Mechanics

Cities and population

Your capital is given at the start of the match. New cities are founded by the Pioneer.

Founding a city

• The Pioneer must stand on plains or forest (see Map and terrain).
• The new city must be at least 4 hexes from every city on the map.
• The Pioneer is consumed.
• The per-player city cap is 6. That is the base cap: playing the Expansionist line dynasty your cap becomes 7 (Getting started).

If you cannot found, you are told why. Selecting the Pioneer does not hide the found-city button; when founding is not possible it is disabled and the reason is printed beneath it. There are four reasons, and since the engine checks them in this order, the first one that applies is the one shown when several do:

1. This unit cannot found a city — the selected unit is not a Pioneer.
2. A city cannot be founded on this terrain — the tile is not plains or forest.
3. You have reached the city limit — the cap is full; the text states how many cities you may have.
4. Too close to another city — the text states the minimum distance between cities.

The numbers in the text are your own dynasty's cap and distance, not the base ones. This is a display only: the engine's refusal stays a single refusal regardless of the reason, and what is written to the record does not change. For a Pioneer that is out of turn or has already acted the button is also disabled, but the reason for that is not one of the four above.

The cap gates founding only. A city taken in battle, a city inherited from a fallen capital and a Neutral village annexed with gold are never asked about the cap — your city count can go past it. The count still works backwards, though: the founding gate counts every city you own, so while you are over the cap a Pioneer cannot found a new one.

Below the cap, expanding is not free either: the Pioneer's cost rises by 1 production for every city you own beyond the first. Like the cap, the cost counts cities owned — a city you conquer or a village you annex makes the next Pioneer dearer.

Name and status

Every city has a name, assigned automatically when it is founded. "Capital" is not a name but a status: losing your capital eliminates you (Victory conditions), while a city keeps its name even when it changes hands.

You can rename your own cities from the city panel (up to 24 characters). Once you hold more than one city, the city button at the top becomes a list: picking a city centres the board on it and opens its panel.

Region

A city's region is the 1-step ring around its tile (7 tiles, clipped at the board edge). Resource nodes inside the region produce income; region tiles count toward score (Territory and score).

A region grows with population: at population 3 the ring widens to 2 steps — 19 tiles — and the city's building slots rise from 3 to 4 (The production queue). The second route to a wider region is gold: you can buy a tile next to your region for a price starting at 6 gold. No building does either.

Population

Each city stores food. When the store reaches population × 4, population goes up by 1 and the store resets.

Population cap

Population has a cap, and the cap is not fixed — it opens step by step. The base is 5; four sources each add a step on top:

• Farm and Almshouse — raise the cap of the city they stand in.
• The Healing and Cavalry nodes — raise the cap of all your cities.

With all four open, a city's cap is 10. The size of each step is shown in the effect line on that source's own page. A tech node finished this turn opens its step at the start of the next turn. The city panel shows population as population / cap.

Granary

On a turn where every city is at its cap (or in revolt), surplus food is not lost: it is written into your empire's granary. The granary has a limit — 20 food. Whatever arrives above the limit is lost.

When a city that can take food appears again — a city you just founded, or an old one whose cap opened by a step — the granary feeds it, but only up to its growth threshold: if that turn's surplus does not fill the threshold on its own, the granary tops up the rest and keeps what is left. Food past the threshold would be wasted with the store that resets on growth, so the granary never overfills a city. The granary does not cover a deficit: if the turn's income falls below upkeep, the granary is not touched (Economy).

Population is the city's production multiplier:

Population pays three more times: it raises city HP (see below), with no growth focus set it decides the default food recipient (see above; Economy), and at the threshold it widens the region. Investing in food is not only faster production — it is a wider border.

Where the yield comes from

Below the yield rows, the city panel has a collapsible yield source breakdown. It spells out the city's per-turn income item by item: city base, resource nodes, buildings, the population multiplier and — if the city is in revolt — the revolt cut. Each row states, with a sign, which of food, production and gold it contributes to (a building's contribution carries a plus sign, the revolt cut a minus sign); an item that contributes to none of them is not listed. The total row at the bottom is the very income the engine credits to the city: the breakdown is not a separate calculation but a decomposition of the engine's own income calculation. The global base is added at the empire level and appears in no city's breakdown.

Growth focus

Net food is written each turn into the store of a single city, and you pick that city: the growth focus button in the city panel makes it the focus, a second press clears it. The panel shows a badge on the focused city and states where the food is actually going that turn.

With no focus set the recipient is the least populous eligible city. That default is a trap once you hold several cities: a newly founded city usually becomes the recipient (city id order breaks ties), so the moment your 6th city goes up all the food flows there and your grown capital stops growing. That is why the decision is yours — a wide base, or one strong centre?

Three rules follow from the focus living on the player rather than the city:

• Lose the focused city and the rule falls back to the default on its own; there is nothing to clear.
• A focused city in revolt cannot receive the surplus (see below) and the default recipient is used for the duration — but your focus is not erased, it applies again once the revolt ends.
• A focused city that has reached its population cap (see above) cannot receive it either: a capped city no longer grows, so the food would sit dead in its store. The rule falls back to the default and your focus is still kept. Leaving the focus on a fully grown capital is therefore not a mistake — the food goes to a city that can still grow, or to the granary if none can.

The focus costs no resource, and the end-of-turn check (The turn cycle) does not count it as unfinished business: leaving the focus unset is a valid way to play.

City defense

A city's HP is 15 + 2 × population and its base defense is 3. Playing the Defensive line dynasty a city starts from 6 instead, and the Walls' contribution stacks on top of that (Getting started). Walls raises both. When population grows, the city gains the new population's HP (2) at once.

A friendly unit inside the region does not count as a garrison: the city defends with its own HP and does not strike back at a melee attack, and strikes back at a ranged attacker only with its share (Combat). You defend with units.

The city tile

The city tile itself is filled by the structure: you cannot enter your own city's tile. The one exception is conquest — the unit that takes a city stays on its tile, and an attack on that tile hits the unit rather than the city. You cannot post a guard inside your own city; the units that protect it stand on the adjacent tiles (Combat). The same rule shows up in production: a unit built by a city is born on a passable, empty neighbour of that city — a mountain or water neighbour does not count — and if no neighbour qualifies the item waits, fully funded (The production queue). The Pioneer is consumed when it founds a city, so a new city tile starts unit-free as well.

A city whose HP reaches zero changes hands when an attacking unit enters it: its population drops by 1 (never below 1), its queue and stores are wiped, its buildings survive, and it passes to the new owner at full HP for that new population (Victory conditions). The tile is open only while the city's HP is at zero: a standing city cannot be entered, and a fallen city cannot be attacked — it is entered. The unit that takes the city stays on the tile and cannot come back once it leaves, because the city is now its own.

A player whose capital falls is eliminated: their units leave the board and their remaining cities go to whoever took the capital — in revolt (Victory conditions).

A city in revolt

A city inherited through a fallen capital does not serve its owner for 3 turns: it produces no income (except for the owner of Law, who gets a share of its normal income), its production queue does not advance, it does not repair at the start of the turn, and its defense is multiplied by ×0.5. The city panel shows a revolt badge with the number of turns left.

Score is not affected — the city counts toward its new owner from the moment it changes hands. The full mechanic lives on Victory conditions.

A city you founded yourself, or took in battle, never goes into revolt.

City repair

A damaged city repairs itself: +2 HP at the start of the turn, never above its maximum. Walls raises that to 4.

There are two conditions, and both are sharp. First: a city in revolt does not repair (see above). Second: a city under siege does not repair. The siege test is whether an enemy unit stands on one of the city's 6 neighbours; whether that unit attacked this turn makes no difference. An army waiting at the gate without striking is a blockade too — and so is the unit of a rival you hold a truce with (Diplomacy and truces): the test is standing adjacent, not being able to attack.

What this means in play: driving off a siege now genuinely saves the city. From the turn you kill or push back the besieger, the city starts recovering — but while the army stands at the gate, waiting achieves nothing. You have to remove it.

If you would rather not wait, gold repairs the city instantly: the price is 1 gold per missing HP, and it works under siege and in revolt too (Gold). In a revolting city what you buy is HP only — income (apart from the Law share) and production do not return until the revolt ends.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.