MischkaLoMania

Creating & joining a world

• Any member with permission to play can create a world: name, 2 to 8 slots, start and end era (1 to 9 each), a game speed of 1 to 10 minutes per round, and 0 to 7 AI opponents sharing one difficulty level.
• Map size depends on player count: 3×3 for 2–3 players, 4×4 for 4–5, 5×5 sectors for 6–8. Some tiles are impassable gaps; every home sector is guaranteed to stay connected. Neighbours are only the four directly adjacent sectors, not the diagonal ones.
• When you join, you choose a free player colour – blue, red, green, yellow, purple, orange, turquoise or pink – and get a home sector at the edge of the map with a stronghold already built. Once every slot is filled, the world starts.
• The game speed applies to everything: growth, gathering, research, production, build times, combat and AI turns all run in rounds of the chosen length.

AI opponents

AI opponents join the world immediately and are named Rotbart, Nachtfalke, Eisenhand, Sturmkralle, Steinbeißer, Glutauge, Wolfszahn and Schattenfuchs. They play by the same rules as you, with no hidden bonuses: they assign their population, research, produce, station defence weapons, found strongholds in empty neighbouring sectors, take over abandoned strongholds – and attack the weakest neighbour once they feel strong enough. They treat humans and other AI players the same way.

AI players are marked with their level in the rankings.

Stronghold & population

You start with 30 people; a stronghold holds at most 500. Only free, unassigned people reproduce. Anyone gathering, researching, producing or defending doesn't add to the population – so you're constantly weighing growth against work.

Gathering, research & production

• Gatherers extract raw materials – one per era: wood, stone, bone, tin, copper, iron, silver, gold and lead. The first three are available from the start, tin through iron from the fourth era with a mine, silver through lead from the seventh.
• Every sector has its own finite deposits: 500 to 1,500 units per resource, chosen at random. Once a deposit is exhausted, your gatherers can no longer extract anything there. Deposits belong to the sector – whoever conquers a stronghold inherits what's left.
• Researchers work on three separate tracks: attack weapon, defence weapon and shield. The first step on each track costs 10 wood; every further upgrade costs enough research points plus 100 units of the current era's resource.
• Producers manufacture the researched weapons. Each weapon has a recipe – a rock costs 2 stone, a spear costs 1 wood and 1 stone or bone, a cannon costs 3 wood and 3 iron, an atomic bomb costs 10 iron, 5 gold and 5 silver. If materials are short, fewer weapons are produced. Older weapons remain available too.
• Buildings: mine, factory and laboratory – one of each per stronghold, with a build time of 10 rounds. A new stronghold takes 3 to 60 minutes: the more settlers you send, the faster it's built.

The nine eras

Each era increases your weapons' striking power, your defences' resilience, and the speed at which your shield repairs the stronghold.

Deploying: found, capture, reinforce, besiege

With a single action, you send people – armed if you like – into another sector. What happens depends on the target:

• Empty sector: you found a new stronghold.
• Abandoned stronghold: you take it over – research and storage there start from scratch.
• Your own stronghold: your people reinforce it as a garrison.
• Someone else's stronghold: you start a siege, or join one already underway.

Siege & combat

• People versus people: only the defenders you've sent out in front of the stronghold, plus the garrison, actually fight. Anyone who stays inside the stronghold is safe. Defenders have a home advantage.
• Weapons count: an unarmed person has 1 combat power, an armed one roughly 3.6 to 9.75 depending on the era. Headcount determines losses, while combat power determines the damage dealt.
• Stronghold under fire: only armed attackers damage the stronghold. Stationed defence weapons and armed defenders reduce the damage, and the shield keeps repairing it.
• If the stronghold falls, it becomes abandoned and can be taken over. If every attacker has fallen or withdrawn, the defender wins.
• Each unit can retreat individually. If its home stronghold no longer exists, it's lost.
• The fallen take their weapons to the grave; recalled defenders return theirs to storage.

The atomic bomb

In worlds that reach the Modern Age, you can research and build the atomic bomb. It can strike any sector on the map: the stronghold and all its buildings are wiped out, and the sector becomes permanently uninhabitable. Your entire stock of atomic bombs is used up in the process.

Game interface

The game runs in its own animated interface right in your browser – including full screen or in a new tab. On the left you see the minimap in player colours, your stats and an action bar that only offers what's currently possible. In the centre is your sector with its stronghold, mine, factory and laboratory, along with your workers, defenders and attackers. Sliders take effect the moment you release them, the display refreshes automatically every 15 seconds, and clicking the minimap switches sectors without reloading the page.

Points & victory

Points are awarded for resources gathered, people born, defeated opponents and the highest era reached. Defeated players stay on the ranking too – with a gravestone next to their name.