A short walk from the charter to your first bound reactor. The manual (docs/manual.pdf) has the full rules and every table.
The game opens on the cover: New game takes you to the Charter, Resume puts back the last save and names its season, and How to play opens a short primer. A link with a pinned seed goes straight to the Charter. From the Charter on: Spend exactly 11 picks: codices in the five doctrines open protocol tiers at 1, 3, 5, 7 codices, and each codex also adds one power to your bastion; traits cost one or two picks each. Choose a faction, a difficulty, give your sovereign a name, set how many sovereigns share the age (2–6) and, if you like, a seed for a repeatable world. Press Take the field. Random charter deals a legal one; Resume saved game reloads the autosave.
The screen has two columns: the left is information — Ground (what is under the cursor and the facts of a hold), Protocols (what you know), Realm (the ledger, your holds and units) and Log; the right is controls — orders for the selected stack, the Switchboard, hold build orders, research and casting, and the game buttons. On a narrow screen the columns stack under the map, controls first.
| Control | Action |
|---|---|
| U or Ctrl+Z | Take back the last thing you did this season |
| Q / Shift+Q | Quick save and quick load |
| The ? button | The field book: how to play, and every unit, building, protocol and terrain |
| Sound | A Sound button and volume slider in the Game section; sound starts on your first click or key |
| Envoys | Offer a truce, send gold, or break a truce, in the controls column |
| Click a stack | Select it; the left column (information) shows the stack, the right column (controls) offers its orders |
| Click an adjacent hex | Move the selected stack one hex |
| Click a far hex | March toward it, spending movement |
| Click an enemy stack or hold | Attack; the battle plate opens |
| Drag the glass / wheel / pinch | Pan and zoom the map |
| Move the pointer with a stack selected | The road that march would take is laid out in breadcrumbs |
| Arrows QWEASDZX | Move the cursor one hex; the chosen hex centres on the glass |
| Enter | Select the stack under the cursor |
| N | Next unit with movement left |
| F | Found a hold with a caravan |
| B | Bind the reactor under the stack |
| P | Switch between Surface and Undercity |
| E | End the season |
| Esc | Deselect |
| + − | Zoom |
| Enter / Space on the battle plate | Fight a round; close when the battle is done |
Each turn is a season. During your season you may move every stack that has movement, queue buildings and units in your holds, set research, cast overland protocols off your charge, and drag the three breakers of the Switchboard. When you press End season (E) the computer sovereigns act, holds grow, queues advance, power flows through the breakers, and a new season begins. The game autosaves at the end of every season.
Every unit has movement points; terrain costs one or two, and a stack moves at the pace of its slowest member. Rings on the map are shafts: a stack standing on one may descend to the Undercity or climb to the Surface. Hatched green glass burns any unit that is not radproof. Caravans, built at a Depot, found a new hold on any free hex at least four hexes from another hold. Stand a stack on a cleared reactor and press B to bind it for +4 power.
Attack by moving onto an enemy stack, hold or guarded site. The battle plate opens with attackers on the left and defenders on the right. Fight a round resolves one exchange; Fight it out runs to the end; Fall back withdraws at the cost of a wound to each of your units. Battle protocols are cast off your surge — the cap set by the third breaker — so a sovereign who wants to fight with power must leave the SURGE breaker open. Units in a hold heal 2 a season; resting units 1.
Three roads: conquest — take every rival bastion; the Long Broadcast — bind four reactors of four different doctrines, research the Broadcast, and cast it; or the ledger — hold the best ledger when the horizon falls at season 150.
You fall when your last hold is taken. A rival who completes the Long Broadcast first also ends the age. The end plate names the winner and the reason and offers Look at the map or New game.
The game saves itself at the end of every season, and the Save game button in the Game section of the right column saves at any moment. Both use one browser storage key, tronsoft_rust_sovereigns_save; a new game overwrites it at its first season end. To restart, finish or abandon the age and press New game on the end plate, or reload the page and take the field again from the charter. Storage that is unavailable or full is reported in a toast and the game plays on unsaved.