Welcome to Kaiser-Imperium

Kaiser-Imperium is a free, turn-based medieval strategy game. You rise from a humble beginning to the most powerful Emperor by growing an economy, feeding your people, researching technology and waging war for land.

This manual is the complete reference — every mechanic and every number that matters. All values in green (like 50.000 gold) are the numbers this round is actually being played with.

The core loop

Your turns refill around the clock on their own. Building, researching, trading, training and launching attacks cost no turns — you do those freely in between. Only ending a turn spends a turn and simulates time: troops march and fight, buildings produce, your people eat and grow, taxes flow in, your military demands its pay and your labs research. For the league table at the round's end, land is not the only thing that counts — every rank-up scores points (the King and Emperor ranks especially), and holding the best research in an area earns bonus points too. Only gold and your standing army don't count.

League & Season

Kaiser-Imperium is built on fairness: nobody is unbeatable just because they started years ago. Play is split into a yearly league made of many league rounds.

• Each round lasts exactly 3 weeks (21 days) and starts & ends on a Sunday at 18:00 (Europe/Berlin). The first round of a new year always starts on the first Sunday of January at 18:00; the leftover days at year's end are a short season break.
• At the end of a round your realm is scored: land, your rank and your top research together make up your league points — gold and standing army do not count.
• Then the world is hard-reset: all realms, buildings, research and armies return to the start values. Your account and your accumulated league points from past rounds are kept. The inbox, the chats and the news are cleared along with the world — they are about realms that no longer exist.

How the points add up: every rank you reach is worth 150, and the top two ranks add big one-off bonuses — King (rank 18) +100 and Emperor (rank 19) +250. Each of the 12 research areas in which you hold the highest value earns 50, and your land counts at a tenth of its normal point value. A full Emperor therefore banks 3,200 points from rank alone, before any land or research.

This lets you try a brand-new strategy every round: an all-economy Bohemia build this round, a feared warlord the next.

Getting Started

You begin with a full warehouse and an empty map. Your people have roofs over their heads and your stores hold gold, grain, timber and iron — but not a single farm, mine or workshop stands on your land. That is deliberate: what gets built first is your decision, and every one of the 12 factions starts from exactly the same position, so nobody begins with an advantage. Your grain feeds your people for a while, and the iron in your stores is capital: sell it at the Imperial Market and turn it into whatever you actually need.

What you start with

Stores	Amount	Land & buildings	Count
Gold	50.000	House	3
Grain	7.000	Meadows	24
Timber	131	Tax rate	10%
Iron	31
Population	120
Turns	90

Only meadows, no forest and no mountain — and that is on purpose. Meadows are the one kind of land every faction needs: houses, farms and laboratories all stand on them. Forest and mountain are not needed by everyone, so which of them you buy is your first real decision, and it follows from what your faction does best.

Two settings come pre-configured: your tax rate starts at 10% (neutral), and your grain distribution starts on Minimal consumption — every citizen eats 5 grain per turn, so your people consume 600 every single turn from the very first one. There are 3 levels in total, from the leanest to the most generous; switch between them any time on the grain page.

Note the two numbers that matter most: your stores hold 7.000 grain and are not being replenished. Farms are therefore the first thing every ruler builds — and the land they stand on has to be bought first.

The guided introduction

You do not have to work all of that out on your own. Right after choosing your faction you are asked whether you would like to be shown around. The introduction walks you through 21 steps: what sits where on the screen, buying land, selling on the Local Market, putting up buildings, setting research and watching a level tick over — and it ends with your first promotion to Serf.

While it runs, only the highlighted control can be clicked, and every change of page goes through the menu on the left — the point is that you know your way around afterwards. You can stop at any time using the “Cancel tutorial” button in the speech bubble, and declining costs you nothing: the starting package is exactly the same either way. Nothing is handed to you that a player without the introduction would not get.

Start the introduction again — this works at any time, from any rank.

Choosing your Faction

Before you take the throne you pick one of 12 factions. Your choice is binding for the whole round. Every faction grants a flat bonus added per matching building, each turn — the icon shows which good, the number is the flat bonus, and the building it applies to is named beside it.

Böhmen

+432 per Gold Mine

Bayern

+3 per Brewery

Schwaben

+6 per Laboratory

Franken

+1 per Quarry

Sachsen

+2 per Coal Mine + Charcoal Kiln

Thüringen

+2 per Iron Mine

Mähren

+1 per Woodcutter

Kärnten

+36 per Farm

Pommern

+1 per Weaponsmith

Holstein

+1 per Blacksmith

Westfalen

+1 per Horse Farm

Österreich

+100 DEF per Castle

Austria is the exception — its bonus is castle defense in battle, not production: each castle then defends with 500 instead of 400 (see War & Combat).

Is one faction stronger than another?

No — and that is not luck, it is arithmetic. Every faction bonus is exactly half of what its building produces anyway (+50%), and the market floor prices are set so that one worker earns the same over the whole production chain, whichever good it is. The raw numbers look wildly different — +1 weapon against +400 gold — yet they are worth the same. The column that decides is the last one.

Faction	Building	Bonus	Workers	Value / turn	Gold / worker
Böhmen	Gold Mine	+432	16	432	27,0
Bayern	Brewery	+3	8	216	27,0
Schwaben	Laboratory	+6	12	–	–
Franken	Quarry	+1	10	270	27,0
Sachsen	Coal Mine + Charcoal Kiln	+2	16	432	27,0
Thüringen	Iron Mine	+2	16	432	27,0
Mähren	Woodcutter	+1	5	135	27,0
Kärnten	Farm	+36	8	216	27,0
Pommern	Weaponsmith	+1	20	540	27,0
Holstein	Blacksmith	+1	20	540	27,0
Westfalen	Horse Farm	+1	10	270	27,0
Österreich	Castle	+100	–	–	–

Value per turn is the net value. For factions with a recipe — Bavaria, Holstein, Pomerania, Westphalia — the extra input the bonus consumes is already deducted. A Pomeranian weaponsmith makes one more weapon worth 1.863 gold, but it also swallows the wood, coal and iron for it: what is left over is the smith's own work. That is why every faction lands between 27,0 and 27,0 gold per worker.

Where the differences really are: not in strength, but in character. Bohemia's bonus is gold and needs no supplier — safe, but it never rises above its own value. Pomerania and Holstein have to buy 50% more raw material every turn: they depend on the market, they carry the price risk, and their bonus sits on the most worker-dense building in the game, so it yields the most per field. Carinthia's bonus rides on farms, which you build many of anyway. Swabia and Austria have no economic bonus at all — theirs pay off in research and in castle defence.

Figures use the market floor prices; the real price is usually above it. Saxony is calculated with the coal mine; the charcoal kiln gets the same bonus and is worth exactly the same.

Tip: specialise on the good your faction boosts, build many of that production building, and pour research into it — then trade the surplus on the global market.

Turns & the Turn Sequence

Turns are your most precious resource. You gain one automatically every 4 minutes, even offline. You can bank at most 360 turns (= exactly 24 hours). When you press End turn, time is simulated; you may end up to 10 turns at once.

What one processed turn does — in this exact order

Every ended turn runs these steps strictly in order. Each step changes the population and resources the next step reads, so the order is not cosmetic — it is the mechanic.

1. Armies arrive: incoming attacks are fought, returning troops and conquered land come home, and finished recruits join your army.
2. Your people eat and drink: wheat and beer are consumed by the population you had at the start of the turn — exactly the two figures your top bar showed you beforehand.
3. Your people change: births and deaths (depending on how well-fed they are), then everyone who moves in — church immigration first, then tax-driven migration.
4. Housing check: anyone with no roof leaves — your houses set a hard population ceiling.
5. Taxes are collected from the population that remains.
6. Your army is paid; units you can't afford or house desert.
7. Finally the buildings produce — workers are assigned and goods are made (labs last).

Because production comes last, wheat you grow this turn only feeds your people next turn, and fresh gold can't rescue this turn's upkeep — so plan a buffer.

Because eating comes before anyone moves in, newcomers never eat in the turn they arrive — they start eating the turn after. That is why the consumption figures in your top bar are exact: what it says before you end the turn is what the turn actually costs you.

Population

Your population are your workers, soldiers and taxpayers all at once. Four forces move it every turn — births and deaths, church immigration, tax migration, and the housing cap — applied in that order, all of them after your people have eaten and drunk.

Immigration. If you own a Church, +3% of your population arrives every turn on top of everything else. They move in after the meal, so they cost you no wheat and no beer in the turn they arrive — but do watch your housing: newcomers with no roof leave again in the very same turn.

Births & deaths depend on how well you feed your people (see Food): well-fed on the "maximal" setting they grow fast and barely die; on "minimal" they grow more slowly; when starving, growth nearly stops and deaths spike. A Pharmacy cuts deaths by 5%.

Taxes move people too: below 10% they immigrate, above 10% they flee — the further from 10, the stronger the pull (see Taxes).

Housing is a hard ceiling. Each house holds 40 people; if your population ever exceeds your housing, everyone without a roof leaves that same turn. Watch the "free housing" figure in the top bar — if it turns red, build houses fast.

Taxes

Every turn your citizens pay taxes. The tax rate runs from 0 to 21 (default 10). At the neutral rate of 10, one citizen yields 5 gold per turn (before research and civic-building bonuses).

The rate is a double-edged sword — it also drives migration (see Population):

• Below 10%: people immigrate every turn — the lower the rate, the more newcomers (at 0% about 12% of your population arrives each turn).
• Exactly 10%: a steady, gentle inflow of about 2% per turn.
• Above 10%: people flee — one extra percent of your realm leaves for every point above 10, so at 21% you lose 11% every single turn.

A Police station (+10%) and a Cathedral (+100%) raise your tax income on top, as does research in the "taxes" area — a Cathedral alone more than doubles what you collect.

Food & Beer

Wheat keeps your people alive. You choose how much they may eat per turn via the distribution setting:

• Minimal consumption: each citizen eats 5 wheat → about 5% births and 3% deaths per turn.
• Normal consumption: each citizen eats 6 wheat → about 10% births and 1% deaths per turn.
• High consumption: each citizen eats 7 wheat → about 15% births and 0% deaths per turn.
• Starving (any level): only 0% births, but 20% deaths.

Starvation is all-or-nothing: if you're even one wheat short of feeding everyone, the whole population goes hungry that turn — growth collapses and many die. Always keep a comfortable wheat surplus.

Beer becomes a real need once your city passes 5,000 citizens: from then on your people drink 1 beer for every 20 citizens each turn — exactly the demand shown in your resource bar. It's checked every turn, just like wheat. If your stores run dry, the unhappy citizens start packing up: about 10% of the population flees that turn — the same rate at which hunger kills. Below 5,000 citizens beer is pure trade goods and nobody misses it, but once you grow past that mark, keep a brewery running so the taps never go dry.

Land & Expansion

Every building needs a plot. There are three land types, and the price of any plot rises with your total land holdings — quadratically.

• Meadow — civil buildings (houses, farms, labs, smiths, barracks, castles). Base 200 gold. 1
• Mountain — mines & quarry. Base 400 gold (expensive). 2
• Forest — woodcutters & charcoal kilns. Base 100 gold. 0.5 Free forest can be cleared into meadow.

The price climbs with the square of your total land: at roughly 100 total plots every field costs about double its base, at 200 about five times, and it keeps accelerating. So buying in bulk (up to 200 plots at once) is cheaper than one at a time, and a Peat Hut, a Dike and a Trading Post each shave 5% off. Forest you aren't using can be cleared into meadow for the current forest price — it yields no wood.

Buildings

Building costs are flat — the same price for each one you build, no scaling with how many you own. Each building occupies 1 plot of its land type. Workers are needed to operate a building, not to build it, and there is no per-turn build cap — only land and resources limit you.

After a successful order you are told the total cost of the whole batch, not the price of a single building. If an order fails for want of resources, you are told exactly what is missing and how much — and a single click takes you to the Global Market, which names exactly those missing amounts.

Building	Land					Produces / Consumes
House		500	5	0	0	40
Woodcutter		1.480	5	0	5	2
Farm		2.380	8	0	8	72
Brewery		1.840	8	2	8	6 −24
Charcoal Kiln		2.460	11	3	11	4 −2
Gold Mine		4.750	16	0	16	864
Quarry		2.970	10	0	10	2
Coal Mine		4.750	16	0	16	4
Iron Mine		4.750	16	0	16	4
Laboratory		2.750	12	3	12	12
Blacksmith		4.590	20	5	20	2 −2 −2
Weaponsmith		4.590	20	5	20	2 −2 −2 −2
Horse Farm		2.430	10	2	10	2 −8
Barracks		4.000	100	20	0	12
Castle		75.000	400	2000	0	400 50

Two capacities come from buildings: each house gives 40 housing, and your barracks (12 each) plus castles (50 each) decide how many soldiers you can hold. A castle also defends with 400 in battle and costs no upkeep. That figure is a base value: your military research raises it by its full percentage, an Austrian adds +100 per castle, and the City Wall adds another 20%. The buildings page shows you the finished number.

Production Chains & Workers

Every citizen is a worker. Buildings are staffed in a fixed priority order each turn; if workers run out, later buildings (labs first to suffer) simply produce nothing that turn.

1. Farms (survival first)
2. Breweries
3. Woodcutters, charcoal kilns, gold mines, quarries, coal mines, iron mines
4. Blacksmiths, horse farms, weaponsmiths
5. Labs (researchers are staffed last)

How much a building makes: (base output + faction bonus) × production multiplier, per active building. The multiplier is 100% plus your research bonus in that good (+1% per level) plus any special-building bonuses — so the faction bonus is scaled up too, no longer added flat on top. Research boosts eight goods — the six raw materials (wheat, wood, stone, iron ore, coal, gold) plus beer and horses; iron and weapons have no research. On top of that, a Marketplace, Bridge or Harbour lifts the production of every good — added like a research bonus — and for iron and weapons it is the only multiplier boost they get.

Production chains turn raw goods into finished ones: breweries eat wheat → beer, charcoal kilns burn wood → coal, blacksmiths consume coal + iron ore → iron, weaponsmiths need wood + coal + iron → weapons, and horse farms feed wheat → horses. If a building lacks its inputs it simply makes nothing that turn — it never goes negative.

Research

There are 12 research areas. Labs generate research points; all points go into the single area you're currently researching. Each level gives a bonus.

Warning: if no research area is selected, lab points are still generated but added to nothing — they are lost. Always pick an area.

Each level costs 10% more than the last. The formula is cost of level n = 100 × 1.1ⁿ⁻¹ (rounded up), so 100, 110, 121, 134, … points.

What counts is always the total collected in that area, not the last step alone: level 10 needs 1,598 points in total, level 25 already 9,846, and level 50 a full 116,414 — the step from 49 to 50 alone costs 10,672. At 12 points per lab per turn that is roughly 389 turns with 25 labs.

Every level adds +1% to that area's effect — more production, more tax income, or stronger troops (military research boosts your whole army's attack and defence). Research is open-ended: there is no maximum level.

Labs generate 12 points each per turn (Schwaben adds more), and the Alchemist, Academy and University speed research up by +3%, +10% and +20%. Since labs are staffed last, keep a healthy worker surplus if you want to research fast.

Military

Three unit types. Training costs are flat per unit; recruits consume population and arrive after their training time (in turns). Every unit then costs gold upkeep every turn.

Unit										Train	Upkeep
Warriors	4	20	0.01	0.5	1.000	2	1	0	0	2 turns	250
Horsemen	12	25	0.04	1.4	5.000	6	3	0	1	5 turns	350
Bombards	80	60	0	12.5	30.000	10	5	10	4	7 turns	600

Upkeep & desertion: every turn each unit draws its gold upkeep, paid right after taxes. If you can't pay, units desert (infantry first, then cavalry, then artillery) until you can afford the rest; the same happens if you hold more troops than soldier room. Deserters are gone for good.

Dismissing a unit gives back its population and half its weapons — but no gold, iron or horses. Cavalry needs a horse to train, artillery needs iron and horses. Building a Tavern or Palace hands you a one-time batch of free mercenaries that fills your empty soldier room – split into 75 % infantry, 20 % cavalry and 5 % artillery. That is deliberately a campaign-ready force rather than sheer mass: without artillery every wall would stay standing. So build your barracks first, then the tavern – only empty room is filled.

War & Combat

Every battle plays out in three acts – the field battle, then the siege, then the storm. The result is calculated, not rolled: there is no luck. A smaller, well-led, well-researched army beats a big careless one.

What you march out with

Research wins wars. Only your military research counts in battle, and it lifts attack and defence of your entire army – with no upper limit: at 50 levels every soldier fights at 1.5× strength, at 100 levels at double, and so on. On the defending side it also thickens your castle walls by the same percentage.

The mix matters just as much. Each of the three arms does something the others cannot:

What each arm is for

Unit	Its role	What it cannot do
Infantry	The cheap mass. Soaks damage, wins the field battle, storms the breach.	Each man claims only a small patch of ground.
Cavalry	The land-taker. Every rider claims 4× as much ground as a footman – the cheapest way to carry land home.	Poor value in a fight – too costly to carry the field on its own.
Artillery	The only thing that breaks castle walls. Without it you take nothing from anyone who owns a single castle. Expensive – you bring a handful, not a park.	Claims no land at all – guns break walls, they do not hold ground.

Only two of those are actually mandatory – and it pays to know the difference between "must" and "is smarter":

• Artillery, as long as the enemy owns even a single castle. If one wall is still standing when the bombardment ends, not a single field changes hands – however large your assault force. If he owns no castle, you need no gun at all: winning the field alone is enough to take his land.
• Infantry or cavalry – either one will do. Once the breach is open, each of them storms and carries ground on its own. Only a pure gun army always comes home empty: it breaks the wall and then stands in front of it, because guns hold no ground.

Everything beyond that is not a rule but a calculation. A rider carries 4× as much ground as a footman, but also costs 2.8× the points – so per point, cavalry brings home about 1.4× as much land. In exchange it puts far fewer bodies into the battle beforehand – and that battle has to be won first; per point, infantry is by far the cheaper way to win it. So infantry wins the field, cavalry carries the land – and how much of each you need depends on the enemy: a strong defender calls for plenty of foot, a small raid on a weak one for more horse. There is no single right ratio – which is exactly why it pays to run the simulator first.

So a combined force is not the only way, it is the cheapest one. Infantry wins the field cheaply, a handful of guns opens the wall, cavalry carries the ground. That is roughly how armies looked around 1800 – mostly foot, a minority of horse, few guns – and the free mercenaries from Tavern and Palace come in the same proportions: a sound army to start with, not a formula. Leaving an arm out does not lose you the campaign by itself – it just makes you pay more for the same patch of land.

Act 1 — The Field Battle

The defender's field army marches out to meet you. First both sides' cannon open fire, then the cavalry clash on the flanks, and finally the infantry lines collide.

A cannon always fires at full force – in the open field just as later before a wall. Its damage comes down on the whole enemy army by head count, never aimed at one particular arm. Bringing plenty of infantry therefore shields your own guns: only a fraction of the fire lands on them, and a gun takes three times the punishment a footman does. No barrage ever fells more than 50 % of an army — guns soften the enemy, but the clash of the lines always follows, and whoever attacks bleeds too.

How many men you lose depends solely on his attack strength. Each side loses the share that the enemy's attack achieves against its own defence – enemy attack divided by your own defence. A defender with 6,400 attack strength therefore costs you the same 320 infantry whether you march up with 8,000 men or 40,000. A bigger army does not make your losses smaller – only less significant.

When the dust settles, two things are checked – in this order:

• If you (the attacker) have lost about half your army, your generals sound the retreat. You march home with whatever survives, but the campaign is over – no land. What is measured is the point value of your army, not the head count – the same points that appear in the ranking. A cannon therefore weighs as much as 25.0 infantrymen: if you lose cheap foot soldiers while your guns stand untouched, you march on. And if the enemy army has been wiped out entirely, there is nothing left to retreat from – you have won the field.
• Otherwise, if the defender is down to roughly a quarter of his army, his lines collapse and you win the field. If neither breaks, the side with more fighting strength left wins – the sum of all attack values, artillery counted in full.

If you win the field and the defender has castles, his survivors try to flee inside. How many make it depends on cavalry in the same way. With no castle to flee to, every survivor is cut down – and with no castle in his realm at all, the won field alone hands you his land.

Act 2 — The Siege

Now your artillery pounds the walls, and this is where campaigns are decided. A wall is always equally solid – an empty castle is exactly as hard to breach as a fully manned one. Only the stone counts here, so a castle always costs the same weight of guns.

Each castle defends with 400. An Austrian defender adds +100 per castle, and his military research raises the whole figure by its percentage. A gun strikes for 80, so as a rule of thumb:

Every wall must fall. If a single castle still stands when the bombardment ends, no field changes hands – see Act 3.

You always shoot anyway, even when it is not enough. Your fire is spread across the walls: if it suffices for seven castles out of ten, seven wall rings collapse and three stay standing – and the report tells you exactly how many. It costs you not a single man, because the garrison only fires back once you actually storm. So after every campaign you can see how far from the breach you were, instead of merely learning that it was not enough.

Act 3 — The Storm

There are no ladders. An intact wall cannot be climbed, at any price. The only way into a realm is through a breach your artillery has opened – which is why an empty castle protects just as well as a manned one. A castle you cannot garrison is still a castle the enemy must shoot to pieces.

Once the breach is open, your infantry and cavalry go in. What decides the assault is your storm strength against the garrison – the troops that fled behind the walls. The masonry no longer counts; it has already done its work by making you bring the guns.

A hopeless assault is not attempted. If the garrison behind the breach is stronger than your storming force, your commander does not send his men into the streets. He withdraws with the army intact – and without land. That is a defeat, but a cheap one.

If your storm strength prevails, the castles fall and the land changes hands. The garrison is not put to the sword to the last man: a share surrenders or slips out through a postern gate and stays with the defender. Losing a battle costs you your army – no longer every last man of it.

Conquest — the only thing a war pays

Land changes hands under exactly one condition: every wall breached and the storm won – or the defender owned no castle at all, in which case winning the field is enough.

How much land you take is set by your surviving infantry and cavalry. Each footman claims a small patch, each rider 4× as much. Artillery claims nothing. The riders are the minority of your host, but they carry a large share of the land – that is what horsemen are for.

Which land you get is not your choice – it is taken in proportion to what he owns. Whoever holds a lot of mountains loses a lot of mountains:

Example: your victim owns 10,000 land and you take 1,000

Land type	He owns	Share	You receive
Meadows	4,000	40%	400
Mountains	5,000	50%	500
Forests	1,000	10%	100

Conquest is deliberately gradual: even a crushing victory shifts only a portion of a realm in one attack. You won't wipe anyone out in a single blow. And if your victim is under defence protection, your land haul shrinks accordingly – see When you are attacked.

The five ways to come home empty

All of these are defeats. It is worth knowing them before you march, not after:

Reconnaissance — what a battle report really tells you

A battle report is not a bird's-eye view of the enemy realm. It is what your returning soldiers can tell you. From that follows the most important rule of scouting:

What you learn depends on how far your army got – and whether anyone came back to tell of it:

For the same reason the report no longer quotes hard attack and defence values, only how the balance of forces stood: hopelessly outmatched, at a disadvantage, evenly matched, at an advantage or overwhelmingly superior. From two exact numbers the enemy's entire composition, military research included, could otherwise be worked backwards.

The battle simulator still shows you every number to the digit – there you type the enemy's values in yourself. It runs on exactly the same combat machinery as real war, so you can safely play through what an attack would cost.

When you are attacked

Being attacked is part of the game. But losing does not mean losing everything – two rules make sure a realm survives a bad day: defence protection and proportional loss.

Defence protection

Without it an enemy could farm you attack after attack while you sleep. So: every time an attack actually takes land from you, your defence protection rises by 20 percentage points – up to a maximum of 100%.

The protection applies to everything that defends: infantry, cavalry, artillery and the walls of your castles. At the same time the attacker's land haul shrinks by the same percentage – at full protection he may still win every act of the battle and still go home with nothing, which counts as a defeat for him.

Where you see it: In the ranking a clock with the percentage appears behind the name of every protected player. Hover over it to see how high the protection is and when it expires. Your own protection additionally shows in the realm box at the top right. Check this before you attack – a target at 100% protection is not worth the troops.

What a defeat really costs you

If you lose land, you lose it in proportion to what you own. Whoever holds mostly mountains loses mostly mountains. You cannot choose what is taken – but you always know that no single attack strips you one-sidedly.

Buildings stand on the land you lose, and they go proportionally – lose a fifth of your meadows and you lose a fifth of everything you built on meadows, from every kind alike. Unbuilt land is no shield: a buffer of empty fields no longer keeps your buildings safe.

And they are not razed – they change owner. Every building that leaves with the land stands in your attacker's realm the next morning, castles included. That cuts both ways: a won campaign hands you a working economy, a lost one hands yours to someone else.

And your army? It no longer falls as one. How many get away depends on how narrowly you lost: lose by a hair and you keep almost everything, be overrun and almost nothing. Your own cavalry covers the retreat, the attacker's turns it into a hunt – the same calculation that applies to the attacker when he loses the field battle. Castles are no longer a condition: without them your men fall back into the countryside instead of being cut down.

This holds for the defender only. Whoever sets out on a campaign carries the full risk and can lose his army to the last man – attacking is dearer than defending, and that is intended.

Example: 250 meadows, fully built – you lose 25 meadows (10%)

Building	Before	Lost	After
Farms	100	10	90
Houses	50	5	45
Castles	100	10	90

Your castles are rebuilt

This also changes how you plan your defence: castles are a lasting investment, not a consumable that one big attack wipes out. They are tied to your land – as long as you hold your land, you hold your castles.

What your attacker learns about you

Less than you fear. He sees only what his returning soldiers can report: if his whole army falls, he learns nothing about you. If he gets no further than the field battle, he sees your field army but not your castles. Your castle count reaches him only once his troops actually stood before your walls. The full breakdown is in the chapter War & Combat.

Your own battle report, on the other hand, always arrives complete – it is your realm, after all.

Trade

There are two markets. The Local Market is the bank: it buys any good from you instantly, always at the minimum price — safe gold, but little. The Global Market is where players trade with players: you list your goods at your own price and buy from other players' offers — or you use the buy requests, where players are looking for goods and have already deposited the gold for them. Gold is the currency and cannot be traded.

Good	Minimum price
Wheat	6
Beer	96
Wood	135
Iron ore	216
Coal	216
Stone	270
Horses	294
Iron	972
Weapons	1.863

The Local Market

One table, one amount field per good, one Sell button. You always receive the minimum price from the table above — instantly and with no duty. The goods go to the bank and leave the game. Whatever you produce is therefore never worthless: this base value is guaranteed at all times. The local market only buys; if you want to buy goods yourself, you do that on the Global Market.

The Global Market

Every offer on the Global Market comes from a real player: “5,000 wood at 260 gold per unit”. Pick a good in the filter to see all its offers, sorted by cheapest unit price or largest amount. You may buy an offer in part — enter an amount, or leave the field empty to buy all of it. The seller receives the proceeds immediately; a market duty of 3% is charged on purchases only.

To sell, list an offer of your own: amount, gold per unit, done. The goods move out of your storage into the offer (so you cannot spend them twice) and come straight back if you withdraw the offer. The minimum asking price is the local minimum price — anything below that the bank pays you anyway.

One position per good. Each player holds at most one offer per good, so nobody can flood the wood list with ten different prices. Listing again simply adds to what you already have — and the unit price you enter then applies to the whole position, old amount included (the page asks you first). That is also how you change your mind about a price: enter the new price, leave the amount empty. To make a position smaller, withdraw it and list again; withdrawing costs nothing, everything comes straight back.

Is that price good or bad? You do not need to know by heart. Every offer carries a rating against the normal price (twice the minimum price — roughly what producing the good yourself costs an unspecialised player): green means cheaper than normal, a bargain; red means above normal. The further from zero, the stronger the signal.

The price of a good is the cheapest offer currently on the Global Market — the price you can actually buy at right now. If there is no offer at the moment, the last known price remains. The percentage next to it, and the price bar below your resources, show exactly the same figure as the rating in the list: how far that cheapest offer sits from the normal price. Clicking a good opens its price history, where every change of the cheapest offer is a point on the curve. The trade log below the market lists every deal — anonymously: what was traded and at what price, never by whom.

Buy Requests

A buy request is an offer with the roles swapped: instead of goods, you put down gold. “I will take 1,000 weapons at 1,900 gold each.” The full sum plus the market duty is deposited the moment you list it — that is what makes the request trustworthy: anyone who delivers has the gold in the same instant, with no duty of their own to pay.

Anyone holding the good sells straight into your request, in part if they like: deliver 100 of the 1,000 weapons and the request keeps looking for the remaining 900. Withdraw it and you get everything back for the amount still open, duty included — in the end you only pay for what actually arrived. One position per good applies here too, and changing the price works exactly as it does for an offer: the deposit is merely recalculated — you pay the difference at most, and lowering it gives gold back including the duty share. You never pay the market duty twice.

Buy requests are the fastest way to sell: no waiting for a buyer to notice your offer. Watch the rating there — it is coloured the other way round, because now you are the seller: green means the request pays more than the normal price.

If you are short of resources while building, the buildings page brings you to the Global Market with a note listing exactly what is missing. Whoever needs gold quickly sells to the Local Market; whoever wants a fair price lists an offer and lets the players decide.

Special Buildings

Each special building is unique (one per empire) and a one-off flat purchase. Same-type bonuses stack (added as percentage points). Every special building you own also raises your rank by one (see Ranks).

Building					Effect
Well	10.000	11	5	0	+5% wheat production
Pharmacy	18.300	20	10	0	−5% deaths
Peat Hut	33.600	37	18	0	−5% land price
Church	61.700	67	34	0	+3% immigration/turn
Sawmill	113.100	123	62	0	+15% wood production
Tavern	207.400	226	113	2	one-time mercenaries on build
Alchemist	380.300	415	207	3	+3% research speed
Trading Post	697.400	761	380	5	−5% land price
Police	1.278.900	1.395	698	9	+10% tax income
Market	2.345.200	2.557	1.279	17	+5% production (all goods)
Dike	4.300.700	4.690	2.346	31	−5% land price
Water Plant	7.886.600	8.600	4.303	57	+10% wheat production
Bridge	14.462.400	15.771	7.890	105	+10% production (all goods)
Academy	26.521.300	28.922	14.469	193	+10% research speed
Harbor	48.635.000	53.037	26.533	354	+20% production (all goods)
City Wall	89.187.100	97.260	48.656	649	+20% military research
University	163.551.900	178.355	89.226	1.189	+20% research speed
Cathedral	299.922.600	327.069	163.624	2.181	+100% tax income
Palace	550.000.000	599.782	300.055	4.000	one-time mercenaries on build

Ranks

Your rank ladder runs from Beggar (rank 0) up to Emperor (rank 19). Three things must come together for every rank: enough special buildings, enough land and a fulfilled trade record.

Your rank is the weakest of the three. Own nine special buildings but only the land for rank eight, and you are rank eight — and you advance the moment the land arrives, without building anything else.

How many special buildings you may own is a single blunt number: your rank plus one. At rank eight you may own nine — exactly one in advance. The tenth waits until rank nine is actually reached. Neither land nor the trade record is checked a second time when you build; both are already part of the rank.

The trade record belongs to the rank, not to the building: for every rank you must have traded goods on the market (local or global) worth 1.000× that rank's land requirement. Buying and selling both count, and it is entirely up to you which way round you do it — sell what you have in abundance, or buy what you are short of. Every rank you gain sets your trade volume back to zero: the requirement applies to each rank afresh and is not added up across the whole game. Anyone who trades as a matter of course will hardly notice it.

A rank you have reached is yours forever — it can never be taken from you. The highest rank you ever held is recorded, so losing land later never costs you a rank. That is why you can finish the round as Emperor even if your land has since fallen below the 32.000 that the Emperor rank demands: you held it once, and that is enough.

The full rank ladder — requirements and league points (per rank + locked-in total)

Rank	Land needed	Trade record	Special building	League points (from rank)	Total (locked in)
0 · Beggar	starting rank	–	–	–	0
1 · Serf	30	30.000	one special building	+150	150
2 · Servant	70	70.000	one special building	+150	300
3 · Freeman	120	120.000	one special building	+150	450
4 · Citizen	200	200.000	one special building	+150	600
5 · Peddler	350	350.000	one special building	+150	750
6 · Merchant	600	600.000	one special building	+150	900
7 · Patrician	1.000	1.000.000	one special building	+150	1.050
8 · Baron	1.500	1.500.000	one special building	+150	1.200
9 · Count	2.200	2.200.000	one special building	+150	1.350
10 · Prince	3.200	3.200.000	one special building	+150	1.500
11 · Margrave	4.500	4.500.000	one special building	+150	1.650
12 · Count Palatine	6.000	6.000.000	one special building	+150	1.800
13 · Landgrave	8.000	8.000.000	one special building	+150	1.950
14 · Duke	10.500	10.500.000	one special building	+150	2.100
15 · Elector	13.500	13.500.000	one special building	+150	2.250
16 · Grand Duke	17.000	17.000.000	one special building	+150	2.400
17 · Archduke	21.000	21.000.000	one special building	+150	2.550
18 · King	26.000	26.000.000	one special building	+150 +100 bonus	2.800
19 · Emperor	32.000	32.000.000	one special building	+150 +250 bonus	3.200

Points

There are two different point systems — and they are not the same thing:

• Your in-game score — a live power ranking of everything you own. It only drives the honour rule (whom you may attack); it does not decide the season.
• Your league points — awarded at the end of every round and summed across the season. These decide the standings.

Your in-game score adds up everything you own: land (mountains most, then meadow, then forest), units (artillery most, then cavalry, then infantry), each castle, and every research level you hold. Highest first, total land breaks ties.

Alliances

• An alliance holds up to 25 members. Founding is free.
• Name: 3–30 characters. Tag: 2–6 characters (alphanumeric, optional). Description: up to 500 characters.
• Only the leader may invite, accept/reject applications, kick, transfer leadership or disband. The leader must transfer leadership before leaving.
• The pool is fully open: every member can deposit and withdraw all goods (including gold). Every transfer is logged with who, what and when.