How to Play

Maps

Every map is generated from its seed. Each type has its own ground and its own seating, for two to eight players, and every seat gets the same resources, landmarks, and distances. Maps grow with the number of players.

• Open Frontier: Wide plains with scattered groves and ponds; many ways to attack.
• River Crossings: Rivers split the land; hold the banks, and fight over the fords and bridges.
• Broken Highlands: Ridges and plateaus; you start in a basin, and ramps lead up to the high ground.
• Crossroads: Roads through dense forest meet at landmark hubs; control the junctions.
• Archipelago: Everyone starts on an island; sandbars and fords lead to the contested isles.
• Great River: A wide river braided around delta islands; armies wade from isle to isle.
• Lakeland: Lakes and marsh everywhere; armies squeeze over the land bridges between them.
• Desert Oases: Open sand and sandstone ridges; wood, water, and fruit gather at the oases, so hold them.
• Frozen Lakes: Snowbound taiga round frozen lakes; the ice bears no army, so cross at the fords and forest gaps.
• Random (unique): A one-off map with no symmetry: rivers, lakes, ridges, and woods anywhere, starts placed where the measures are fair. Its seats are not copies of each other, so its fairness is measured rather than exact. About half its maps are temperate, a quarter wintry, and a quarter desert, each with ground to match.

Climates

• Temperate: grass, woods, lakes, and rivers: most maps.
• Winter: snow and taiga. Frozen lakes and rivers are ice that no army crosses, like deep water; the frosted rims and fords can be waded. Berries are rosehips at the forest edges, deer are reindeer.
• Desert: sand, sandstone, and dry wadis, with little water: wood, fruit (prickly pear), and water gather at the oases, so they are worth holding. Deer are gazelles.
• Choosing one: Desert Oases and Frozen Lakes are made for their climate. The other map types can be drawn in another climate as a look (the ground stays the same), and the Random map takes its climate from its seed.

Ground

• Open ground: walk and build; beaches, roads, plazas, and high ground are open ground too.
• Shallows: fords, sandbars, and bridges: armies wade across, but nothing can be built on them.
• Marsh: reeds and mud: walk through, but no building.
• Deep water, rock, cliffs: block movement and building; ramps lead up through cliffs.
• Dense woods: block until cut: felling the edge trees opens the woods behind them.

Weather

With weather events on (Rare by default; Off, Rare, or Frequent when you set up a match or host a room), now and then a storm comes down in open country, always far from every Town Hall and about as far from each realm. Its look follows the climate: a tornado, a sandstorm or a blizzard; the rules are the same: a funnel, a rolling wall of dust, a spinning snow squall.

• Warning: with Storm warnings on, everyone hears of it and sees a dashed amber circle on the map and the minimap 25 seconds before it forms. With them off (the default) it comes unannounced: it gathers for 6 seconds, slow at first, and everyone is told the moment it forms.
• It hunts for 45–55 seconds, then fades: it goes after the nearest units (and wild animals) within 13 tiles, turning slowly, at 2.2 tiles a second: a little slower than infantry, far slower than Riders. Keep your units moving away, best sideways off its path; anything that stands still, works, or crawls (siege engines) gets caught. A small amber ring moves with it.
• Never into a base: it never comes within 19 tiles of a Town Hall or Fortress, so running home is safe. Luring it into an enemy army in the field works.
• Caught: units and wild animals that come within 1.6 tiles of its middle are lifted, spin in the air for 3 seconds, and are thrown out about 3.4 tiles away: about 30% of their health each time. Run and they recover; stand in its way and they die.
• Buildings it passes over lose 3% of their health a second, but never drop below 20%: a storm destroys nothing. Resources are untouched.
• How often: A storm about every 25 minutes, never in the first 12. Frequent: A storm about every 12 minutes, never in the first 8.