Move and fight
On touch screens, drag to pan and pinch to zoom. Tap a city or soldier to select it; All units and Local squad select groups. Choose Issue order, then tap a destination. Cancel or Escape exits order mode without clearing your squad. City details opens morale and government controls; Research is always available above the map. Tap Queue for the selected city’s real training list. Choose Train, Build or Care in the bottom dock for action cards. Choose This city or All cities to issue one purchase per eligible city; each card quotes the total cost and skipped cities. Set rally point sends future recruits from all cities to one map location. Existing troops keep their orders. Close actions or click the battlefield to dismiss them.
Drag to select. Shift-click adds units. Right-click terrain to move or a hostile city to attack. Units fire automatically and can retreat while moving. By default, idle squads respond to hostile troops within 440 distance or reported city attacks within 1,150 distance, even without direct line of sight. They travel around obstacles to engage. Hold keeps a squad in position; Auto-defend restores this response. Movement orders take priority. Marines travel 150 units/s, over twice the first version's speed.
Lock to Home keeps selected defenders near their city and excludes them from All units. Unlock them to move them freely. Nearby matching troops automatically form a doom stack at ten or more: its number, size and outline show the represented army. Damage lowers its strength, and dead members cannot be healed back. Use Split doom stack to separate it for at least 30 seconds.
Q selects all unlocked troops. H holds. R trains a marine. C centers on a city; F shows the world. WASD, arrow keys, middle-drag, or the minimap move your camera. Scroll to zoom. Space pauses.
Found and build
Click Locate site to find a marked landing pad, then Dispatch & found. Three units travel there; once the area is clear, 320 alloy is spent and a city builds in 14 seconds. Keep that alloy available until they arrive.
Each city has four expansion plots, shared by housing and foundries. City defense towers are no longer purchasable; build separate field bunkers for defense. The original city buildings take no plots. Field bunkers are separate. Use Construction for visible habitats (+20 population cap) and foundries (+20% city industry), with defenses provided by separately placed field bunkers. Cities recover after 10 seconds without a hit: 1 HP/s normally or 5 HP/s for bugs and plants. Command centers never fire; every defense needs living infantry inside. Construction scaffolds show exactly where each structure is going. Field bunker costs 120 alloy: click clear terrain anywhere outside city footprints. An infantry builder travels there and builds for 14 seconds. Only ranged, non-artillery troops may crew bunkers, including ranged scouts; four fit inside. Each crew member has twice their normal range. Melee troops and artillery cannot enter. Empty bunkers cannot fire. Your construction limit is two bunkers per completed city, including unfinished bunkers. Click your bunker for load, unload, resume construction or Demolish; demolition evacuates the crew and gives no refund. Medium and large maps also contain abandoned structures: occupying one claims it, and emptying it releases it. These do not count against your construction limit. Escape or right-click cancels placement.
Conquer countries
At 100 unrest, a city becomes independent. With resentment below 35 it stays neutral and old troops remain loyal. With resentment 35 or higher it declares war on its former ruler and takes all surviving hometown troops, wherever they are stationed. Select a neutral city and Declare war before attacking it. Every faction can be conquered.
Deplete a hostile command center's health to capture the whole city automatically. Its buildings survive. Population falls 22%, morale becomes 18, and unrest becomes 0 under temporary occupation. Old soldiers keep their old allegiance. Devourers destroy defeated enemy cities for 320 alloy. Bugs and plants are always Devourers; other peoples choose before the match. Everyone destroys bug and plant cities for the same reward. Optional Devourers can recapture their own non-hive cities. Ordinary cities facing devourers gain survival resolve and may raise up to six final volunteers below half health. Fixed-force fortress mode gains no extra troops.
Open Diplomacy / peace offers to negotiate with ordinary countries. Human commanders must both agree. Accepted peace keeps borders, cancels mutual attacks and pending strikes, and starts a 120-second truce. Devourers never negotiate.
Govern the aftermath
Foreign cities with active protesters can be targeted with Arm protesters, including neutral countries and human allies. It costs 320 alloy, succeeds 60% of the time, and adds up to 60 unrest. Failure exposes the sponsor. Independent rebels never automatically join the sponsor.
Population grows automatically in each city until its local cap, including people serving in units. Morale affects work and births. Losses near friendly cities cause grief without government blame. Distant losses add resentment and more war weariness. Larger countries, heavy recruitment, crowding and prolonged war budgets strain support. The city panel explains the actual unrest trend and whether a breakaway would be peaceful or armed.
Occupation suppresses unrest temporarily. Relief and negotiations heal wounds. Crackdowns spend limited charges to suppress protests, but accumulate resentment. Repeated repression can push a city into a later revolt.
Design and research
Open Govern to mix five categories with four choices each. Each changed choice costs 20 alloy and adds 2 morale loss and 3 unrest. Reforms cause 26–100 seconds of instability: less alloy output, with 15% slower training, growth, and research. Reforms are never permanently locked.
The Research tab offers ballistics, armor, logistics, and automation. One-time Support training unlocks scouts and healers; Heavy training unlocks heavy fighters and siege. Siege also requires a city foundry. Queue up to 20 projects countrywide; they run one after another, usually 12–21 seconds each. Complete any five upgrades in an era, then research the next era in 20 seconds. Napoleonic → Civil War → World War I → World War II → Modern → Future. Bonuses carry forward, and new branches unlock in later eras. All controlled cities and units benefit. Use Stabilize city for a one-click recovery package: +32 morale, −40 unrest, less grief and resentment, plus a welfare budget. It costs 150 alloy. A quarter of relief is immediate; the rest arrives over 15 seconds. Reuse after 45 seconds. Morale above 45 helps unrest fall, but accumulated resentment and foreign weapons can outweigh it. Security policy determines suppression charges; one recharges every 100 seconds.
Know your opponents
Four command doctrines emphasize scouts, heavy assault, healing defense or siege expansion. Each people gives those doctrines its own name. Hives have all five roles with normal unlocks; each order produces a four-body brood: half health, 75% melee damage, 30% faster movement and quarter population share per body, permanent war, devoured cities and no unrest. Machines have triple health and damage; fourfold price, crew and training work, with much smaller starting armies.
AI recruits continuously and sends coordinated armies into battle, including defensive factions once they can spare an attack force. Cityless AI survivors keep attacking. All countries start at war except co-op allies. Independent states can later be conquered or, after peace, purchased for 1,000 alloy by non-Devourers through Diplomacy. The player legend keeps countries with surviving cities or units; units-only countries remain in play. Defeating every foreign city and army opens the victory statistics.