You inherit a small city-state. Feed your people, set your taxes and your justice, raise marketplaces, mills, a palace and a cathedral, keep an army — and rise from the lowest knighthood to King or Queen before death takes you.
Standing is shown for rulers only; barons do not seek the crown. “With you” shows pacts and trade roads between the ruler whose turn it is and each court.
Choose your laws and cast the horoscope.
Each cast plays the coming years with your present edicts, buying grain to hold the chosen ration and building steadily (marketplaces, mills, palace, cathedral) while keeping enough soldiers; rivals follow their own tempers. Harvests, rats, plague, invaders and tidings are rolled afresh in every cast. Your real game is untouched.
Each year your deeds are weighed and you may rise one title: Sir → Baron → Count → Marquis → Duke → Grand Duke → Prince → King (Lady → … → Queen). The first ruler crowned wins. A title once won is never lost — though with Dynasties on, an heir begins one title below the ruler who died — but death comes for everyone — some sooner than others.
Victory and defeat. You win when you are crowned King or Queen. You lose if a computer ruler is crowned first, if your reign ends — by age or sickness, an assassin, a starving mob or rebels — with no heir to follow (turn on Dynasties to let an heir take up the line), or if a Dynasties game reaches 1550 with no one crowned. Either way the Chronicle tells your reign and A New Reign starts again.
Most years bring news: trade fairs, floods, locusts, pilgrims, bandits, a papal legate. Some ask a decision — a Bishop's tithe, a condottiere's company, a noble wedding, a Florentine loan (3,000 fl now, 1,150 a year for three years), famine refugees at the gate. Decide before you go to market.
Each phase carries the Steward's counsel: how much grain to hold to feed generously and still sow next spring, how much land your serfs can work, what your taxes are doing to the economy, and which works buy the most standing per florin. Fold it away once you know the realm.
This is the solo edition: you are the only human ruler. Every other seat is a computer ruler with a temper: Prudent (moderate taxes, fair courts, steady building), Ambitious (buys land, builds the palace early, raids now and then) or Iron-fisted (heavy taxes, harsh courts, a large army and a taste for war). Computer rulers race you to the crown and may march on your city.
Before you commit to a policy, ask the Astrologer (header, or F). Set taxes, justice, the yearly ration and how many years ahead; it plays those years sixty times with fresh dice and shows the lean, middle and fat outcomes for your serfs, treasury, standing and mood, the chances of rising in title, of riots, of death and of a rival's crown, and a fan chart of your standing against the title thresholds. Use these taxes carries the rates to the Exchequer.
Saves (or S) offers three slots beside the autosave, export of the game to a file and import from one, and display options: larger text, high contrast, a still map, quiet music and separate volume sliders for sound effects and music. A new game can be guided: through 1400 and 1401 the Steward points at what to do in each phase.
Your people's mood (0–100, shown on the left) moves each census: a full ration lifts it and hunger crushes it; total tax above 35% and harsh courts sour it; low taxes, fair courts, Poor Relief, the Annual Fair and cathedral works sweeten it; plague and invasion shake it. A happy city draws more immigrants and at 80 or more its sales tax yields 10% more. Below 25 the mob may riot — looting the treasury, killing soldiers, burning a marketplace — and a ruler whose people fall below 10 may not survive the year.
At the market each neighbouring city quotes its own grain price. Buy where it is cheap and sell where it is dear; carriage costs 15% each way, only 5% with cities you hold a pact with, and each city deals in at most 10,000 steres a year. Undo trades restores these too.
Sixteen deeds (from Ennobled to The Just Crown) are kept in your browser across games and listed in the Annals. The Annals and the end of the game also tell your reign as a chronicle.
In Works you can also build straight from the map: click the palace, cathedral, market square, a mill site on the river or your army.
In the Exchequer you may proclaim standing laws, each with a proclamation fee and a yearly upkeep paid with your revenues: the Granary Ordinance (rats take at most 10%), Poor Relief (starvation halved, and no starving mob will tear you down; costs grow with your serfs), the Guild Charter (merchants settle under 45% customs + sales, but the guilds keep 15% of sales tax), Watch and Ward (20% fewer soldiers needed, each costs a florin more) and the Annual Fair (immigrants' appeal ×1.25, more merchants). Repealing is free. Your tax settings are kept while you proclaim or repeal.
Begin from the classic inheritance or from four others: The Hungry Years (thin stores, three lean harvests), A Debt-Laden Throne (a palace wing and six years of Florentine payments), The Border March (wide land, stronger barons) and The Merchant Republic (markets and merchants but few fields).
At the market, Undo trades restores the treasury, grain and land to how they stood when you arrived. The Annals add a chart of every ruler's standing in multi-ruler games and a Download CSV of your year-by-year record.
Once a year, in Works, you may send envoys with gifts to a neighbour. Barons usually accept; computer rulers accept by temper. A pact means three years of peace: neither side may march on the other, and pacted barons will not invade you. If every baron is bound to you, only wandering condottieri remain and invasions come half as often.
The Granary shows what a ration is likely to do before you commit — the range of births, deaths, starvation, immigration and flight, and the chance of invasion. The ranges are the dice's own bounds; plague comes on top.
You may run into debt; it grows 10% a year. Sink too far and your creditors seize your works and most of your land.
Your title is weighed from your marketplaces, mills, palace, cathedral, treasury, land, merchants, nobles, soldiers, clergy, serfs and public works — each counts up to a limit, so a balanced realm rises fastest. Justice is weighed too: every step above Very Fair costs 3 standing (Moderate −3, Harsh −6, Outrageous −9), and a hostile Church costs 2 more. The ladder on the left shows how close you are to the next title.
The Annals (header) chart every ruler's people, estates, treasury, grain and standing year by year, break the standing down part by part, and list each year's harvest, ration, taxes and revenue.
Every hex has a soil: river bottomland beside the Fiumaccio yields ×1.4 (and costs 1.3× the land price), meadow ×1.1, hill country ×0.8 (0.8× the price), woodland ×0.5 (0.7× the price). Your farmers always sow the best hexes first, so the soil of what you hold sets the yield of every harvest (shown on the left and in the harvest report). At the market you may buy land by quantity, which takes the nearest hexes, or click any hex that borders your land to claim that very hex (claimable hexes are outlined in gold during the Market). In Works, click a woodland hex of your own to clear it for 300 florins and make it meadow.
In Works, click a hex next to your walls — your own land, open country, or the river for a bridge — to lay a road (150 fl on your land, 250 fl in the wilds, 600 fl for a bridge), and extend it hex by hex. When an unbroken road runs from your walls to the border of a neighbour's domain, a trade route opens: 200 fl a year plus a share of their size, half again with a pact; carriage on grain bought or sold there drops from 15% to 8% (3% with a pact); and the merchants' guild is pleased. But a road to an unpacted baron is also a road for his army: each one raises the risk of invasion by a tenth. Prudent and Ambitious rulers build roads too.
A computer ruler or baron with twice your soldiers (and at least sixty) may demand tribute. Pay, and they swear peace for two years at the cost of some pride; defy them, and they march — you may throw them back, or lose land.
Courts (or C) lays every ruler and baron side by side: standing, serfs, land, treasury, army, mood, the estates' favour, works, and your pacts and roads with each. Saves now also offers quiet music.
Besides the mood of the people, three estates hold an opinion of you (0–100, on the left). The merchants' guild likes feeding, light customs and sales tax (under the merchant threshold), marketplaces and the Guild Charter. The nobility likes feeding, income tax under 12%, palace wings and the Annual Fair, and hates outrageous courts. The clergy like fair courts, cathedral works and Poor Relief, and resent hunger and harsh justice. Every opinion also drifts back toward the middle each year.
At 80 or more an estate sends you more of its members. Below 30 its members leave, and aggrieved merchants hide a fifth of their trade and aggrieved nobles a quarter of their income from your tax collectors. The Church's displeasure (below 25) costs 2 standing; its devotion (85+) adds half a point. Paying the Bishop's tithe or hosting a noble wedding wins favour; refusing loses it.
In years without other tidings, the most aggrieved estate — or the serfs themselves — may petition you: paving a street, a charter of free passage, a tournament, a year's exemption from income tax, a hospice, mercy in your courts, remission of rents, a feast day. Granting costs florins but wins favour; refusing loses it.
At each year's end the Steward sums up what happened and why: where your serfs came from and went, where the money came from and went, what moved your standing, how the estates feel, and one thing to do better. The map shows the season as the year turns from harvest to winter.
In Works, click any hex of your land to improve it (one work to a hex; works on land you lose are lost with it, and each adds a quarter-point of public works):
The plan is a hex map: each hex is about 100 hectares. Your fields grow outward from the walls hex by hex as you buy land (gold when sown, brown when fallow, scorched when an invader takes them), bounded by a gold border; the river runs through blue hexes where your mills stand; unclaimed meadow, woodland and hill country lie between you and your neighbours, whose domains are tinted in their colours. Hover any hex for its use and coordinates.
The centre shows your city-state: walls that swell with your people, fields (gold when sown, brown when fallow), mills on the river, the market piazza, the palace and cathedral growing wing by wing, the granary and your soldiers. Drag to pan; use the wheel, pinch or the buttons to zoom.
Keys: Enter continue · A Annals · F Astrologer · C Courts · S Saves · R Rules · + / − zoom · 0 fit the map · Esc close.
After the 1978 BASIC game by George Blank. This is an original browser implementation; the formulas and text are new.