Empires & Discovery
Raise a commonwealth. Unlock the secrets of the earth.Defend the frontier, from the first bow to the atomic age.
Existing colonies continue into the age of discovery.
Choose any available discovery. Prerequisites follow the branches from left to right. Switching preserves progress; unused research stays banked. Towns generate 3 + half your population in research each turn. Staffed, connected libraries and universities add more.
Deposit locations are fixed when the world is created. Technology reveals them only on land you have explored.
Found a colony: select your Settler and choose Found settlement. Workers must stand on a building’s footprint or on an edge-adjacent tile. Diagonal contact does not count. Ordinary buildings need a Town Hall or Storehouse within 12 tiles; infrastructure and storehouses can establish remote outposts.
Production and storage: outputs reach your empire only through roads, rails, harbors, or connected completed building footprints to a Town Hall/Storehouse. Dense buildings contain streets: adjacent roads or rails determine their quality; otherwise the highest researched standard applies. Disconnected buildings deliver nothing and consume no inputs. Stored resources are shared empire-wide, so any Worker may use them. A one-tile Storehouse accepts local deliveries and adds 150 capacity per resource. The top bar shows stock / capacity.
Freight: roads carry 16 units/turn, rails 72, Harbors 36, and Electric Ports 96. Sea lanes carry 192. Harbors must border water; two harbors on the same connected body of water join their road networks automatically. Power research unlocks the Electric Port upgrade. Inputs, outputs, and research couriers share throughput; production divides into recipe batches and routes around congestion when another reasonably quick path is available. Daily hauling time is 12: road tiles cost 1, rail tiles 1/3, water tiles 1/2; harbors cost 1. Building footprint size counts toward travel time. Detours cannot exceed 1.75 times the fastest route plus 2. Longer routes need nearer storage or better transport; cargo is not queued for future turns.
Support buildings: build Supply Posts beside transport lines (+12 capacity within 4 tiles). Combustion unlocks Truck Stops (+32 within 5); Railways unlocks Rail Depots (+64 to rails within 5). The two strongest nearby compatible posts apply. Stores near remote resources shorten journeys. Press L for last-turn utilization; inspect a producer to see actual delivered output and any bottleneck, missing input, or full storage.
Research: press R to open the Academy. Select an available project; prerequisites unlock later discoveries, and switching preserves progress. Libraries/universities need labor and a supply route. Horses, sulfur, coal, oil, and uranium appear only after their technology is discovered and their tile is explored. Extractors must sit on the matching deposit.
Roads and rails: normal land movement costs terrain points, roads cost 1/2, and rails cost 1/6 per tile entered. Research Railways, select Railroad, and click an existing road while a Worker is adjacent. Rail and port upgrades retain the old location and ID.
Navy: research Seamanship and build a coastal Harbor. Muster a War Cutter or Troop Transport; later technologies unlock Ironclads and Destroyers. Ships launch into adjacent water and cannot enter land. Select a coastal land unit and Board transport to embark; select the ship and Unload, then click adjacent land. A transport carries four units; passengers are lost if the ship sinks. Settlers can establish new coastal towns after landing.
Maintenance: Jobs (J) lists periodic building bills and per-turn unit upkeep. Unpaid workplace maintenance blocks production and appears on the map. Basic farms, lumber camps and mines remain maintenance-free. Housing and transport remain usable during shortages. Construction, output, upkeep and research values can be tuned in balance.json; see BALANCE_GUIDE.md.
Carriers and flight range: Naval Aviation unlocks carriers at harbors. Fly onto a carrier to land in one of four berths. Docked aircraft sail with it; select them through the carrier flight-deck buttons to launch. Return to base considers free carrier berths. Fighters scramble from carriers; docked planes are lost if their ship sinks. Green tiles allow flying, one strike, and landing; gold allows flying and landing only; red permits reaching the tile but leaves no safe return. Estimates use remaining movement and current landing sites; moving a carrier may change the safe area. The dashed fighter outline shows interception range.
Endgame: Advanced Computing, Orbital Engineering, Quantum Science and Interstellar Communication extend research beyond Radio Astronomy. Their research facilities consume power and materials. Interstellar Communication unlocks the final Beacon.
Aircraft: Aviation unlocks Airstrips, Fighter Squadrons and Bomber Wings. Planes cross every terrain, strike for 2 movement points, and keep their remaining movement to return. Every aircraft must end every turn on a completed friendly Airstrip or it is lost. Use Return to base; the End Turn warning can return all aircraft that still have enough movement. Aircraft do not automatically continue routes next turn.
Air defense: a supplied fighter stationed on an airstrip automatically scrambles once per enemy phase to protect targets within 5 tiles. Interception damages the attacker and reduces a surviving incoming strike to 35% damage. Select the fighter to see its defense boundary. Airborne or unfueled fighters cannot scramble. Nearby frontier camps can field bombers after you discover Aviation. Ground weapons cannot attack aircraft; fighters can.
Visual key: science uses blue/book signs, industry copper/gears, logistics teal/crates, military red/shields, housing terracotta/houses, and food production green/wheat. Buildings retain their unique equipment and silhouettes. Units have light and dark contour outlines, role-colored clothing, and pale-blue friendly or coral enemy pennants. Roads have dark edging and pale stone centers; railways show sleepers and metal tracks.
Catalogs: Build (B) opens a searchable construction book with categories and a Builder selector. Choose a plan to return to map placement. Muster (M) opens a separate recruitment screen with service filters, costs, stats, and requirements. It stays open for repeated recruitment. Negative resource changes are red.
Feedback: Muster confirms each recruitment with its location. Sound on/off above the map toggles generated retro tones and remembers your preference. Battles show damage and pixel debris; enemy attacks focus the camera on the target. Skip animation releases End Turn immediately. Battle report lists recent encounters and can locate them. Dismiss clears the notification.
Combat: land armies recruit at Barracks. Right-click a visible enemy or choose Attack. Check the damage preview and weapon range first. Melee land units with range 1 can attack all eight neighboring tiles; diagonal attacks cannot cross two impassable corners. Retaliation uses the same rule. Ranged weapons retain their existing Manhattan range. Mountains block ground fire; hills and forests improve defense. Fortify with F and rest to heal. Units need food; powered vehicles need fuel. Army capacity is 4 + half your population. Muster lets you select a preferred harbor, barracks, or airstrip.
Jobs: press J for staffing and production reports. Every completed producer or research building needs one colonist, separate from map Worker units. Priority jobs are filled before Automatic jobs; ties use construction order. Pause a job to free its colonist. Changes affect next-turn production and persist in saves. Map badges: L means no labor, P paused, and ! means a production problem. Hover for its reason. Staffing and connections are current; other warnings report last-turn results.
Worlds: choose a landscape and suggested seed in New, or generate a random seed. Reusing the same seed and landscape reproduces the terrain. Lake Country, Highland Frontier, Sunlands and Verdant Coast add new climate, elevation and river patterns; Classic keeps the original maps. Existing saves retain their terrain.
Population: click Growth → Details. After production and food consumption, keep food above twice your population and leave housing space for three consecutive turns to gain a colonist. Missing either condition resets progress. Starvation loses one colonist.
The Cinder League: another expedition develops its own connected colony, research, resources and army locally in your browser. Discover it through exploration, then check Foreign Affairs. It grants ten turns after contact and at least 45 turns from arrival before declaring war. Attacking starts war immediately. Destroy its Town Hall to force surrender.
Legacies: reach 18 population and finish the Grand Assembly; defeat three camps; or power a fully supplied Frontier Beacon for 8 consecutive turns. You may complete all three. Watch food consumption as your colony and army grow.
Controls: drag / WASD / arrows pan, scroll zooms, Home centers the colony. Click units repeatedly to cycle a stack; Alt-click to inspect the building beneath. Left-click only selects or inspects unless you chose a placement, attack, or unloading action in the panel. The selected unit pulses and the map banner describes the current controls. Right-click moves or attacks. Enter ends a turn; Escape cancels an order. R opens research, L shows freight, F fortifies, and F2 opens sandbox tools. Saves remain local to this browser.
Testing tools mark this world as a sandbox. Revealing terrain does not unlock hidden deposits; discover their technologies too.
Every aircraft must finish the turn on a completed friendly airstrip or a carrier with a free deck berth. These aircraft will be lost:
Choose a Builder and a plan, then place it on the map beside that Worker.
Choose a recruitment site and compare units, costs, and capabilities.
Choose a unit to recruit.
Priority jobs are filled first, then Automatic jobs in construction order. Pause a workplace to release its colonist; prioritize another to transfer labor. Changes affect the next turn. Roads, housing, storage and support posts need no labor. Growth adds workers; starvation removes them.
Map badges: L = no labor, P = paused, ! = production problem. Gold warnings report the last turn; red staffing and connection warnings reflect current orders. Select a workplace for its location and details.