The Art of War

Everything you need for a first campaign, in the order you will need it.

How to begin

Launch the game from your Tronsoft Games library. The opening screen asks four things:

• Houses — how many houses contend, from two to six.
• Played by people — how many of those houses you and the people beside you will play. One means you against the bots; the full count is a hotseat game passed around one screen.
• Bot temper — cautious, steady, or ruthless.
• Map seed — leave it blank for a fresh board, or type a seed to replay an earlier one. Words work as well as numbers.

Press Sound the drums to begin. If a saved campaign exists, a Resume campaign button appears above it instead of being buried in a menu.

Controls

• Click one of your pieces to select it. Hexes it can march to are outlined with a dashed pale line; hexes it can strike are hatched in red.
• Click a marked hex to march there. Click a hatched hex to attack it.
• Point at any hex to read its ground in the panel on the right, and at a target to read the arithmetic of the attack before you commit to it.
• Click the selected piece again, or press esc, to clear the selection.
• R raises levies. space or enter ends your turn.
• The rules at the top right opens the full rules at any point in a campaign.

Touch works the same way: tap to select, tap to march or strike.

Turn order

Houses take their turns in a fixed order around the board. Which house opens the campaign is drawn when the map is made, so the first move is not tied to a seat. A full circuit of every standing house is one season, and the season counter runs at the top of the screen. A house that has fallen is skipped.

On your turn you give one order: raise levies, or march. Never both. Choosing one closes off the other until your next turn, and this single choice is the spine of the whole game.

Raising levies

Every settler you own that stands on productive ground, is not blockaded, and has an open hex beside it puts one new piece into the field at once. A settler on plain raises a settler; on highland, a soldier; in forest, nothing at all. A settler on your capital raises whichever kind the Capital raises switch is set to, and you may change that switch every turn.

A settler with an enemy soldier alongside it is blockaded and raises nothing. A settler with no open hex beside it — often because your own pieces have crowded it — has nowhere to put a new piece. New pieces appear on the open hex nearest a rival capital.

Movement

Every piece has two movement points, and terrain is paid for on entry: plain costs one, highland and forest cost two each. One piece to a hex; pieces never stack, and you cannot move through your own.

Stepping into a hex beside an enemy soldier halts that piece for the rest of the turn. It may still attack from where it stands. Because rough ground costs two points, a piece that steps onto highland or into forest has nothing left to attack with that turn — broken country slows an assault as surely as it shelters one.

Combat

No dice, and nothing hidden. Attack is 1 for the attacking soldier, plus 1 for every other soldier of yours already touching the target hex. Defence is 1 for a soldier or 0 for a settler, plus the cover of the ground it stands on, plus 2 if it stands on its own capital. Soldiers standing beside a defender do not add to its defence.

• Attack higher than defence — the defenders break and you advance into the hex.
• Attack equal to defence — both companies are destroyed and the hex is left empty.
• Attack lower than defence — your attack is thrown back and the company is lost.
• A settlement overrun by a lone company is put to the sword. One taken with a soldier in support surrenders and changes allegiance, joining your economy intact.

Settlers never attack. An attack ends the attacking piece's turn.

Scoring: the mandate

Every house has a mandate score, shown in the houses table from the first season. It counts 10 for each rival capital you have taken, 4 for each settler, 3 for each soldier, and 2 for each settlement ready to raise this turn. It is a running measure of who is winning, and it decides the campaign if nobody wins outright.

Winning

Put a soldier on a rival capital and that house falls at once: its soldiers are removed, its settlers swear to you, and its capital becomes ordinary ground. Take every capital and you rule the empire.

If more than one house is still standing when season 60 closes, the campaign ends and the mandate goes to the highest score.

Losing

You are out when an enemy soldier stands on your capital, or when you have no pieces left on the board at all. There is no elimination for running out of money or time — only for losing your capital or your last piece.

Saving and restarting

The campaign saves itself to this browser after every turn. Close the tab and the opening screen will offer to Resume campaign, telling you which season it left off in.

New campaign at the top right opens the setup screen; starting a campaign there replaces the save. Finishing a campaign clears it, and the verdict screen offers another. The game reads and writes one storage key of its own and never touches another game's data.