⬡ 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.
v1.2.0 battlefield controls
- N cycles to the next unmoved unit.
- Hover a reachable destination to preview movement cost and route.
- Hover an enemy destination with a selected unit to see a combat estimate.
- Use the minimap to inspect the strategic situation and click it to recenter the main map.
- Choose AI difficulty on the campaign setup screen.
v1.3.0 tactical warfare
- Units now have 3 strength points. Combat can damage a unit without destroying it.
- Survivors earn XP and gain Veteran levels that improve combat performance.
- Land defenders receive a terrain bonus; defenders in cities receive a larger fortified bonus.
- Damaged units recover one strength point when starting your turn in a friendly city.
- Friendly cities now use production queues. Click unit types to append them, then use Repeat Queue or Clear Queue as needed.
- Campaign setup supports Conquest, Domination, and Turn-limit Score victories.
- The campaign autosaves at player turn boundaries. Manual Save remains available.
- Use the Sound button to enable or disable synthesized game effects.
Operational Orders (v1.4)
Select a friendly unit and choose Orders. Sentry holds position, Return to Base seeks the nearest friendly city, and Move Route lets you click a distant explored hex to create a persistent multi-turn route. Wake/Manual returns the unit to direct control.
Use Overlay to cycle through ownership, enemy threat, and friendly supply-range views. Friendly cities can set rally points so newly produced units receive a route toward a chosen operational area. The Strategic Overview summarizes your forces, production queues, rally points, and recent campaign events.
Scenarios and Scenario Editor (v1.7)
Use Scenarios on the start screen to load or import scenario JSON. Use Scenario Editor to create a map, paint land/water, place cities and forces, assign objectives, then export an Empire Scenario Format 1.0 JSON file.
During play, Turn Briefing summarizes threats, isolation, contacts, production readiness, and recent battles. The Intelligence screen preserves last-known enemy positions after contact is lost.
Operational Planning (v1.8)
- Hover a highlighted destination for movement cost, remaining movement, route length, supply, and tactical combat information.
- Older enemy contacts remain as expanding, fading uncertainty rings for up to eight turns.
- Task Forces can use Move Formation; click a destination and members receive coordinated routes while preserving spacing where possible.
- Production queue items can be moved earlier/later or removed with the controls shown on each queue chip.
- End Turn warns about idle units, isolated formations, threatened cities, and blocked deployments.
- The AI now forms defensive and offensive fronts and concentrates forces toward higher-priority objectives.
v1.9 Operational Warfare
Land units project a Zone of Control into adjacent hexes. Entering an enemy ZOC stops continued movement, so defensive lines and breakthroughs matter. Adjacent friendly combat units can support an attack or defense, while Headquarters units provide command and supply influence within three hexes.
Defeated units may retreat to a safe neighboring hex. If a defender retreats, a compatible attacker advances into the vacated hex. Units that remain isolated or encircled for multiple turns can lose strength through attrition. Use the Fronts overlay to identify contested sectors.
v2.0 Command, Logistics & Combined Arms
- Engineers can use Orders → Build Road. Road hexes improve land mobility and extend local supply reach.
- Artillery and Cruisers can bombard visible enemy units within two hexes by selecting the firing unit and clicking the target.
- Bombers are long-range air attack units and require the same fuel/airfield discipline as fighters.
- Land formations gain combined-arms bonuses when coordinated with artillery, HQs, and nearby friendly aircraft.
- Land units that remain stationary become entrenched, increasing their defense over time.
- Use Orders → Set Reserve to hold a formation in strategic reserve, or Plan Operation to route nearby land units toward a map objective.
- Weather changes at the start of player turns. Rain, storms, and snow affect movement and combat, especially air operations.
- Cycle the Overlay control to Roads to inspect the infrastructure network.
v2.1 Theater Planning
Computer opponents now organize their land war before moving individual units. The AI identifies threatened friendly cities and offensive city objectives, chooses staging areas, estimates required Army/Artillery/HQ strength, assigns formations to fronts, and preserves an operational reserve when the situation permits.
The Fronts overlay remains compatible with this planner, but the underlying AI now distinguishes staging, defense, offense, and reserve assignments instead of treating every objective as an independent target.
v2.1.1 AI Corrections
- AI Engineers now build roads normally when their position and movement allow it.
- AI cities preserve production queues instead of replacing them every turn.
- Healthy, supplied formations are preferred for strategic reserve duty.
- Badly damaged AI Armies are assigned to refit near friendly cities when the front is not in an emergency.
v2.1.2 Stabilization
- Strategic reserve scoring now correctly rewards In Supply and Low Supply formations.
- Campaign Roads Built and Bombardments statistics now report Player 0 actions only.
- Save migration now upgrades campaigns through the v2.1.2 stabilization rules.
v2.1.3 Input Hotfix
- Click a friendly Army or other unit normally to select it.
- Map panning begins only after an actual drag, so a normal click is no longer intercepted by pointer capture.
v2.1.4 Automatic Next Unit
After a player-controlled unit completes an activation-ending action such as combat, bombardment, embarkation, or city capture, Empire Hex selects and centers the next unit still awaiting manual orders. Sentry, Strategic Reserve, automated-order, destroyed, and out-of-movement units are skipped.
v2.1.5 Movement Flow
- After a normal move, a unit remains selected while it still has movement points, allowing consecutive moves in one activation.
- When its movement reaches zero, the next eligible player unit is selected automatically.
- Done / Next Unit (N) ends the selected unit's remaining movement and advances to the next unit.
- A victorious Army now advances into an enemy city after destroying its defender and captures the city from that hex.