What is Godsreach? #

Godsreach is a real-time strategy game in the classic mythological tradition. You lead the Reach: you start with a Keep and a handful of villagers, gather food, wood and gold, grow a village into a kingdom across four eras, take a god at each era-up, and finally raze the enemy Keep with soldiers, siege engines, priests and dragons.

The world is large: 500 units across, with towns in the corners (or evenly round a ring in three- and five-sided games). Each side wears its own colour, the same on every screen: Blue (always the host), Red, Green, Purple and Yellow.

Quick start: the first five minutes #

From the title screen choose PLAY (it reads NEW MATCH when a saved match is waiting under CONTINUE), pick the number of players, the computer's difficulty (start on Easy or Normal), the mode (Supremacy is the standard game) and whether to play with fog of war, then press BEGIN. You start with:

• a finished Keep (your town centre, +10 population),
• 6 villagers and 1 Spearman (population 7 of 10),
• 200 food, 200 wood and 100 gold,
• six resource patches around your town: two of food, two of wood and two of gold.

1. Put everyone to work. Select villagers (tap one, or draw a box) and tap/right-click a resource patch. Split them between food and wood at first, with one or two on gold.
2. Keep the Keep busy. Select the Keep and train villagers (50 food, 4 seconds each). Tap or right-click a resource with the Keep selected to set its rally point there: new villagers walk straight to it and start gathering.
3. Build a House early. You start at 7 of 10 population. Each House (50 wood) adds 5 room once it is finished.
4. Shorten the walk. Put a Granary next to your food and a Storehouse next to your wood or gold. Villagers always carry their load to the nearest finished building that accepts it.
5. Research Iron Tools at the Keep (+1 resource per swing) and Carry Frames at the Granary (carry 15 instead of 10).
6. Lay Farms before the wild food runs out: one villager per field, food forever.
7. Save 400 food and 150 gold and advance to the Iron Era at the Keep. You choose your first god (Solen or Veyra) when you press Advance. The Iron Era unlocks the Barracks, walls, the Market and the Temple, and ends the truce: from then on you may attack, and be attacked.

Reading the screen #

The map fills the whole screen; small see-through panels float over it.

The score in Stats is villagers × 10 + army value × 20 + finished buildings × 30, where a soldier's value is its food plus gold cost divided by 50.

Touch controls #

The tick and the cross

Placing a building or aiming a god power never happens by accident on touch. The building (or the power's circle) appears in the middle of the screen with a green tick and a red cross beside it:

• Building: press on the building and drag it where you want it (or tap the ground to move it there), then tap the tick. The plate under it is green where it fits and red where it is blocked, and the tick is greyed out while it is blocked.
• Wall: drag along the ground from where the wall should start to where it should end, then tap the tick. A plain tap lays a single segment.
• God power: tap or drag to move the aiming circle, then tap the tick to call it down.
• The cross cancels.

On touch, placement ends after each building. To give one villager a list of buildings, keep it selected and place them one after another: each new site goes on the end of its list (see placing buildings).

Mouse and keyboard #

Building placement with a mouse: the building follows the cursor and a click places it. Walls: press where the wall starts, drag to where it ends, and let go.

Hotkey table #

Control groups (keyboard players): the buttons above the minimap select a group with a click, centre the camera on it with a double-click, and assign the current selection when held for about half a second.

Resources and gathering #

Resource patches

Patches come in sizes, and you can see the size: a big forest looks like a big forest. Base sizes are 400 (small), 900 (medium), 1,700 (large) and 2,600 (huge), each varied by roughly a sixth either way. Point at or tap a patch to see how much is left.

• At home every side gets the same six: a small and a medium food patch, a medium and a large forest, and a medium and a small gold seam. Enough to open with, deliberately not enough to win on.
• Out on the map are the big ones, in fair copies for every seat, with forests the most common, plus one huge gold seam in the very centre. Leaving home is how you pay for an army.
• Food above 700 is a herd of animals; smaller food patches are berry bushes; a few small groups of wild strays (around 240 food) roam on their own. All are gathered the same way.

How fast gathering is

Drop-offs

A gathering villager walks its load to the nearest finished building that accepts it: the Keep takes everything, the Granary takes food, the Storehouse takes wood and gold. Building a drop-off beside a patch is the single best thing you can do for a gathering crew. (The Woodcutters' camp is a place of work, not a drop-off.)

The Market

Send villagers to a Market and they go inside and trade, bringing in gold steadily whether or not there is ore left in the ground. Five can trade at each Market and you may have at most three. The further a Market stands from your nearest Keep, the more each trader earns: from ×0.6 (30 gold a minute each) within 8 units of the Keep, rising evenly to ×2.2 (66 gold a minute each) at 58 units or more. Select a Market to see what it is worth. A frontier Market earns over three times as much as one in your courtyard, and is that much easier to raid.

Villagers at work #

Villagers are the only units that gather, build and repair. They do not fight. Godsreach leaves the decisions to you: a villager that runs out of work waits for orders rather than wandering off to do something you did not ask for.

• A patch runs out: the villager moves on only to another patch of the same kind right next to it (within about 12 units, the next stand of the same wood). Otherwise it goes idle and you are told, with a reminder to build a Market if it was gold.
• A building is finished: its builders go idle (anyone holding a load takes it home first). The exception: the villager sent to raise a Farm or Woodcutters stays and works it, if there is room. A Market's builder waits, because trading is your choice.
• Walk a villager into a patch with a plain move and it starts gathering there.
• Building lists: lay out a new site while your selected villagers are already building and it goes on the end of their list: one villager can lay out and raise ten houses, one after another, and then waits. Shift with a mouse queues any order the same way.
• Repair: send villagers to a damaged building of yours and they mend it, free, at half the speed it went up.
• Places of work: Farms, Woodcutters, Markets and Temples report how many villagers they hold when selected. If you send more than fit, the extras carry on as they were.
• Rally points: put the Keep's rally point on a resource and new villagers gather it; put it on a Farm, Woodcutters, Market or Temple with room and they go to work there.
• Find the idle: the Idle button (or .) selects every idle villager and moves the camera to the next one each time you press it. Idle villagers show zz over their heads.

Villagers working, hauling or building are allowed to overlap one another so they never jam at a drop-off; soldiers and walking units keep their distance.

Population and houses #

• Every unit takes room: villagers, Spearmen, Swordsmen and Priests take 1; Archers, Horsemen, Horse Archers and War Priests 2; Champions, Lancers, Battle Mages, Stormcallers and Catapults 3; a Dragon takes 6.
• Room comes from your Keep (+10) and each House (+5), counted only once the building is finished and lost if it is destroyed.
• The hard limit is 200, however many houses you build.
• Room is reserved the moment a unit is queued, so a full queue can block training even before the units appear.
• A second Keep may only be raised when your population is completely full (and below 200). It then adds 10 room, takes all resources and trains villagers. Markets measure their distance from your nearest Keep, so a second Keep beside a Market lowers what that Market earns.

Buildings #

Build time is in villager-seconds: two villagers raise a building in half the time, four in a quarter. Every building has 30% armor against hack damage and 80% against pierce, so arrows barely scratch them. Buildings see 21 units through the fog.

Every production building has a queue of 10. Cost and population are taken when you queue; units train oldest first; Cancel last (or X) removes the newest order with a full refund. Each production building has its own rally point: select it, then tap/double-click the ground or right-click. New units walk to the flag and spread out around it. A production building can train and research at the same time, but researches only one thing at once.

Buildings grow a little with every era their side reaches (6% per era; walls, gates and fields keep their size), and your buildings take a gold trim when you reach the Iron Era.

Placing and raising buildings #

• Press a building card (or its hotkey). If no villager is selected, the game picks builders for you: idle villagers first, then working ones; two for anything that takes more than 8 seconds, otherwise one.
• The preview shows the real building on a plate: green where it fits, red where it is blocked. Sites snap to a grid.
• A site is blocked by other buildings (yours or anyone's), by resource patches still standing, and on a hilly map by ground too steep to build on. Buildings other than fields and walls keep a little walking room around them.
• Locked buildings are shown greyed out with the era that unlocks them. If you cannot afford one, the card is tinted red and the game tells you what you are short of.
• Resources are paid when the site is laid out. A site under construction stays reachable for its builders; once finished, a building blocks movement (except Farms, which are walked over, and your own Gates).

The four eras #

Each era opens a new tier of the game. You advance at the Keep: pressing Advance opens a screen with the two gods the next era offers. Choose one (or press NOT YET) and the research starts, paid for then. In a single-player game the match waits while you choose; in a LAN game it does not. When the era arrives a column of light rises over each of your Keeps, the era's name crosses the screen, and your god's blessing and power take effect. Every side is told whenever any side advances.

The six gods #

At each era-up you choose one of two gods. The choice is permanent, every blessing you take stacks with the others, and each god gives you one power: a targeted spell with its own cooldown, ready the moment you take the god. Neither god of a pair is the better pick; each leans a different way.

To use a power, press its button (above BUILD, or P for the first ready one), aim the circle and confirm with the tick (or Enter). Damage from powers ignores armor, and buildings caught in a striking power take double. Healing powers mend only your own units. A rival's power cast near anything of yours is announced.

IRON ERA

CROWN ERA

MYTHIC ERA

Units #

Armor is the share of that kind of damage a unit ignores. Rate is the time between blows. Speeds are relative (a villager walks at 6.2). RIDER marks mounted units, which Spearmen are made for; FLIES marks flyers, which only ranged and flying attackers can reach.

Roles at a glance

Combat rules #

How damage is worked out

Damage = Attack × bonuses × (1 − target's armor against that damage type) × your damage boosts

• Two damage types. Hack (blades, spears, boulders, dragon fire) and pierce (arrows and bolts). Each unit has a separate armor value against each.
• Bonuses multiply: a unit's bonus against one named unit, the Spearman's ×2.5 against anything mounted, and the siege bonus against buildings.
• Damage boosts: Tempered Blades (+40% for melee units), Kargath (+35% for everything) and a priest's blessing (+25%) all multiply together.
• Armor: Chainmail adds 18 percentage points to both armor values of all your units (a Spearman's 15% hack armor becomes 33%).
• Missiles never miss, but a shot whose target dies before it lands is wasted. Catapult boulders fly slower, in an arc.
• God-power damage ignores armor.

Orders and how soldiers behave

• Move (tap the ground / right-click): units walk there and ignore enemies until they arrive, even when hit. Groups arrive in formation facing the way they marched: melee in front, ranged behind, villagers and priests at the back.
• Attack-move (Q or the Attack move button, then the ground): units fight everything they meet on the way, buildings included, then wait there.
• Attack (tap / right-click an enemy with soldiers selected).
• Hold (V): units defend their spot and strike anything in reach, but never chase.
• Stop (Z): drop every order, including queued ones.
• On their own, idle soldiers pick up enemies that come within reach and fight back when hit. When anything of yours is attacked, idle soldiers within 28 rush to help. A soldier with nothing in reach in an enemy village walks to the nearest enemy building within 24 and knocks it down (unless holding). Catapults look for buildings before units.
• Your soldiers only pick targets you can see through the fog.
• Units that cannot reach where they were sent re-plan, then try the nearest reachable ground, then stop and wait for orders rather than push at a wall forever.

Healing

• A unit that has been out of combat for 8 seconds and stands within 9 of one of your finished buildings recovers 2.5 health a second (10 with Ilmara).
• Priests and War Priests mend the most hurt friend near them (see priests).
• Mending Rain, Blood Oath and Moonlit Tide heal in an area.
• Villagers repair damaged buildings for free at half their build speed.

Buildings and siege

Buildings shrug off arrows (80% pierce armor) and take hack blows at 70%. Soldiers can take buildings down, but slowly; Catapults (×5 against buildings, range 15, beyond a Watch Tower's 13) and Dragons (×2.5) are made for it. Sunfire and Blood Oath deal double to buildings. Only the Watch Tower fights back.

When you are attacked, a horn sounds (at most every 45 seconds), a notice appears (at most every 20 seconds), a red X flashes at the spot and on the minimap, and the Under attack! button (or Space) jumps you there. Whoever hits you is glimpsed through the fog for a few seconds wherever they stand.

Counters and the flying rule #

The heart of the army game is a triangle: Spearman beats Champion, Champion beats Archer, Archer beats Spearman. Riders sit beside it: spears beat every horse, and Horsemen ride down Archers.

The flying rule

Dragons #

The Mythic Era's last word. Dragons are dear, slow to raise and take six mouths of population each, but there is no limit beyond what you can pay for and house.

• Where: the Dragon Roost (J, Mythic Era): 600 wood and 450 gold, 60 villager-seconds, 2,600 health, a 7×7 plot. Put several villagers on it.
• Cost: 350 food and 450 gold, 45 seconds, 6 population.
• Strength: 1,500 health, 30% hack and 35% pierce armor, speed 8.5, and the widest sight of any unit (22). Its big body is also easy to tap.
• Fire: 40 hack damage from 7 away every 3 seconds; the blast bursts over its target, dealing half damage to every other enemy unit within 4.5. Against buildings it hits ×2.5 (70 damage a breath to a building).
• Flight: it flies over walls, gates, buildings and cliffs, and only ranged and flying attackers can hit it (see the flying rule). A Dragon can itself fight other flyers.
• Upgrades: a dragon counts as a ranged attacker, so Tempered Blades does not help it; Kargath's blessing and a priest's blessing do.
• The announcement: when any side's first Dragon takes wing, every side hears it. Yours: "YOUR FIRST DRAGON TAKES WING!". Theirs: a warning that they have a dragon and that Archers bring it down.
• Breeds: each side's colour flies its own breed. Blue and Purple share one that breathes a stream of flame, Red has its own flame-breather, and Green and Yellow fly a breed that spits fireballs. The breeds look different; their numbers are identical.

Burning herds and forests

Send selected Dragons at a herd or a forest (not gold): they fly within reach and set it alight. A roasted herd's animals fall where they stood; a burned forest goes black. From then on, villagers gather that patch twice as fast (double per swing) until it is gone. The burn uses one breath and does not use up any of the patch.

The computer builds a Dragon Roost once it reaches the Mythic Era and can afford it with some to spare, on every difficulty except Easy.

Priests and War Priests #

The Priest (Temple, Iron Era) and the mounted War Priest (Stables, Crown Era) never take orders to attack and never pick fights. They follow your army and do three things, checked once a second:

1. Mend. The most hurt friendly unit within 7 is healed: 5 health a second by a Priest, 7 by a War Priest. You see a green ring and rising motes.
2. Bless. With nobody to mend, it blesses up to 6 of your soldiers within 9 that are not already blessed: they strike 25% harder for 12 seconds. A priest blesses at most every 15 seconds. Blessed soldiers glitter with gold.
3. Smite. With nobody to mend and no blessing to give, it smites the nearest enemy within 9 with a bolt of violet fire: 10 damage about every 3 seconds, which armor does not reduce (4 against buildings). Smite reaches flyers. It obeys the truce.

The Priest's far sight: a Priest sees 12, but the longer it stands still the further it sees, up to 22 more (34 in all) after about ten seconds. Walking resets it. It is the way to look into the fog without sending an army.

Priests walk at the back of a formation with the villagers. The War Priest keeps pace with cavalry (speed 8.6 against the Priest's 4.8).

Walls, gates and towers #

Walls arrive with the Iron Era, exactly when the truce ends and there is something to keep out.

• Drawing a wall: press R (or the Wall card). With a mouse, press where it starts, drag to where it ends, and let go. On touch, drag along the ground, then tap the tick. A plain click or tap lays one segment.
• Any angle: runs follow the line you drag, diagonals included; the segments overlap at the corners so a diagonal wall stays closed. A single run is at most 40 segments.
• The preview shows every segment: green where it will go, red where it is blocked or your wood runs out, and taller where a gate will be.
• Gates: every fifth segment you lay becomes a Gate automatically (35 wood, 750 health), so you never wall yourself in. Your own people walk through your gates; every other side's are shut out.
• Builders start from the nearer end, each takes a stretch, and none goes back to gathering until the last segment is up. Hold Shift to keep laying wall.
• Cost: 20 wood and 4 villager-seconds a segment, 600 health. Nobody walks through a wall, so it decides where a fight happens.

Watch Towers

The Watch Tower (Crown Era, 150 wood and 30 gold) is the only building that fights back. It shoots the nearest hostile unit within 13 for 14 pierce damage every 1.5 seconds, reduced by the target's pierce armor. It can hit flyers. It never shoots buildings, will not fire until finished, and obeys the truce. Every foot soldier is out-ranged by it; a Catapult (range 15) is not.

Research #

Each upgrade is researched once, at a specific building, and applies to your units only. A building researches one thing at a time.

Orun's blessing makes research (and training, and building) 40% faster. Next-era research is shown greyed out with the era it needs, so you can see what you are saving for.

The truce #

Nobody may start a fight in the Hearth Era. The opening is a race of economies and build orders, not a rush.

• A side may attack once it reaches the Iron Era.
• Being attacked ends your own truce at once: falling behind in eras never leaves you defenceless, and retaliation is never blocked.
• What the truce blocks is starting a fight: attack orders, attack-move aggression, soldiers picking their own targets, Watch Towers and priests' smites. A refused attack order tells you why.
• The standing line under your purse says TRUCE while it holds. In Deathmatch there is no truce at all, and a God-difficulty computer does not wait for one.
• The computer is bound by the same rule: it researches its era-up as soon as its difficulty allows and it can pay, and while saving it holds back half of the cost rather than spending it on soldiers it cannot use yet.

Fog of war #

Fog of war is chosen on the New Match screen (On or Off). With it on, the map has three shades:

• Clear: ground something of yours can see right now.
• A light haze: ground you have explored that nothing of yours is watching. You can still read the land and the patches; enemies there are not shown.
• The veil: ground nobody of yours has ever seen. Still translucent, so the lie of the land is always readable.

Enemy units are drawn, labelled, shown on the minimap and open to orders only while something of yours can see them. An enemy building shows as soon as any corner of it is in sight and stays on your map once found. Whoever hits you is glimpsed for a few seconds wherever they stand. Sounds on the map are only heard where you can see.

Every unit sees further than it can shoot, so you are never shot at by something you cannot see. Nyxa's blessing adds 30% to all your units' sight, and Night's Eye lifts the fog over a wide circle for 30 seconds. The computer plays without fog, but it only knows about your army what its own units and buildings can see.

Computer opponents #

The computer plays by your rules. It starts exactly as you do (a Keep, six villagers and a Spearman; it gets 150 gold to your 100), its villagers really gather, walk to its own drop-offs and can be killed to starve it, it lives under the same population cap and builds Houses, and its units feel its gods' blessings and its research exactly as yours do.

Wave timings are jittered by up to 30% either way, so attacks never land on a predictable clock. "Its army against yours" means what it has seen of your army; a person sitting in a computer seat in a LAN game plays at full speed, with no handicap.

How it plays

• Picks a rival: the nearest side still standing, or whoever is in its base right now.
• Scouts: one early scout walks to look at your base and comes back. It will not blind-rush a base it has never seen.
• Grows waves: it musters soldiers a little way out of town towards you and waits for a full wave; waves grow with every attack and as the match wears on, from raids to armies.
• Hits soft targets: villagers and outlying buildings before defended ones.
• Mixes its army: roughly four in ten foot soldiers, a third shooting, a quarter riders and a healer for every dozen; half the time it trains the counter to the most valuable unit it has seen of yours.
• Retreats and defends: badly hurt soldiers (below a quarter health) go home and rejoin at 70%; soldiers of yours near its town always come first.
• Uses its gods: it takes a god at every era-up, casts striking powers only on a crowd of at least three of your units it can see, and heals when at least three of its own are hurt.
• Plays the whole game: fields, Woodcutters and Markets once the ground near home is bare; drop-offs beside far patches; a Temple and, in the Mythic Era, Stormcallers, a Siege Workshop and (above Easy) dragons. With its Keep gone, its villagers try to raise another.

Game modes and victory #

Winning and losing

• You lose when your last Keep falls (in Conquest, when you have nothing left at all).
• With several rivals, each one that loses its last Keep is out: what is left of its village crumbles, and the map belongs to those still playing.
• The last rival asks for terms. When the final enemy Keep falls in Supremacy or Deathmatch, the game pauses with "They ask for terms" and tells you what they have left. Accept and the victory is yours on the spot. Choose No mercy and the match goes on until every last enemy building and soldier is gone; your idle soldiers in their village go after the next building by themselves.
• After the result you can Play again or Keep looking around.

LAN multiplayer #

Up to four people on the same Wi-Fi or local network can share a match of up to five sides. No internet, no account and no server are needed. Every seat no person takes is played by the computer.

Hosting

1. Main menu > MULTIPLAYER > HOST A GAME.
2. Read out the join code shown in large letters (eight characters, like K7QM-2XDA). The seat list shows who holds each colour; you are always Blue.
3. SET UP THE MATCH to choose the number of sides, the computer's difficulty, the mode and fog, then BEGIN. Once people have joined, the map and number of sides are fixed.

Joining

1. Main menu > MULTIPLAYER > JOIN A GAME.
2. Type the host's code and press JOIN. On a PC, games heard on the network are also listed with their open seats; tap one to join. (An iPhone or iPad does not hear other games by itself: type the code.)
3. You are told which colour you play. Your camera starts over your own Keep.

Good to know

• Each player sees the match from their own seat; "you" is always your own side.
• A LAN match cannot be paused for everyone, and the god screen does not stop the clock: choose quickly.
• If a player leaves, the computer takes over their seat where they left it, including any god choice left hanging.
• If the host leaves, the match ends for everyone who joined.
• Both copies must be the same version of the game; a mismatch is refused with a message.
• LAN matches are not saved, by the host or by anyone who joined: saving is for single-player matches.
• Nothing happening? Check the code against the host's screen and that both are on the same network. Windows may ask the host to let the game through its firewall.

Strategy for beginners #

1. Never stop making villagers in the opening. A villager is the fastest thing in the game to make (4 seconds) and pays for itself many times over.
2. Watch the Idle button. Villagers wait for orders when their patch runs out or a building is finished. An orange Idle count is lost income.
3. Build ahead on houses. If your population (the two people in the purse) is within a few of its room, start a House now: room only counts once it is finished.
4. Drop-offs next to patches. A Granary at the berries and a Storehouse at the forest can double what a crew brings in, just by shortening the walk.
5. Use the truce. Nobody can attack you before they reach the Iron Era. Spend it on economy, then advance.
6. Lay Farms before the food runs out. Six to eight fields keep villager and army production going for the whole match.
7. Mix your army. Spearmen in front, Archers behind, and the counter triangle will do much of the work for you.
8. Fight near home when you can. Your units heal near your own buildings once out of combat, and villagers repair for free.
9. Read the alerts. When the horn sounds, press Space or tap Under attack! to jump there.
10. Start on Easy. Its first attacks are small and late. Move up a level when you win comfortably.

Advanced strategy #

Economy

• Upgrade order: Iron Tools adds 25% per swing; Carry Frames cuts trips by a third. On patches far from a drop-off, Carry Frames matters more; close in, Iron Tools does. Both are cheap and Hearth-Era.
• Veyra stacks: base 4 + Iron Tools 1 + Veyra 2 = 7 per swing, and a dragon-scorched patch doubles that to 14.
• Frontier Markets: a Market 58 or more units from your nearest Keep earns 66 gold a minute per trader, 330 a minute when full. Three of them is a war chest that never runs dry, if you can defend them.
• Renewables free your villagers from walking and keep paying when the map is bare: 48 food a minute per Farm, 108 wood a minute per full Woodcutters' camp.
• Harvest of Ages adds 600 to every patch in its circle: cast it over a cluster of mined-out patches near a drop-off.

Army

• Swordsmen are the efficient line: 60 resources and 6 seconds, the fastest swing in the game, and ×1.7 against Spearmen. Fill with them, then add the specialist the enemy's army asks for.
• Train from several buildings. Every soldier takes longer to train than a villager, so a bigger army means more Barracks and Stables, not one building working harder.
• Champions and Horsemen against archer-heavy armies; Spearmen whenever you see horses.
• Battle Mages and Dragons punish clumps. Spread your own army when they appear, and focus them with Archers.
• Blessings and priests: a Priest or two behind the line mends between fights and blesses six soldiers for +25%, stacking with Tempered Blades and Kargath. War Priests keep up with cavalry raids.
• Catapults need an escort: they out-range Watch Towers but die quickly to anything with a blade.
• Plain move to disengage: a move order ignores enemies even when hit, so it is the way to pull a hurt army out.

Map and timing

• Scout with a Priest: park it out of sight and let its view grow to 34.
• Choose gods for your plan: Solen's speed for raids and map control, Veyra for a booming economy; Kargath for a fighting army, Ilmara to fight near your walls; Orun for production and renewed patches, Nyxa to see their every move.
• Time your era-up against the computer. Each difficulty has an earliest minute for each era; advancing first gives you the right to attack while it is still bound by the truce (unless it hits you first).
• Wall the approach, not the town. A short wall with a tower behind it at a choke costs less than a ring and makes the enemy walk into your fire. Flyers ignore it, so keep archers home in the Mythic Era.
• The centre gold: the one huge seam is in the middle of the map. Holding it, with a Storehouse beside it, pays for a late-game army.

Saving and continuing #

A single-player match looks after itself. With Autosave on (it is, unless you turn it off in Settings), the game writes the match down:

• every minute of play,
• whenever the app goes to the background: you switch apps, take a call, lock the phone or swipe the game away,
• when the game is closed, and
• when you leave the match for the main menu.

To save at a moment of your choosing, press Pause, then Save game (the button reads "Saved" for a moment). It works with Autosave off as well.

When a saved match is waiting, the title screen leads with CONTINUE and says where you left off, for example CONTINUE - IRON ERA, 23:10, and PLAY becomes NEW MATCH. Continue, and the match is back as it was, with the line "Welcome back" and the era and time played.

What a save keeps

• Every side: food, wood, gold and favor, population, era, research, gods (with each power's time left to recharge, and a god still waiting to be chosen), and whether the truce still holds for it.
• Every building: where it stands, its health, how far it is built, its training queue and research in progress, and its rally point.
• Every unit: where it stands and faces, its health, the load a villager is carrying, and Hold.
• What villagers were doing: gathering a patch, raising a building, or working a Farm, Woodcutters, Market or Temple. They go straight back to it.
• The map: what is left in every patch, and which herds and forests a dragon has burned.
• The match: the clock, the difficulty, the mode, fog on or off and the ground you have explored, a refused surrender (No mercy), and where the camera was.

What it does not keep

• Soldiers' orders. A march, an attack or a queue of orders is not kept: soldiers stand where they were and, like any idle soldier, fight what comes into reach. Give them their orders again.
• A villager's list of buildings beyond the one it was raising.
• Anything in the air: arrows and fire in flight, a priest's blessing, and the sight that Night's Eye opened.
• The computer's plans. Its attack timers start again from the beginning, so its next wave may come a little later than it would have.

Good to know

• One save. There is a single saved match. A new match takes its place the first time the new one is saved.
• Single player only. LAN matches are never saved, whether you host or join.
• A finished match is not kept. Win or lose, the save is deleted: CONTINUE would only bring back the ending.
• With Autosave off, only Save game writes the match down, and leaving for the main menu loses anything since you last pressed it.

Settings #

Open SETTINGS from the title screen or from the pause screen. Everything is kept as you change it, Sound included; DEFAULTS puts everything back as shipped.

The pause screen (Esc or Pause) shows your era and time played, with Resume, Save game (single player only), Settings and Main menu. Leaving asks you to confirm: with Autosave on, a single-player match is saved as you go and CONTINUE on the title screen picks it up; with Autosave off, or in a LAN match, what was not saved is lost. Pausing stops the world in single-player; menus never stop the camera, so you can still look around. Your last match setup (sides, difficulty, mode, fog) and the build-card drawer state are remembered between sessions.

FAQ #