wood or stone, 2 labour
+1 food, +1 leather