How to play Citavon

1Getting started

From a new account to a city that runs on its own: signing up, the three screens, what to do in your first hour, and the clock the whole world keeps.

Signing up

Citavon has accounts and lords. Your account is one email address and one password. A lord is a player in the world, with cities, troops and heroes. One account can hold as many lords as you like, and every lord on it logs in with the account's password.

1. On the login page click New here? Create an account. Type your name (the name friends find you by, shown with a number, such as Ana#48213) and your email.
2. We email you a six-digit code. Type it in and choose a password of at least 6 characters. After 6 wrong codes, or when the code runs out, you start again.
3. You land on your account page. Click A new lord and choose a lord name (3 to 20 letters, digits, spaces, _ or -, not taken by anyone else), a portrait, and if you like a city name, a flag (1 to 4 letters or digits) and the state to start in. If a friend gave you their code, put it in Friend's code.
4. Click Found it and play. Your lord gets a city on a free flat and the starter pack, and the game opens.

Next time, log in with your email and password to see all your lords, and click one to play it. You can also type a lord's name in the email box (with the password) to go straight into that lord.

Your first city

Every new lord starts with:

The starter pack is in My Items from the start:

The screens

Three big tabs at the top right of the frame switch the main view:

Click a building to open its window; click an empty plot to build. Down the right side are your lord (with Overview, My Items and Friends List under the portrait), your list of cities, and the city's numbers in four tabs: resources (with rates and caps), troops and walls, and heroes. Along the bottom are the round buttons (Shop, Alliance, Quest, Reports, Forum, Contact Us, Statistics, Mail) and the chat. What is being built, researched or trained, and your armies on the move, show in a small panel at the bottom left of the view, each with a Speed up button.

Your first hour, step by step

The routine quests lead you through the start, and every one pays an award. A good first hour:

1. Open My Items, find the Newcomer's Bundle on the Chest tab, click Detail and Use. Then open Quest and press Get Award.
2. On the City tab, build one Farm, one Sawmill, one Quarry and one Ironmine. Each takes a minute or so and can be finished free at once. Each has a quest that pays resources and a 15-minute speed-up.
3. On the Town tab, build a Cottage and raise it to level 2 (both finish free). More cottages mean more people, more tax and more workers.
4. Take the daily gift: Quest, the Daily Quest tab, Get Award. It is a Lucky Charm; using it is another quest.
5. Raise the Town Hall to level 2 (30 minutes; use your 15-minute and 1-hour speed-ups). It opens 3 more outside plots, the Academy and the Embassy.
6. Build a Rally Spot, then a Barracks, a Warehouse and the Academy. Start Agriculture or Lumbering at the Academy.
7. Build an Inn (it needs a level 2 Cottage) and a Feasting Hall, hire a hero and make it mayor: its politics raises the city's production and speeds its buildings.
8. For Town Hall 3 you need Walls, and the Walls need a Quarry at 2 and a Workshop; the Workshop needs a Forge at 2, and the Forge an Ironmine at 3. The Walls quests walk you through it one step at a time. Town Hall 3 brings the Lord's Bundle: 250 Workers, 10 Cross and 5 Rose Medals, a Master Builder's Script, a Field Hospital and more.

Beginner's protection

A new lord is protected for 7 days, or until any of its Town Halls reaches level 5, whichever comes first. While it lasts, no lord can attack or scout your cities, and you may attack and scout only valleys and flats (not NPC cities, not other lords). Raising a Town Hall to 5 ends it at once, so plan your defences before you do.

Holiday

Going away? A holiday shields every city of yours while you are gone. Open it from My Items → Holiday.

• It costs 10 coins a day, for 2 to 7 whole days. Tick renew and it starts again for the same term when it ends, as long as your coins last. Only you can end it early.
• You cannot start one while anything is building, researching, training or being fortified, while an army is out, or while a market order is open.
• On holiday nobody can attack or scout you. Your troops eat nothing, your heroes take no pay, and no unrest applies. Your fields keep producing.
• On holiday you cannot build, research, train, fortify, demolish, march, hire a hero or raise a levy. You can still use items and trade on the market.

The daily maintenance

Server time is UTC (hover the clock in the header to see it). Every day at 07:00 server time the game closes for about 15 minutes. World chat warns 15, 5 and 1 minute before. During it nobody can log in, but the world goes on: marches land, fields produce, jobs finish.

• The day turns. The daily gift comes back, and so does the day's allowance of resources bought with coins and of items with a daily limit.
• Valleys level up. Every valley and flat nobody holds goes up one level; a level 10 goes back to 1. A valley you hold keeps its level. Valleys and flats nobody holds get a new guarding hero.
• NPC cities reset. Every 3 days, 10% of the NPC cities that have stood 30 days or more turn back into level 1 flats, but never so many that flats outnumber NPC cities.
• Holiday traders are put back (see the warning above).

2Your account

Lords on one account, logging in, sharing a lord with a friend, the security code, names, bringing a lord over, and starting again.

One account, many lords

Your account page lists every lord on your account: face, title, prestige, cities, alliance, whether it is being played now, and attacks coming in. Search them and sort them by name, prestige, attacked first or playing now first. A new lord founds another one, with its own city and starter pack, logging in with the account's password. Your email is the account's for good; it cannot be changed.

Logging in

• Log in with your email to reach the account page, or with a lord's name to go straight into that lord. The password is the account's either way.
• With Remember me the account page stays logged in for 30 days from its last use; without it, a day.
• A lord's own login ends 7 days after it was last played. The log-out button ends it at once and takes you back to the account page.
• One login per lord. Opening a lord anywhere closes it everywhere else ("logged in elsewhere"). That includes a friend you gave access to.

Friends and sharing a lord

On the account page's Friends tab, find a friend by their name and number (Name#12345) and invite them. Then, on Share lords:

• Give access: your friend plays your lord from their own account page, for example to defend it while you sleep. Take it away at any moment; that also closes their game on it. They can give it back themselves.
• Hand over: the lord becomes theirs for good once they accept (they have 7 days), and logs in with their password from then on. You and everyone you shared it with lose it. It asks for your password.

Only the owner shares or hands over a lord. Ending a friendship ends the access each gave the other. The History tab shows what happened.

The security code

A second password for the things that cannot be undone. Set it in Overview → Security code… (it asks for your password), 4 to 20 characters.

• It always guards resetting or closing the lord. You choose whether it also guards abandoning a city, dismissing troops, dismissing a hero and changing the tax.
• A guarded action asks for it once; after that it is not asked again until you log out.
• Three wrong codes a day; after that it is not even tried until a day has passed since the first wrong one.
• Forgot it? Reset it with your password: it is removed after 72 hours, and you can keep it after all until then.

Passwords

Change the password on the account page (Email & password); every lord on the account takes it, and your other browsers are logged out. Forgot it? Forgot your password? on the login page emails a code, and the new password is for every lord on that email.

Names

• Lord name: a Royal Warrant (200 coins) gives you a new one, 3 to 20 letters, digits, spaces, _ or -, if no other lord has it.
• City name: free, in the Town Hall's Rename City, once a day for each city (1 to 20 characters).
• Flag: a Banner Cloth (6 coins), 1 to 4 letters or digits, shown over all your cities.
• Your face: pick another lord's portrait any time, free.

Bringing a lord over

If you play on another server, the account page's Bring a lord over from another server moves your lord here: its name, titles and ranks, prestige and honor, research, items, and each city with its buildings on the same plots, troops, walls, resources and heroes.

1. Give your server and your login there. We log in once to read the account, which logs anyone else on it out for a moment. Your password is not kept. (You can paste an export instead; we check a pasted one before it comes in.)
2. You see the name you will have and what comes over. If a lord here already has that name, you choose another.
3. Confirm. The lord lands on your account and logs in with your account password.

Your cities start on random free flats, with a Settler's Map for each to move it onto a free flat or an NPC city you choose. A lord brought over also gets the starter pack, 250 more coins, and a Surveyor's Map and a Siege Map for each city. An account comes over only once. Import many at once on the same page brings a whole list of accounts in one go.

Starting again

Overview → Reset lord… asks for your password (and your security code, if you have set one). Everything the lord has goes: every city (its spot becomes a flat), troops, heroes, research, items, reports and alliance seat.

• Reset keeps your coins and starts a new lord with a new city, the starter pack and beginner protection.
• Close ends the lord and frees its name.
• Refused while an army is out, or while you host an alliance that still has other members.

Bringing a friend

A new lord who joins with a friend's code and raises a Town Hall to level 5 earns a Silver Master Key, and so does the friend whose code it was. Once for each new lord.

3Buildings

What every building does, how many you may have, what each needs first, and how the build queue, speed-ups and demolishing work.

Inside and outside the walls

A city has two fixed places, the Town Hall and the Walls, plus:

• 32 plots inside the walls (the Town tab) for the town's buildings. All are open from the start.
• 40 plots outside (the City tab) for the four fields. 13 are open at Town Hall 1, 3 more each Town Hall level: 16 at 2, 19 at 3, and all 40 at 10.

Fields go only outside; everything else only inside. Inside the walls you can swap two plots for free with Move: the building (and any work on it) goes with it. The Town Hall and the Walls stay where they are.

Every building

Every building goes up to level 10, and level 10 of any building uses a Master Builder's Script. What a building needs is checked in the same city.

"Any" means as many as you have plots for. The Town Hall cannot be built twice, and every building marked 1 is one per city.

The build queue

Each city builds one building at a time. You pay the full cost when you start.

• Builder's Hammer: lets one more building wait in line behind the one going up (it is used when the building joins the line, and you pay that building's cost then). How many may wait goes with your title: 1 as a Civilian, 2 as a Knight, and one more each title up to 10. Each one waiting is checked against the city as it will be when the ones before it are done, so you can line up a level 2 behind its level 1. The Hammer is not sold; it comes from chests and the Lucky Charm.
• Twin Foremen (150 coins): for 72 hours every city of yours can put up two buildings at the same time, as long as nothing is waiting in line.
• Fortifications and troops have their own lines (the walls and each barracks), so they never hold up a building.

Build times and speed-ups

A building's time is fixed when it starts: the table time, x0.9 for each level of Construction, x0.995 for each point of the mayor's politics. Construction 10 cuts it to about a third; a mayor with 100 politics takes off about another 40%.

• Finish free: a building or research whose normal (table) time is 5 minutes or less.
• Speed-up items work on the building at work (not one waiting): 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2.5 hours, 8 hours, a random 10 to 30 hours, 30% of the time left (Builder's Ledger) or 50% of the time left (Stonecutter's Masterwork). One that reaches the end finishes the building at once. The panel's Speed up button can also buy one and use it in one go.
• Master Mason's Square (125 coins): for 72 hours every building you start, in any city, takes half the time.

Cancelling, demolishing and moving

• Cancel a building in the queue and 95% of its cost comes back. With several on one plot in line, cancel the last one first.
• Demolish takes a building down one level. It is a job in the build queue taking half the time that level took to build, and when it is done 30% of that level's cost comes back. From level 1 the plot is cleared. Not while the plot has work queued, and not a barracks at level 1 that is training.
• Blasting Powder (20 coins) brings a whole building down at once, with nothing back. Not on a building being built or training troops.
• The Town Hall and the Walls can never be taken down.
• Fortifications can be taken off the walls at once from the Walls window to free space; nothing comes back.

Level 10 and the Master Builder's Script

Raising any building to level 10 uses one Master Builder's Script (50 coins in the shop; also from the Lord's Bundle, the Special Chest and as a rare battle treasure). Keep one for each building you mean to finish. A Town Hall at 10 also needs Walls at 8.

4Resources & population

Where food, wood, stone, iron and gold come from, how much a city can hold, what is safe from raiders, and how the people and the army fit in.

The five resources

Resources belong to a city. To use one city's stock in another, send it by transport (see Transports) or trade it.

How production works

Each city makes a flat 100 an hour of food, wood, stone and iron with no fields at all. On top of that come its fields, and the bonuses add to the fields' part only:

100 + fields x (1 + research + mayor + valleys + items)

fields    what its fields make at their levels (less if they are short of people)
research  +10% a level of Agriculture, Lumbering, Masonry or Mining
mayor     +1% a point of the mayor's politics
valleys   the bonus of each valley the city holds for that resource
items     +25% from a production item (Iron Plough, Frame Saw, Quarry Picks, Bellows)
          +10% of everything from a Haunted or Winter Keep

For example, ten Farms at level 10 make 55,000 food an hour. With Agriculture 10 (+100%) and a mayor of 50 politics (+50%) they make 137,500, plus the flat 100.

A held valley adds to one resource of the city that holds it. A city may hold as many valleys as its Town Hall level.

The Town Hall's Production tab shows where each resource's output comes from: the fields and base, research, the mayor, valleys and items.

People at work: the production rates

Fields need people to work them. The more a field makes, the more hands it takes:

If the city has fewer people than its fields need, every field makes the same share less: with 60% of the people needed, the fields make 60%.

The Town Hall sets a production rate for each of the four resources, 0 to 100% in steps of 10. At 40%, that resource's fields need 40% of their workers and make 40%. The people freed become idle. Idle people are the ones you train troops from (people = population minus those working the fields), so lowering a rate for a while is how a city frees people for a big batch.

Storage caps

Each of food, wood, stone and iron has a cap in each city: 10,000, plus the storage of that resource's fields (a level 10 field adds 550,000). Production stops at the cap but nothing is ever taken away for being over it: deliveries, transports, quest awards, plunder and items can take a city past its cap. Gold has no cap.

Warehouses do not raise the cap; they decide what raiders cannot take.

The Warehouse: what raiders cannot take

All the city's Warehouses together keep an amount safe from plunder: 10,000 at level 1 up to 550,000 at level 10 each, plus 10% a level of Stockpile research (double at level 10). That safe amount is shared between food, wood, stone and iron by percentages you set in the Warehouse window (25% each to start; together at most 100%).

• Example: two level 10 Warehouses and Stockpile 5 keep 1,650,000 safe. At 40% food, 30% wood, 20% stone, 10% iron that is 660,000 food, 495,000 wood, 330,000 stone and 165,000 iron.
• Gold is never protected. Spend it, or keep it moving.
• An attacker's Privateering research shrinks your safe amount by 3% a level (30% at level 10).

Population

A city's room (its population limit) is 50 plus what its cottages house. The people move toward a target of room x loyalty%: at loyalty 80 the city fills to 80% of its room. They move fast, up to half the room an hour, whether growing or shrinking.

• Training troops takes people from the idle population at once (a Worker or a Pikeman 1, an Archer 2, Cavalry 3, a Cataphract 6, a Battering Ram 10). The population then grows back toward its target.
• Dismissing troops gives their people back, as far as there is room.
• A Census Decree brings 20% of the room (at least 100) at once; the Town Hall's Raise population brings 5%.

Tax and gold

Gold comes in every hour: population x tax rate, less your heroes' pay (each hero takes 20 gold an hour a level, from the city it lives in). A Tax Edict or Tax Charter adds 25% to the tax for a day or a week. How the tax rate and loyalty pull against each other is in Loyalty, comfort & tax.

Food upkeep and starving troops

Every troop eats food every hour, at home or stationed in a valley (twice as much there). Allied troops stationed in your city eat your food too. The Troops tab and the resources tab show the city's net food an hour.

Armies on the march carry their own food, taken from the city when they leave: twice their upkeep for each hour of the way out and any camp.

Ways to cut upkeep for a while: a Granary Blessing or Edict of Rations (half the food for 24 hours), Sunwine or a holiday treat (none for 24 hours), or a holiday (none at all).

5Loyalty, comfort & tax

How tax, loyalty and public grievance set the size of your population, the Town Hall's comfort actions and levies, and what a neglected city does.

Loyalty and public grievance

Every city has a loyalty (0 to 100) and a public grievance (0 to 100). Loyalty drifts toward

100 - tax rate - public grievance

by one point every 6.5 minutes (about 9 an hour), up or down. The population follows loyalty: at loyalty 70 the city fills to 70% of its room.

Grievance never fades on its own. It rises when the city loses a defence (the loyalty the attack takes becomes grievance), when its troops go without food, and when its heroes go unpaid. Only disaster relief, prayer and a Rousing Speech lower it.

The city panel on the right shows them as loyalty / grievance. The + beside them opens Comforting, the tax figure opens the Tax Rate window, and the + beside the gold opens Levy.

Choosing a tax rate

Set it in the Town Hall, 0 to 100% in whole numbers (20% to start). A higher tax takes more from each person but leaves fewer people. With no grievance, for a city with room for 10,000:

Gold peaks at 50%, but then half the room stands empty: fewer people to work the fields, fewer idle to train, and less loyalty to lose when the city is attacked. Grievance comes off the same total, so a city with grievance 20 at tax 20 heads to loyalty 60, not 80.

Comforting your people

The Town Hall's Comforting window. Each action has its own 15-minute timer in each city, and each earns you prestige: 10% of the resources it cost.

Prayer's loyalty drifts back toward 100 − tax − grievance, so it is a quick lift; relief lowers grievance for good and so raises where loyalty settles.

Levies

A levy takes a one-off sum from the people at the cost of 20 loyalty. Each kind has its own 15-minute timer. Not allowed while the city's loyalty is under 15, and not on holiday.

Refuge, revolt and riot

A neglected city pays for it every 6.5 minutes the trouble lasts. Each kind sends one report an hour that gathers what happened.

Refuge and revolt turn loyalty into grievance, so they push a city toward riots. Feed the troops, keep gold for the heroes, then comfort.

Quick fixes

• Rousing Speech (100 coins): loyalty back to 100 and grievance to 0 at once, in one city.
• Census Decree (50 coins): 20% of the room in new people at once (at least 100).

6Research

The Academy, how research is queued and timed, and every technology with what one level gives and what it needs.

The Academy and the research queue

• Research belongs to the lord: a level learned in one city counts in every city.
• Each city's Academy researches one technology at a time, and one technology cannot be researched in two cities at once. With several cities you can run several different researches side by side.
• What a technology needs (Academy level, buildings) is checked in the city that researches it.
• Research costs resources and gold, paid at the start. Cancelling gives back 95%.
• Time: the table time, x0.995 for each point of that city's mayor's intelligence. No technology makes research faster. Speed-up items and the free finish work on research as on buildings.
• Every technology goes to level 10.

Every technology

Several technologies also open troops and wall defences: Military Tradition 1 opens Pikemen, Iron Working 1 Swordsmen, Archery 1 Archers, Horseback Riding 1 Cavalry; Metal Casting opens Abatis (1), Rolling Logs (5) and Defensive Trebuchets (6), Archery 3 Archer Towers. The Barracks and Walls windows show what each still needs.

7The market

Buying and selling food, wood, stone and iron for gold, what it costs, how long goods take, and moving resources between your own cities.

Buying and selling

Open the Marketplace. There is one order book for each of food, wood, stone and iron, priced in gold for one unit. The window shows the best orders on each side, the last trades and the day's average price. You place an order from the city you are in:

• Sell: the goods leave the city at once and wait in the book.
• Buy: the gold (price x amount) leaves the city at once and waits in the book.

A new order fills against the best orders on the other side at their price. If you bid more than a seller asked, the difference comes back to you. Whatever does not fill stays in the book until someone matches it or you cancel. Cancelling gives back the goods or gold not yet traded, never the fee. Every fill sends you a Trade report. Orders between two of your own cities fill like any other.

Prices, fee and limits

A Swift Caravan (5 coins) brings in the delivery due soonest to a city at once: one delivery for each caravan.

The standing traders

Besides other lords, the market has standing traders on both sides of every book. Every 5 minutes they take down their orders and post a fresh ladder of buy and sell orders a little above and below a reference price. That price drifts at random, but is always pulled back toward its average: about 25 gold for wood and iron and 5 gold for food and stone. So there is nearly always someone to sell to or buy from; watch the reference and the day's average to trade at a good moment.

Transports between your cities

To move resources without the market, send a Transport march from the Map or the Rally Spot to one of your own cities, or to a city of a lord in your alliance. The goods are unloaded on arrival and the troops come home.

• Every troop carries a load, +10% a level of Logistics. The food the march eats on the way comes out of the same load. A Transporter carries 5,000, a Worker 200, Cavalry 100.
• The sending city's Relief Station makes marches to your own cities, your alliance's and your allies' 2 to 6 times faster.
• Each march takes one of the Rally Spot's armies-out.

8Items & the shop

Coins, the Shop and My Items, the main item groups and what they do, how chests and the Lucky Charm work, and the seasonal chests and tokens.

Coins

Coins are the shop's money. Each lord has its own coins (shown at the foot of the Shop as "Account"). A lord starts with 250, and earns more from some quests and from the Lucky Charm's coin prizes. Coin packs can also be bought with real money in the Shop's Get Coins tab.

Coins also pay for a holiday (10 a day) and for Get More Resources (the button under your resources): 1 coin buys 200,000 food, 160,000 wood, 130,000 stone or 100,000 iron, delivered to the city at once, up to 100,000,000 resources a lord a day.

The Shop and My Items

The Shop (round button) has the tabs Get Coins, Special Offer, Hot Sale, Speed Up, Produce, Hero, War, City and Chest, and a search box that finds an item by any word of its name. Click Buy on a card to choose how many (up to 1,000 at a time). Packages marked "as soon as you buy it" open straight into their contents.

My Items (under your portrait) lists what you hold, in the tabs All, Speed Up, Produce, Hero, War, City, Chest and Medal, with what is in force now. Click an item's picture or Detail to read it and Use it. Chests, charms, packs, boosts, hero boxes and experience books can be used several at once.

The main item groups

Items that add up in time

A boost for the same thing does not stack in strength: using a second one adds its time after the first ends (the buff list says when). Angel and devil items are the exception: they stack in strength up to their own limits. Hero boosts count per hero, city boosts per city.

The Lucky Charm and its wheel

A Lucky Charm (5 coins; one free every day with the daily gift) spins a wheel. The wheel shows 24 prizes and you win one of them: speed-ups, production boosts, horns and vests, hero items, rare war items, hoards, or now and then coins (10, 30, 50, 100, 300 or 1,000; the 1,000 about once in 3,300 spins). Coins go straight to your lord. The rarest prizes, and coin prizes of 300 or more, are announced to every lord. The Gambler's Pouch (45 to 60 Lucky Charms) is sold only during promotions.

Chests and keys

A chest opens with its own key. Use the chest (not the key). If you hold the chest's own key it is used; otherwise a Silver Master Key is used, which opens any chest. Keep your Master Keys for chests whose key is hard to get.

Medal chests need no key: the Bronze Medal Chest (80 coins) gives 2 to 4 each of Cross, Rose and Lion Medals, the Silver (140) Courage, Honor and Wisdom, the Gold (240) Freedom, Justice and Nation. A Medal Purse turns into one medal at random. Medals are also won in battles against valleys and NPCs and from quests; they pay for promotions and for persuading captured heroes.

Peace Treaty and Dream Truce

• Peace Treaty (30): 12 hours in which no lord can attack or scout your cities, and you may attack and scout only valleys and flats. Your armies must all be home and no attack may be on its way to you. The next one can start 12 hours after this one ends. Scouts coming at you do not stop you using one.
• Dream Truce (40): a 10-hour truce every day, starting at the hour you pick (server time, UTC). Each one adds a day. The hour can be moved once every 72 hours, outside a truce window. Cancelled, a window running now runs out and the days not yet begun come back as items.

Moving a city

A city's armies must all be home before it moves, and a moved city lets go of its valleys.

Seasons, tokens and holiday treats

Each season has its own chest and key in the shop, sold only while it runs (dates in UTC):

Season tokens let you earn the chest without coins. While a season runs:

• A won attack on an NPC city, with a hero, may drop its token: 5% plus 1% for each level of the NPC.
• The season's quests pay tokens: 5 for taking the daily gift on 3 days, then 10, 10 and 15 for winning 5, 15 and 30 battles against NPCs. That is 40 in all.
• In the token's window, 25 tokens buy the season's chest and 15 its key. Tokens keep after the season, but trade only while it runs.

Holiday treats come free with the daily gift on each day of their window: Sweetheart's Bonbons (6 – 17 February), Shamrock Stew (17 – 21 March), Harvest Ale (27 September – 7 October), Hallowed Sweets (24 October – 2 November) and Midwinter Milk and Cookies (18 December – 8 January). Each gives 24 hours with no troop upkeep in every city; keep them and use them whenever you like.

9Quests & rewards

The Quest window: routine quests, promotions, the season's quests and the daily gift, and how awards are claimed.

The Quest window

Open it with the Quest round button; the number on the button counts the awards waiting. It has two tabs:

Routine quests

Over 200 one-time quests, each done once per lord. A quest is done as soon as its target holds in any of your cities (a Farm at 5 anywhere, a city with room for 1,000 people), and it stays ready until you claim it. Some families:

The Nobility family holds your next rank and title as quests. They show what each still needs, and their button is Promote, which pays the gold and medals and raises you.

The daily gift

Once a day, on the Daily Quest tab, Get Award gives you a Lucky Charm, plus the holiday treat while one's window runs. The day turns at the daily maintenance (07:00 server time). A day missed is not kept.

Season quests

While a season runs, its four quests sit at the top of the Routine list, paying season tokens (see Seasons). They come back every year.

Claiming awards

1. Pick the city that should get the award in your city list first: resources, people and troops go to the city you are looking at. The window names it.
2. Select the quest (a tick marks the ones done) and press Get Award.
3. Items, medals and coins go to your lord, prestige to your standing. Resources may take the city past its cap; people only up to its room.

10The world map

One world for every lord: 800 by 800 tiles of flats, valleys and NPC cities. This section covers what is on a tile, how far armies march and how long it takes, and how you found, move and add cities.

What is on a tile

Every tile on the map is one of these. The map wraps round at its edges: march off the right side and you come in on the left.

Low-level NPC cities are far more common than high ones: each level is rarer than the one below it.

Your city's place

Your first city is put on a free flat. Its place is two numbers, x,y, each from 0 to 799. The map is split into sixteen states of 200 by 200 tiles, four across and four down, read row by row from the top left: Friesland, Saxony, North March, Bohemia, Lower Lorraine, Franconia, Thuringia, Moravia, Upper Lorraine, Swabia, Bavaria, Carinthia, Burgundy, Lombardy, Tuscany and Romagna. The states only matter for the Wayfarer's Map (below), which drops a city into the state you pick.

Click any tile to see what is on it and what you can do there: Scout, Attack, Reinforce, Transport, Build a city, Station troops or Let go, as the tile allows. Tiles you want to find again go on your Coordinate List (up to 100 tiles, each with a name of your own).

Distance and march time

Distance is a straight line between the two tiles, the short way round the map's edges: 3 tiles across and 4 down is 5 tiles. An army marches at the pace of its slowest troop:

seconds = distance in tiles × 60,000 ÷ speed of the slowest troop

So cavalry (speed 1,000) take 1 minute a tile, warriors (200) 5 minutes a tile and catapults (80) 12½ minutes a tile. The troop table lists every troop's minutes a tile. The way home takes as long as the way out.

Swift Boots (from an alliance mate or ally) make your marches 35% quicker; Wanderer's Fog on your city makes its marches 20% slower.

Camp time. On the march window you can add camp time (hours, minutes, seconds, even milliseconds, up to a day) so an army lands exactly when you want. The army waits out its camp at home first, out of your city's defence, then marches. Nobody sees it coming until it sets off. Recall it while it still waits and it is back at once; recall it on the road and it turns round, home in the time it has marched so far.

Food for the road. An army takes food with it: twice its hourly upkeep for every hour of the one-way march and the camp. That food counts against what the troops can carry.

Flats and building a new city

A new city is built in two steps:

1. Hold a flat. Attack a free flat (an attack needs a hero) and beat its guards. The flat is then held by the city that sent the attack, and counts as one of that city's valleys (see how many you can hold).
2. Send workers to build. Open the flat and choose Build a city. Send at least 250 workers and nothing else. The march also takes 10,000 each of food, wood, stone, iron and gold from the sending city; they go with the workers outside their load.
3. When the workers arrive, the flat becomes your new city: a level 1 Town Hall, the 10,000 of each resource, and 300 people (250 of the workers settle there as people). Workers beyond 250 stay in the city as troops.

A held flat stops levelling up while you hold it. The new city remembers the flat's level: if you ever abandon the city, the tile becomes an NPC city of that level.

How many cities, and abandoning one

Your rank (Lieutenant to General) does not add cities; it only opens the next titles. Cities you take from NPCs or other lords count against the same limit.

Abandoning a city (Town Hall, Cities tab): the city must be empty first, with no troops, no heroes, no armies out and no allied troops stationed in it, and it cannot be your last city. Its buildings are gone, its valleys are let go, and the tile becomes an NPC city of the flat's level. Abandoning is final.

Moving a city

Maps from the shop move a whole city, buildings, troops and all. The city's armies must all be home and no allied troops may be stationed in it. A moved city lets go of all its valleys (troops stationed in them come home). It may march again at once.

A free flat is one with no city on it that nobody holds. Every new lord gets 10 of each of these maps in the starter pack.

11Valleys

Valleys are the forests, grasslands, hills, lakes, deserts and swamps of the map. Beat their guards, hold them, and the city holding them produces more.

What each valley adds

A held valley adds a share to one resource of the city that holds it. The share grows with the valley's level: a base, plus so much a level.

The bonus applies to what your fields produce (farms, sawmills, quarries, iron mines), not to the city's small fixed base production. Bonuses add up: two level 10 lakes give a city 70% more from its farms. A flat adds nothing; you hold flats to build cities on them.

Levels and the daily level-up

Every valley and flat has a level from 1 to 10. Once a day, at the daily maintenance (07:00 server time, UTC), every valley and flat that nobody holds goes up one level, and a level 10 goes back to 1. A valley never changes its type.

A held valley keeps the level it had when you took it, for as long as you hold it. When you let it go, it carries on climbing from that level at the next maintenance. So take a valley on the day it reaches the level you want.

How many you can hold

Each city holds as many valleys as its Town Hall level: one at Town Hall 1, up to ten at Town Hall 10. Flats count in the same total. The limit is per city: a valley belongs to the city whose army took it. If the city is already full, you still win the battle but the valley is not held (the report says so).

Taking and holding a valley

1. Scout it first if you like: the report shows its guards and its hero.
2. Attack it from the city that should hold it. Every attack needs a hero to lead it.
3. Win, and the valley is held by that city at once. Its bonus counts from that moment. The Town Hall's Valleys tab lists your valleys.

Another lord's valley. You can attack a valley someone else holds. If they have no troops stationed there, you take it without a fight. If they have, you fight those troops, with no walls to help them; win and it is yours.

Stationing troops. To guard a valley, open it and choose Station troops (a Reinforce march from the city that holds it). The troops stay and defend it, led by the strongest hero among them, with your research and items counting. They eat twice their normal upkeep, from the city that sent them. They come home if the valley is let go, taken, or its city moves.

A city that moves by map, is abandoned or is taken lets go of (or hands over) its valleys with it.

Who guards a valley nobody holds

A free valley is guarded by its terrain's foot soldiers (warriors; pikemen on flats), with archers from level 4 up. Flats have fewer guards but more of them are archers. The guards fight with every battle research at the valley's level, and there are no walls or fortifications.

Every free valley and flat also has a hero leading its guards. Its attack and intelligence count in the battle. The hero is rolled like an Inn hero, with a level in the band for the valley's level, and stays the same until the next daily maintenance or until the valley's level changes. So the hero your scouts see is the hero your attack meets.

Losing an attack on a valley nobody holds costs you prestige: as much as your dead troops would have earned had they won.

Letting a valley go

Click Let go on the valley (on the map, or in the Town Hall's Valleys tab). It is free and immediate. Troops stationed there march home, the bonus stops, and the valley starts levelling again from the level it kept. Letting go frees a place for another valley.

12NPC cities

NPC cities are barbarian towns from level 1 to 10. They hold troops, walls and a store of resources. You raid them for loot, prestige and medals, and in the end you can take one as your own city.

What each level holds

An NPC city's level never changes. It fights with every battle research at its own level and has walls of its own level. Its full strength:

Farming NPCs for resources

Win against an NPC and your surviving troops carry off what they can from its store. What they carry is shared over the resources in proportion to what the NPC has. Each troop carries its load (see the troop table), plus 10% a level of Logistics; anything the wave brought with it takes its room first.

A win also earns prestige and hero experience for what you killed, may drop a medal, and counts for the season's quests while a season runs. A loss costs the prestige your dead would have earned.

They grow back

Waves that land between two marks never slow the regrowth: it counts the clock's marks, not the time since your last hit. Very old NPC cities may now and then turn back into level 1 flats at the daily maintenance; the map always keeps at least as many NPC cities as flats.

Taking an NPC as your city

An NPC city starts at 100 loyalty. Every attack you win takes loyalty off it: 3 points while it is above 50, 2 once it is at 50 or below, and 1 more when the NPC's loss was crushing (you lost at most a tenth of what you killed). When a won attack brings it to 0, the city is yours, if your title has room for another city.

• You get a whole town at the NPC's level: Town Hall and Walls at that level, one of every town building, cottages on the other plots and farms on every field the Town Hall opens. Its fortifications do not come with it.
• What is left of its resources stays in the city, and your surviving troops and the hero who led the attack move in.
• The new city starts at 50 loyalty.

An NPC's hero

Each NPC city keeps a hero, shown in your scout report. It is a new hero every time the city is scouted. Low NPCs have low heroes (level 1-14 at NPC 1, up to 33-46 at NPC 9); an NPC 10's hero can be anything from level 1 to 40. The hero does not change the battle: an NPC fights with a fixed leader of its own level.

When you take the NPC, its hero is caught or dies. It is caught by the same roll as any captured hero at 0 loyalty, into a free seat of the new city's Feasting Hall. A caught hero is your prisoner, to persuade or let go (see capture). Scouting just before the last wave lets you see who you might catch.

13Medals

Nine medals, from the common Cross to the rare Nation. You need them to rise in rank and title, to reward heroes and to persuade captured heroes. Most come from winning attacks on valleys and NPC cities.

The nine medals and what they are for

Medals are spent when used. A hero's loyalty never goes over 100. When a Seeking Stone takes a hero back from the lord who held it, that lord is paid the medals persuading it would have cost.

What valleys drop, by level

Flats count as valleys here.

What NPC cities drop, by level

When a win drops a medal, it is one medal from that level's list, picked at random.

Where to find each medal

In short: Cross and Rose medals come only from low valleys. Lion medals: level 2-5 valleys, level 1 and 4 NPCs. Honor and Courage: high valleys or low NPCs. Wisdom and Freedom: high valleys or middle NPCs. Justice and Nation: level 9-10 valleys and NPCs only.

Getting more medals

Other treasures. A won attack can also bring a Town Crier or a Master Builder's Script. These come mostly from NPC cities and only rarely from valleys. While a season runs, NPC wins can also drop the season's token, which buys that season's chest and key.

Other sources. Each "Win a … medal" quest gives two more of that medal once you hold your first. The shop sells Bronze, Silver and Gold Medal Chests (each opens into 2-4 of each of three medals), and a Medal Purse (from chests and the Lucky Charm) turns into one medal at random.

14Titles & ranks

Your standing has two ladders: military rank (Lieutenant to General) and noble title (Knight to Prinzessin). Titles are what let you hold more cities; ranks open the titles.

How promotion works

Promote from the Overview window under your lord's face, one step at a time. The gold is paid from the city you promote from; the medals come from your items and are spent. Prestige is only a threshold: it is not spent. Each step pays an award of prestige and speed-ups.

Ranks

Titles

Your title also decides how many buildings may wait in a city's build queue with a Builder's Hammer (title + 1, at most 10), and which captured heroes you may persuade (see capture).

Earning prestige

• Building, research, training and fortifying earn prestige for what they cost. It is divided by the total of all your Town Hall levels, so the same job earns less as your cities grow.
• Battles earn prestige for the value of what you kill, divided the same way. A defender earns prestige for the attackers it kills too.
• Comforting at the Town Hall (relief, prayer, blessing, raising people) earns a tenth of what it costs.
• Quests and promotions pay prestige as part of their reward.
• A lost attack on an NPC city or a valley nobody holds costs the prestige your dead troops would have earned.

15Heroes

Heroes lead your attacks, run your cities as mayor and defend them. You hire them at the Inn, seat them in the Feasting Hall, level them up and keep them loyal, and you can capture other lords' heroes.

The Inn and the Feasting Hall

The Feasting Hall seats your city's heroes: one at level 1, up to ten at level 10. Prisoners you hold take seats too. The Inn offers heroes for hire: as many as the Inn's level, of up to five times the Inn's level (a level 4 Inn offers four heroes of up to level 20; low levels are the most common). A new list comes every hour; a Recruiting Notice brings a new list at once. The Inn shows nobody until the city has a Feasting Hall.

Hiring costs 1,000 gold a hero level, paid from the city. A hired hero starts at 70 loyalty. Each hero is best at one stat: that stat starts at 40-69 plus all the points of its levels, and the other two at 5-49.

Every hero draws a salary of 20 gold an hour for each level, from its city's gold. A city that cannot pay its heroes revolts: every 90 minutes unpaid, each of its heroes loses 5 loyalty, and a hero at 0 loyalty may walk out.

Attack, politics and intelligence

Training a troop becomes instant once one troop would take less than a second (a very high attack mayor with Military Science); the same goes for wall fortifications with politics and Construction.

Levels and points

A hero needs 100 × level² experience for its next level: 100 to reach level 2, 10,000 to go from level 10 to 11. Click level up when the experience is there; each level gives one point to put into attack, politics or intelligence. Experience comes from:

• Battles: the hero leading an attack earns experience for the value of what its army killed; a city's defending hero for what it killed.
• Being mayor: the mayor earns experience from every building, research, troop batch and fortification batch finished in its city, for what it cost.
• Books: Field Manual (1,000 experience or 8% of the next level), Officer's Handbook (10,000 or 30%), Grand Strategy (100,000 or a whole level), whichever is more.

Clear Spring Water gives back every point a hero has placed, to spend again. It takes one bottle, plus one more for every 10 levels (a level 25 hero takes 3).

The mayor

Each city has at most one mayor. Make a hero mayor in the Feasting Hall; it must be at home. A mayor never marches, but it can still lead the city's defence. Pick your mayor for the city's job: politics for a building or resource city, attack for a troop city, intelligence for research.

Who defends a city

The hero who leads a city's defence is the one at home with the highest attack, mayor or not. Heroes out on a march or held as prisoners do not defend.

Loyalty and rewards

Loyalty runs from 0 to 100. A loyal hero is harder to capture; a hero at 0 may run away from a city that cannot pay it. A hero loses 5 loyalty every time it is on the losing side of a battle (an attack that runs the full 100 rounds counts as lost).

Reward a hero in the Feasting Hall to raise its loyalty:

• Gold: 100 gold a hero level, from its city, for +5 loyalty.
• A medal you pick, for that medal's loyalty: Cross +5, Rose +10, Lion +15, Honor +20, Courage +25, Wisdom +30, Freedom +40, Justice +50, Nation +60.

Each hero can be rewarded once every 15 minutes, by gold or medal. A hero already at 100 cannot be rewarded.

Capture and persuading

Heroes can be captured in war. Each time, the captor's city needs a free seat in its Feasting Hall, and the chance grows with that Feasting Hall's level and falls with the hero's loyalty. With a level 10 Feasting Hall, a hero at 100 loyalty is taken 1 time in 4, at 50 loyalty half the time, at 0 loyalty 3 times in 4. A level 5 Feasting Hall takes half as often.

A prisoner sits in a seat of your Feasting Hall and cannot be mayor or march. You can let it go (it is gone for good) or persuade it to join you. Persuading costs its hiring fee (1,000 gold a level), medals by its level, and needs a title:

A persuaded hero joins at 10 loyalty: reward it soon.

Getting a hero back: the Seeking Stone

A Seeking Stone brings home a hero of yours that another lord holds prisoner, or has persuaded to join them. It works only 24 hours after the hero was lost, and not while the hero is out with an army. The hero comes home to the city it was lost from, or the first of your cities with a free Feasting Hall seat. The lord who held it is paid the medals persuading it would have cost. A hero you let go, fired or that died is gone for good.

Hero items

16Troops & fortifications

Twelve kinds of troops trained in the Barracks, five kinds of fortifications built on the Walls, and the medic camp where wounded troops wait to be cured.

Troop stats

Base numbers, before research, heroes and items. Range is how far a troop reaches on the battlefield. Load is what one troop carries. Upkeep is food a troop eats an hour.

Training: cost, time and what it needs

"Barracks 5" means the barracks you train in must be level 5 or more. "People" is how much idle population each troop takes from the city when it is queued; dismissing troops gives them back as people, as far as there is room.

The Barracks

• A city can have several barracks. Each trains its own line of batches, one after another, and holds as many batches waiting as its level (a level 4 barracks: 4 batches).
• From a barracks window you can train in that barracks, in all barracks (the order split evenly between them, each training its share at the same time), or in the idle ones only.
• Time each = the base time × 0.9 for each level of Military Science × 0.995 for each attack point of the mayor. Transporters, ballistae, rams and catapults also train 10% faster for each level of Metal Casting. A Drill Sergeant's Whistle takes 30% off for 72 hours; a Drillmaster's Diary takes 30% off one batch.
• The cost is paid when you queue. Cancelling a batch gives back 95% of its cost.

The Rally Spot

Every march sets out from the Rally Spot. Its level is how many armies the city can have out at once, and each march carries at most 10,000 troops a level (100,000 at level 10). Troops stationed in an ally's city still use one of these places.

• A Rally Banner lets one march carry 25% more. A Haunted Keep or Winter Keep adds 25% for 15 days.
• A Warlord's Standard lets one march carry ten times the Rally Spot's limit (1,000,000 at level 10, 1,250,000 with a Rally Banner too).
• You tick the Banner or the Standard on the march window. Each is used up with that march, and is refused when the march would fit without it.

Wall fortifications

Fortifications stand on your Walls and fight every attack on your city, even with the gate closed. Each takes wall space; the Walls' level sets how much there is. They are built on the Walls, five batches at most in the queue, faster with Construction research and the mayor's politics.

Engineering adds 10% a level to the wall's durability and to archer towers' life. Each Walls level also lets your archers, ballistae, catapults and archer towers reach 3% further when defending. You can demolish fortifications at once to free space; nothing comes back.

Machinery repairs after a battle at your city: of traps, abatis and trebuchets that lost some but not all, a share of the lost ones rebuilds itself (5% for traps and abatis, 8% for trebuchets, times 1 + your Machinery level). Archer towers and rolling logs never rebuild.

The medic camp

Not every troop that falls in battle dies. A share of your dead are only wounded and go to the medic camp of the city they fought for (for an attack, the city it marched from). There they eat nothing and wait until you cure them all at once, for gold: a tenth of their value. The Rally Spot's Healing tab shows them and the price.

• Against NPC cities and valleys: 10% of your dead are wounded.
• Between lords: it depends on your honor against theirs. The side with less honor heals better: 50% when yours is at most a tenth of theirs, 40% at most a half, 30% up to twice theirs, 20% up to ten times, 10% beyond that (and 10% when both are at 0). The battle's own honor change counts first.
• A Field Hospital makes 30% more wounded (10% becomes 13%, 50% becomes 65%). A Leaf of Liberty (your next battle with a lord) or a Sugar Hare (your next attack on a lord) adds 30% more on top.

Fortifications are never wounded: what is lost on the walls is gone.

17How battles work

A battle is fought out in rounds on a straight field, the defender at one end and the attacker at the other. Here is what happens in a round, how the numbers are worked out, and what each side gets afterwards.

Each side's numbers

A Charm of the Unbroken adds 10% attack, defence and life on top. Your research counts in every battle you fight; an NPC city or a free valley fights with all research at its own level.

The field

The field is 200 long plus the longest base range of anything in the battle. With traps, abatis or trebuchets on the walls that is 5,200; with only short-range troops it is short and the armies meet at once.

A round

1. Movement. Melee troops of both sides move first, fastest first; then the shooters. A troop with an enemy in its range stays put; otherwise it moves its speed toward the nearest enemy, never past it. The defender's scouts and transporters never move. The attacker's scouts and transporters wait at the back while anything else of theirs is alive.
2. Strikes. The attacker's troops strike first, fastest first, then the defender's. Each kind strikes one target in its range. A shooter aims at enemy shooters or archer towers if it can, otherwise at the fastest enemy. A melee troop hits the nearest enemy, the strongest of those if several are equally near.
3. Fortifications. Then the walls fire: rolling logs, traps, abatis, archer towers, trebuchets. Each round only a part of the traps (a random 1-10% of those at the start) and a tenth of the abatis, rolling logs and trebuchets fire, and only as many as the attackers need. Fired ones are used up; archer towers stay.

killed = troops striking × their attack × (1 − target's defence ÷ 1000) ÷ target's life
         × 1.8 (pikemen on cavalry or cataphracts)
         × 1.1 (swordsmen on pikemen)
         × 1.2 (cavalry or cataphracts on archers)

Shooters do full damage within half their range and half damage beyond it, and only a quarter against a melee troop that has come within its own range of them.

The wall, and how a battle ends

Once no defending troops or archer towers are left, the attackers in range strike the wall itself with their attack (shooters standing far back do half, battering rams do double, scouts do nothing). The attacker wins when every defender is gone and the wall is down. The defender wins when no attacker is left. If 100 rounds pass first, the defender holds: that is a lost attack.

Valleys have no walls; NPC cities have walls of their level.

The gate

Each city has a gate, open by default; open or close it at the top of the Rally Spot window. With the gate open, your troops and any allied troops stationed in the city fight every attack. With the gate closed, they sit the battle out and lose nothing: only the walls and fortifications fight. If those fall, the attacker wins (and takes loot and loyalty) all the same. A Shattered Bar used on your city holds its gate open for an hour.

The hero's part

Every attack needs a hero. Its attack and intelligence raise the whole army's attack and defence, a point a percent. The defender's hero is the city's highest-attack hero at home. The leading hero earns experience for what its side killed. On the losing side a hero loses 5 loyalty, and an attacking hero that loses at a lord's city may be captured.

After the battle

Both lords get a report with every troop sent and lost, the loot, the loyalty, the honor change and the wounded. If an attack loses every troop it sent, its hero is back home at once.

Honor

Honor is a standing between lords; NPC cities and valleys have none and do not change it. After a battle between two lords, the side that killed more value than it lost gains honor, and the other loses as much: (value killed − value lost) ÷ 200. If only one of the two has any honor, the change is halved. Nobody goes below 0. Honor never changes who wins. It sets how many of your dead are only wounded (lower honor heals better) and ranks lords in Statistics.

What a lost attack costs

• The troops that died (some wounded, see above).
• The leading hero's 5 loyalty, and against a lord's city maybe the hero itself.
• Against an NPC city or a valley nobody holds: prestige, as much as your dead troops would have earned.
• The food the army took for the march.

18War, scouting & defence

Seeing what is coming, scouting your targets, helping your friends, taking cities from other lords, the items of war, and the protection that keeps you safe.

Scouting

A scouting needs at least one scout; other troops may go along. What the report shows depends on your Informatics research, not on how many scouts you send:

• Exact numbers when your Informatics is at least the target's Beacon Tower level (a lord's city) or the target's level (an NPC city or valley). Then you also see a city's resources, buildings and loyalty, or an NPC's resources, loyalty and its hero's stats.
• Otherwise words for each troop count, and the report says what Informatics level you would need:

At a lord's city with its gate open, your scouts first fight the city's scouts one for one: only if you sent more than they have do the rest get through. If yours lose, every scout and every troop that came with them dies and there is no report. At a closed gate nobody fights and one scout is enough.

The scouted lord gets a report naming you, your alliance and the city you sent from. Scouts are never seen coming. Scouting an NPC city gives it a new hero.

The Beacon Tower

Without a Beacon Tower a city gets no warning at all of an attack on its way. With one, it sees more of each attack the higher the tower, from the moment the attack sets off (an attack still camping at home is not seen):

A higher Beacon Tower also hides your numbers from enemy scouts whose Informatics is lower than its level.

Reinforcing and transporting

• Reinforce your own city: the troops and the hero move there for good.
• Reinforce an alliance mate's or an ally's city: their Embassy must take allied troops (a box its lord ticks) and have room: one allied army for each Embassy level. Your troops stay yours, keep their place in your Rally Spot, eat the host city's food, and fight beside its troops while its gate is open; losses are shared by numbers and you get the report. They never attack from there. They come home when you recall them, the host sends them home, your alliances stop being allies, all of them fall, or the city is taken.
• Station troops in your valley: see holding a valley.
• Transport resources to your own cities or an alliance mate's. A transport to a lord with more than 2½ times your prestige is set on by barbarians on the way: 60% of its goods and troops are lost.

Attacking a lord's city

You can attack any lord except one in your own alliance or in an alliance yours has set as Ally. Neutral and Enemy are only colours on the map. You cannot attack or scout a lord under beginner protection, in a truce or on holiday; an attack that reaches a city that became protected on the way turns back with nothing done. The target sees your attack coming as its Beacon Tower allows.

Loyalty attacks and taking a city

A lord's city has loyalty, public grievance and tax, which together make 100. Every attack you win against it:

1. Takes 3 loyalty off it while loyalty is above 50, 2 once it is 50 or below, and 1 more when the defender's loss was crushing. The same amount is added to its grievance (up to 100).
2. Waves bring loyalty down only as far as 15. Below that each won wave only adds grievance, and loyalty sinks by itself toward 100 − tax − grievance, one point every 6½ minutes.
3. Once the city's loyalty is at 0, your next won wave takes the city, if you have room for another city.

A taken city comes to you with its buildings and walls; its loyalty starts at 0 with no grievance. Its own troops are gone and your surviving troops and hero move in. Its heroes at home are caught or die; prisoners it held become yours; its valleys come with it. Every lord hears the news in the system chat.

Defending against it: the Town Hall's comforting (disaster relief, prayer) raises loyalty and cuts grievance; a Rousing Speech puts loyalty back to 100 and clears grievance at once. Grievance never fades by itself.

War items

Using another of the same boost adds its time; a different item for the same thing starts when the one running ends. The items without a price come from chests, packs and the Lucky Charm.

Beginner protection, truces and holidays

Under beginner protection, a truce or a Dream Truce window nobody can attack or scout your cities, and you may attack and scout only valleys and flats: no NPC cities and no lords. On holiday nobody can attack or scout you, and you cannot march at all.

19Alliances

An alliance is a team of lords with its own chat, mail, war reports and diplomacy. Members cannot attack each other and can reinforce each other's cities.

Joining and founding

• Joining needs an Embassy (level 1) in any of your cities. Apply to an alliance, or accept an invitation.
• Founding needs an Embassy at level 2 and 10,000 gold from the city you found it from. The name is 3-20 letters, digits, spaces, _ or -.
• Size: 10 members for each level of the host's Embassy (100 at level 10). A Grand Pact raises it to 100 for good; a Great Pact to 1,000 for 15 days. Any member may use either.

Ranks

Anyone can only change the rank of members below their own, into ranks below their own. A vice host, presbyter or officer can step down to member at any time. The host cannot leave while others are in the alliance: hand it over first, or disband it.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is one-sided. If you set another alliance as Ally, you cannot attack them, but they can still attack you until they set yours as Ally too. Transports go only to your own alliance, never to allies.

Alliance chat and mail

The alliance has its own chat channel, free to use (a world chat line costs a Town Crier). Officers and up can send a letter to every member at once: at most 5 such letters a day each, and each one takes 2 Town Criers.

War reports and events

The Alliance window's War Reports list every battle and scouting between your members and other lords, newest first, 10 a page, kept 30 days. Each side's alliance sees its own side's report: the defenders' alliance sees who came, not what the scouts saw. Battles with NPC cities and with valleys nobody holds are not listed.

The Events tab, for members only, keeps 30 days of the alliance's own history: who founded it, joined (and who invited or accepted them), left, was removed, promoted or demoted, diplomacy and introduction changes, and cities taken by or from members.