The Field Manual in the game tells you the rules. This guide tells you how experienced players win: how to run a big empire without endless clicking, how the computer nations think, how to break a stalemate and how the end of the season really works.
Your whole country can train a fixed number of troops per turn. A big order does not appear at once: it is split over the coming turns. A Military Base adds the most capacity, a Heavy Complex and a Factory add some too, and the Industrial path and the Supply research raise it further. Want a big army fast? Build capacity first, then order.
On Army, Quick recruit spends a quarter or half of your treasury in one tap on the units that give you the most attack and defence for your money. Use it when you need troops now and do not want to work out the mix yourself.
On Army, every tab has a coordinate field. Type 1:2:7 for one land or 1:2 for a whole sector, and press Enter: on Targets it opens the attack window, on Scout it sends scouts, on Calculator it fills in the battle. Your last six coordinates stay as chips under the field.
Any coordinate opens a menu with Watch this land. Army › Targets then shows your watched lands every turn, with their defence (where you scouted) and score, and how they moved over the last 5 turns: wait until a target is weak, then strike. Whole sector (or typing 1:2) shows a sortable table of every land in that sector, the classic way to find the weak spot.
On Build › Troops, Hire mercenaries (auxiliaries in Romaterra) turns idle money into troops at once, outside the training queue. They cost three times the normal price and come once every 10 turns. Handy right before an attack lands.
The game has standing orders for the boring parts: a build plan (up to 5 buildings that start as soon as you can pay), a research plan, Keep my army (it trains back up to the size you choose) and auto-buy on the market for what runs out. Set them once and spend your turns on decisions.
On Army › Defend a land, pick one land and press Rally here. Every 3 turns the troops that were trained or came home since then march there by themselves, while a quarter of your army always stays home. Put it on your front line and stop walking troops over by hand.
On Build, press Copy this land on a land you have built up well. Every land you take after that starts the same buildings by itself, and keeps trying for 10 turns when money or room is short.
A huge army fights less efficiently than its size suggests: logistics drag it down, to as little as half its strength. Supply Trucks in the army and the Supply research soften that. A few strong units in a smaller army often hit harder than a crowd of cheap ones.
The same battle always ends the same way. There is no luck in combat, so the Calculator shows you the exact result before you send a single soldier. Use it before every big attack.
A computer general judges your land by his scouting report. If he has not scouted it, he guesses, and his guess can be wrong. He calls off an attack he thinks will fail, so a well defended land is often left alone. But do not count on the exact minimum: his guess changes, and a scouted weak spot gets hit.
Computer nations remember who attacked them and who helped them, and they band together against whoever runs too far ahead. A non-aggression pact with your neighbours early on keeps you out of a war on two fronts later.
Computer allies send troops when you are attacked, but only help that arrives before the attack lands counts. Help from your own sector is quick; from another sector it takes about five turns, and from the other side of the world much longer. Radar warns you earlier, which gives your allies more time. Help that arrives after the battle stays to guard the land against the next wave.
Once you are among the top three of the world, pressure on you builds for every turn you lead undisturbed. Events warns you first (Your lead is noticed), then nearby nations strike your weakest land, and whole alliances hunt any of your lands. After you lose a land you get a few quiet turns. When no single neighbour can beat you, up to three of them strike the same land in the same turn. They still only attack when their own battle maths say they win, so guard your weakest land, not only your capital.
Army › Defend a land lists every neighbour that has an opinion of you: its trust, its grudge and the reasons, such as − you took their land or + you kept a pact to the end. Next to it: Make amends when they hold a grudge, Offer a pact when they trust you. Helping a neighbour hold a land, trading and keeping pacts all count, not only attacks.
The nations of a theater talk to each other. Take their land or break a pact and your name goes down there: they refuse pacts and deals and more of them join the pressure on you. Help a neighbour hold and keep your pacts and it goes up: they do not prey on you for looking weak. Your name fades back to neutral over time.
The attack window says who owns a land and what kind of nation it is. A defender never strikes a nation first, but hits back when its walls hold. An opportunist strikes the nation whose army has marched away, so keep something at home. Traders and diplomats come to their neighbours with deals and pacts. Raiders and conquerors simply attack often.
A computer general looks again on the last turn a recall is allowed. If your defence has grown too strong, his army turns back, under the same rule as yours. A weak nation that holds a grudge and cannot win asks you for peace by message; accept it and the grudge is laid to rest.
Four things keep a land with its owner even when you win: beginner protection, a raised shield, the one-time emergency shield of a last land (24 turns), and an ally whose larger army fought beside you. The attack window warns you beforehand and the battle report names the reason afterwards.
Nations cannot attack each other's lands inside their own home sector, and they can defend each other there. The rule is about the land: lands outside your home sector are open, both ways.
On Army › Defend a land, next to each nation that is coming at you: Buy peace (it leaves your lands alone for 20 turns and turns back the armies already on the way) or pay a neighbour to hit them (that nation marches on your attacker as soon as it can win; if it cannot within 6 turns, you get half your money back).
Around turn 100 the borders are often full of bunkers and forts, and a head-on attack costs far too much. Open the attack window on a target that is too strong: it lists the ways round the wall. In short:
Spy missions knock out a target's radar or power grid for 3 turns, raid its treasury, stir up unrest, steal research points or put its best commander out of action for 6 turns. Hit the radar or the commander just before your army lands.
The top units come from the doctrines in Research. The Juggernaut doctrine brings huge, heavy units (Titan Mechs in Terrastate) that pack a lot of power into a small army; the Asymmetric doctrine brings fast swarms and elite recon (Swarm Drones in Terrastate). One army of these breaks a wall that ten ordinary armies bounce off.
Every region has its ground. Mountains (+15%), cities (+10%), forest (+8%) and coast (+3%) help the defender; open ground helps the attacker. Tanks struggle in mountains and cities, aircraft see little over forest, infantry fights well in cities. The map shows the ground of each region, and the Calculator counts it exactly. Attack a fortress in the mountains with infantry and air, not with tanks.
On the map, switch to Conflict: lands where your scouts saw an army turn purple when that army is stronger than your attack, grey-purple when you can beat it.
A joint attack with your alliance lands as one blow. Combined, the alliance can take what no member can take alone.
Break a non-aggression pact and strike at once: you get a one-time surprise bonus of +35%. The world will remember it.
To win the season you take the prize (the Nexus, Roma or the Capital Sector), build its command centre and hold it for a number of turns. Two rules decide most endgames.
Only three attacking armies fight at the prize at the same time. Every other army waits outside and shows waits on the map; it goes in as soon as a place is free. Ten small armies therefore block the door for your strongest one.
Once the command centre stands, the holder's defence grows by 15% for every turn it is held, up to +150% after 10 turns. Losing a single battle there does not reset the count; only losing the prize itself does.