How to Play

Step 1 — Create your Realm

When you sign up, you make three choices:

• A people (Mersan, Ashwin, Phlanixian, Slythe, or Cordelon) — each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and its own named troops. Pick whichever playstyle sounds fun; none is a wrong choice.
• An Elemental to worship (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, or Spirit) — picked separately from your people. This unlocks two bonus spells only your worshippers can cast.
• How you join the world — found your own Empire, join a random one, or join a friend's empire with their join code and password.

Every brand-new Realm gets new-realm protection window: nobody can attack, spy on, or steal from you for a while after you start. Use that window to build, not to pick fights — attacking or casting a spell at someone ends your own protection.

Step 2 — Build your economy

Your land is split across terrain types — Plains, Forest, Hills, Coastal, and Mountains. Different buildings need different terrain:

• Housing and Farms go anywhere — they house your peons / peasants and feed them.
• Markets and Roads (Plains) — income and attack.
• Gem Mines and City Walls (Hills) — gems and defense.
• Thieves' Guild and Woodmills (Forest) — thieves and cheaper buildings.
• Cleric Temples and Shipyards (Coastal) — clerics and boats.
• Mage Towers and Blacksmiths (Mountains) — wizards and cheaper troops.

Build Housing and Farms first so your peons / peasants have somewhere to live and eat, then branch into whichever buildings match the playstyle you want.

Step 3 — Grow your Military

Once karats are coming in, train troops any time — melee, ranged, or machine units, each with their own cost and strength. Troops you keep at home defend your realm; troops you send out attack someone else's. You also passively gain wizards, thieves, and clerics from the matching buildings each tick — no training needed for those.

Research (Science) is optional but worthwhile: it unlocks cheaper exploring, more peons / peasants capacity, faster building, and better magic resistance over time.

Step 4 — Use Magic and Thieves

Magic costs gems and needs wizards — scout a rival, buff yourself, or debuff an enemy. Success depends on how many wizards you have relative to your target. Your thieves run a separate system that needs them instead — steal resources, spy, or sabotage a rival, with a limited number of attempts that slowly refill over time. Both raise your profile when you succeed; thieves actions specifically build your Notoriety score.

Step 5 — Fight through Portals

You can't attack anyone directly. You have to open a portal first — it connects you to a random opposing empire roughly your own size, so you can't bully someone far smaller. You can have several portals open at once. Through a portal you can attack, spy, or steal against realms in that empire. Close it when you're done, or it auto-closes on its own after a couple of days.

Combat comes down to picking one of three approaches — Assault formation, Defense formation, or Machine formation — each with a favorable and unfavorable matchup against the others, like rock-paper-scissors, layered on top of raw troops strength.

Step 6 — Team up in an Empire

Your Empire is a group of realms sharing a name, banner, and message of the day. Everyone votes for a commander, who can edit the Empire's public identity. It's a light-touch social layer — coordinate with your fellow Empire members informally on who to help or watch out for.

Step 7 — Climb the rankings

Three leaderboards track different things: Acres (raw acreage), Networth (a blended economy score), and Notoriety (how much war and thieving you've done). There's no single "winner" — pick the board that matches how you like to play.

TL;DR

1. Create a realm (a people + an Elemental + an empire).
2. Build housing/farms, then specialize.
3. Train troops, let wizards/thieves/clerics accumulate passively.
4. Open a portal when you're ready to interact with another empire.
5. Check in a few times a day — the tick does the rest.