⬡ Empire — How to Play

A turn-based hex-grid wargame of exploration, sea power, and conquest.

How to Begin

Launch the game from your Tronsoft Games library. On the start screen choose a map size, the number of AI opponents (1–3), and how many neutral cities to scatter across the map, then press Begin Campaign. A fresh archipelago is generated for you, and you start with one city and one army, everything else hidden by fog.

Controls

• Click a unit (a colored circle bearing a letter) to select it. Its reachable hexes are outlined in yellow.
• Click a highlighted hex to move there, attack whatever occupies it, or embark onto a friendly transport.
• Click one of your cities (marked ⌂) to open its production panel and choose what to build.
• Scroll to zoom, drag to pan the map.
• Press End Turn when you are finished moving.
• The Unload Cargo Here button appears when a selected transport is carrying armies; it drops them onto adjacent land.

Turn Order

Turns proceed in a fixed order: you act first, then each AI empire in turn. At the end of every player's turn each of their cities adds to its production, finished units appear, and fighters burn a point of fuel unless sitting on a friendly city. Play then passes to the next living empire.

Movement

Each unit has a movement allowance spent one hex at a time across the six hex directions.

Unit	Symbol	Moves	Sight	Travels on
Army	A	1	1	Land (or aboard a transport)
Fighter	F	5	3	Anywhere (limited fuel)
Transport	T	3	1	Water — carries up to 6 armies
Destroyer	D	4	2	Water — detects submarines
Submarine	S	3	1	Water — invisible to the enemy

To invade another island: build a Transport in a coastal city, move an Army onto the transport to embark, sail it beside the target shore, and use Unload Cargo Here to land the army next to the enemy city.

Combat

• Move a unit onto an enemy-occupied hex to attack it. The winner is decided by each side's attack or defense strength multiplied by a random swing.
• A unit defending inside a city gets a defense bonus.
• If the attacker wins and the hex holds an enemy or neutral city, the city is captured and flips to your color.
• Submarines are hidden from opponents unless an enemy destroyer sits next to them, which is what makes destroyers the counter to subs.

Winning

You win when every rival empire has lost all of its cities and yours is the last empire standing. Neutral cities do not count as a rival — you may finish the game with some still unclaimed.

Losing

You lose the moment your last city is captured, even if you still have units on the map.

Saving and Restarting

This release does not save games between sessions. To start over, reload the game from the library and press Begin Campaign for a brand-new random map. When a game ends, a Play Again button restarts immediately.