How to Play

Empires is a short auto-battler: you buy structures, your structures raise the troops, and the troops march and fight on their own. A match lasts at most 35 turns. Every number on this page comes from the game's engine.

One match

Empires is one match against the bot — the same kind the Empires Daily deals every day. Every rule below applies from the first turn; the match ends when an HQ falls, when one side holds the center long enough, when a Wonder stands long enough, or at the turn cap.

Your first turns

1. You start with 1 Infantry and 3 Settlers beside your HQ. Settlers never fight: each walks to a work post and stays there. You can also send a Settler further out to build: it stays where you sent it until you build next to it.
2. Buy a structure from the Command — 3 cards per offer, and a reroll costs 1 gold. It waits in your hand: select it, then place it on a highlighted tile beside one of your structures or Settlers (a Wonder only beside a Settler). You can't build where an enemy unit stands; your own units step aside, and if they have nowhere to go, the tile is refused. A Wonder can't touch an HQ, yours or the enemy's.
3. Houses provide housing and have no work posts. A Settler is born beside a House every 2 turns, on a shared schedule for your whole side. Before your first House, births happen at the HQ. Leave free ground beside a House for births. Other structures offer 2 work posts, except the HQ. Each working Settler earns 1 gold a turn.
4. Combat structures raise troops that march and fight on their own. There is no unit micro: choose where to build and the posture of your whole army — attack, hold the centre or defend.
5. End your turn. The bot plays, the turn resolves, and you repeat until the goal is met or the cap of 35 turns arrives.
6. A Settler with no post can clear a forest tile within build range for 1 gold. Forest never stops you from placing a structure — what clearing opens is a path for your ground troops.

Economy

Gold is the only resource, and what you don't spend carries over. Every turn pays 3 gold, plus 1 for each Settler at a post (up to 10 Settlers), plus 1 for each relic your troops picked up, plus interest: one more gold for every 5 you hold, up to 3. A Settler posted in a Granary or Ger Camp pays 1 more.

Population caps Settlers and troops together: every unit costs population — light troops the least, siege and heavy more, the Cataphract the most — and housing raises the cap. A structure that cannot raise its troop waits for room. Build on clear ground next to a Settler; leave space for troops and larger merged structures.

Merging structures

Merging is automatic: 3 identical structures at the same star level become one structure of the next level as soon as the last copy arrives — if the bigger footprint has room to land. No room, no fusion: the trio waits until a neighbour is sold or falls, and merges on your next purchase or sale. The merged structure grows — from one tile, 2×2 and then to 3×3 — up to 3★, and every level adds what the card is for: a harder-hitting troop, more population or more health, depending on the card. Merging also raises the troop count: a merged training structure puts out one troop per star each time it trains, and the cap on its troops grows with the copies it holds. Selling gives back 1 / 3 / 9 gold by star level, and can cost you a degree in that class of cards.

Cards also form class ladders: Infantry +1 attack for its troops · Ranged +1 range for its troops · Siege +1 range for its troops · Cavalry +3 HP for its troops · Air +1 move for its troops · Works +2 HP on every structure. Different cards of a class on the map close its steps; a closed step makes the class show up more in the Command and pays that bonus once per step. Sell the card that closed a step and the bonus goes with it.

Trade and Faith pay in the economy instead: each closed Trade step adds +1 gold per turn, and a closed Faith step adds +1 to every heal a troop already gets — it does not heal on its own.

Wonders

• Pyramid — Wonder: from 2★, keeping at least one standing for 7 consecutive turns wins. The count is checked after combat each turn. If none remain at the required grade, your counter resets.

The Wonders of the catalog planned

The catalog's Wonders are the two famous lists: the seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the seven New Wonders chosen by public vote. Each one belongs to the civilization of the place where it stands, and the ones with no civilization in the game are neutral. 1 of them can be built in a match today; the rest arrive with the new eras.

Civilizations

Every structure card has a class, and most also belong to one of 5 civilizations, listed below; neutral cards belong to none. Different cards of the same civilization on the map climb its ladder at 2 / 3 / 4 cards, and every step gives a bonus for the rest of the match. A step replaces the one below it rather than adding to it, and copies of the same card count once. Lose a card and the ladder can drop back.

• Greeks — 2: +2 HP on every structure you bought · 3: +4 HP on every structure you bought · 4: +6 HP on every structure you bought
  Cannon Foundry, Long Walls, Greek Fire, Hoplites, Cretan Archers
• Romans — 2: +1 attack for every troop · 3: +1 attack for every troop · 4: +2 attack for every troop
  Legion, Cataphracts, Praetorians, Theodosian Walls, Appian Way
• Mongols — 2: · 3: +1 move for every troop · +1 troop from every training structure · 4: +1 move for every troop · +2 troop from every training structure
  Siege Engineers, Ger Camp, Keshig, Horse Archers, Tumen, Yam, Xiongnu Horse Archers
• Song — 2: +1 gold per turn · 3: +2 gold per turn · 4: +3 gold per turn
  Wasp-Nest Rockets, Great Wall, House, Qin Crossbowmen
• Egyptians — 2: +1 HP on every structure you bought · 3: +1 troop from every training structure · +1 HP on every structure you bought · 4: +1 troop from every training structure · +2 HP on every structure you bought
  Pyramid, Granary, Temple of Amun, Medjay Post, Chariot Yard, Al-Azhar

Civilizations in the catalog planned

The catalog draws 12 civilizations. Each one is a place through time, the same land from its first era to its last. 5 of them play today; the others arrive with the new eras.

Eras of the Command

The Command opens in the first era of 3. Each era unlocks new cards and a bigger offer — 3 / 4 / 5 cards per turn, era by era. Advancing is a button in the shop and costs gold on the spot: 5 gold for the second era if you go on the first turn, dropping by 1 every turn down to a floor of 4. The third era only opens on turn 1, and by then its price already sits at its floor: 8 gold. Each era you reach also gives your HQ +5 HP. The offer already on the table does not change; the next roll comes from the new era.

Triples discover

Merge three copies of a card and the Command offers you 3 cards from the next era, free: pick one for your hand. If you do not pick, the first one comes to you at the end of the turn. At the top era the pick comes from that era.

The card pool

Every card comes from a pool the two players share: 18 / 13 / 9 copies of each card, era by era. Buying takes a copy out of the pool, and selling a structure or losing it puts its copies back — merging changes nothing, because a merged structure keeps every copy that went into it. The fewer copies left, the less often a card shows up, in both shops. Once you have a card at 3★, it stops showing up in your shop.

Trade and Faith cards are rarer: 3 copies of each, whatever the era.

Freezing the shop

Freezing is free and toggles on and off. A frozen offer is kept for your next turn instead of being rerolled, and the freeze then wears off. Rerolling unfreezes it, and an offer you have bought out is rolled again anyway.

Army posture

Your whole army follows a single posture. On Attack, the default, troops march on their own to the enemy Wonder if there is one on the board, otherwise to the enemy HQ, fighting whatever they meet. On Hold centre they march to the control point in the middle of the map and hold it; on Defend they guard a flag just in front of your own HQ. The posture is free, can be changed any time during your turn and applies at once to every troop, including those already on the board. Every enemy troop that dies within 3 tiles of one of your structures pays you +1 gold; while your army is on Defend, each of those deaths also takes 1 HP from the enemy HQ. On Defend, your HQ also fires at the nearest enemy troop within 2 tiles, for 3 damage. While an enemy Wonder's count is running, the whole army marches on it, whatever the posture. The wear never takes an HQ below 1 HP: someone has to go and finish it.

Combat

Troops act on their own, in four steps: hit whatever is already within reach (units before structures); otherwise chase a fighting enemy within a short radius; otherwise attack a structure within that radius, the HQ included; otherwise march on the enemy Wonder if there is one, then on the enemy HQ. With the army posture on Hold centre or Defend, troops march to that spot instead and hold it. Terrain defends: forest cuts the damage a unit takes, and stops ground troops. Some structures fight too: towers and cannons fire on their own, bunkers shield whatever stands next to them, and a minefield blows up under the first enemy to step beside it. A match ends when an HQ falls, when one side holds the center long enough or when a Wonder stands long enough; at the turn cap, whoever dealt more damage to the other's HQ wins — an even count, even with no damage on either side, is a draw.

The center is the third clock. From turn 5 the zone of 2 tiles around the center counts: whoever holds it collects 1 gold a turn, and holding it for 11 turns in a row wins the match. An enemy troop pauses the count only if it was already inside the zone when the fighting began and survived it; one that runs in during the fight does not.

Some troops hit certain kinds of target harder — the full bonus table is on the Counters page.

The turn from the inside

Your actions come first — buy, place, sell, reroll, set the army posture, send a Settler, advance the era — and the board moves when you end the turn. Then, in order: troops heal next to your structures, structures raise troops, Settlers arrive and take posts, towers and mines fire, and the troops act one by one, in an order that flips every turn. Each troop either moves or attacks in a turn, never both, so the side that closes the distance takes the first hit; a troop born this turn does nothing until the next. On the 32×32 map a troop with nothing in reach marches 5 tiles a turn. Settlers stop arriving at half your population cap (at most 10) — a House raises it. Every card costs 3 gold and your hand holds 10.

Chance & information

Two things are rolled. The map, once per match from a single seed — in the Empires Daily everyone gets the same one. And the shop's offer, every turn, weighted toward the class of cards you already own. Combat and marching are never rolled: the same position always plays out the same way.