Found a city on untouched land and grow it into a castle-crowned realm.
Start by placing your Town Hall anywhere on dry land. It's free.
More towns: build another Town Hall (Town tab) inside your territory to found a new town with its own land and roads. It's still part of your city: one treasury, one population, one army.
Roads: everything must sit next to a road linked back to the Town Hall. Cut a road and the buildings beyond it stop working.
Gather by hand: click trees, rocks, ore and berry bushes.
Build gatherers next to resources: Lumber Camps chop trees, Quarries cut rock, Mines dig iron & gold, Forager Huts pick berries. Their villagers walk out, harvest and carry it home.
Villagers need housing and eat food. Idle villagers are assigned to buildings automatically. If food runs out, people leave.
Landscape Alter (L): turn empty tiles in your territory into grass, dirt, sand or water. Water can't be built on and slows anyone wading through it, so a moat holds attackers back.
Harvested-out resources disappear, then pop back up on or near the same spot a while later. Ore takes the longest.
Storehouses raise your storage cap. Markets earn gold, Bakeries turn wood into food.
Boosters: Wells add a villager to nearby homes, Stables speed up nearby gatherers, Windmills double nearby farms, and Ranger's Tents make resources regrow twice as fast.
Nations: three rival cities grow on their own. Every city claims the land around its buildings; press T to see the borders. Building on someone else's land declares war on them.
Trade (B): swap any 4 of one resource for 1 of another (3 for 1 with a working Market), or offer other cities any mix of resources for any mix of theirs. They accept if it's worth it to them, and they'll send you offers of their own.
Multiplayer: when founding a city, set any rival to Player to open a party. Share the 6-character code; friends choose Join game on the title screen, enter it, and you accept or deny each request. Your browser runs the world, so keep its tab open.
Diplomacy (N): declare war, offer peace, send gifts or form alliances. Allies join each other's wars.
War: Keeps and Castles train knights and shoot arrows, Town Halls raise militia, Markets hire mercenaries, Churches heal and Statues inspire your soldiers. Walls soak up attacks. Destroy a rival's Town Hall to conquer it. Beat Brutal rivals to unlock Smart army orders: your army defends while enemies march on you, then strikes their Town Halls. Lose yours and your town falls.
Goal: build a Castle, or conquer every rival.
Drag or WASD to pan · Scroll to zoom · Right-click / Esc cancels · X demolish · L landscape · P or Esc pause menu · T territory · N nations · B trade · F fullscreen