Manual · Taking Command
Taking Command
Your first campaign: the turn, the orders, what victory asks, and the first three things to do about it.
How it works
Your first campaign
A campaign is a war for a map of castles between your house and its rivals. You begin by choosing your war: an authored war on the March, or a generated realm dealt fresh from a seed — different geography, the same rules. You command one house; the others are fought by their own commanders.
Everything you own is on the map: companies as banners, castles as walled holdings. There is no second layer to manage and nothing to build — the war is won by ground, gold, and the formations you raise and keep.
The turn and the round
Your turn opens with the war ledger: income from your secured castles, then upkeep for every formation you field, garrison, or have waiting at the walls. What remains is yours to spend on musters, development, and siege work.
Then you command: move, muster, promote, prepare sieges — each order confirmed before anything commits. End the turn and your rivals take theirs in order; a round ends when the last house has acted. When your next round begins, the turn report summarizes what the round did to you, and the Chronicle keeps every event of the war for as long as you fight it.
Selection and orders
Click a banner or a castle to select and inspect it — yours, a rival's, or neutral ground's walls all open a panel. To move, select one of your companies, choose a destination, and confirm: nothing moves until you do, and Cancel — or Escape — puts the choice away without cost.
The confirmation always shows the route, its cost, and the arrival turn before you commit. Move onto an enemy force to give battle; move onto an undefended castle to take it.
What victory asks
The authored war is a duel: take the rival's capital and keep your own. If your capital falls, that campaign is lost. Some wars lock the enemy capital behind prerequisites — achievements earned permanently, shown and tracked in the top bar — so the last assault must be prepared, not merely attempted.
Generated realms fight a crown-claim war: hold a stable majority of the original capitals into the start of your own turn to claim the crown. A rival reaching a majority raises a claim of its own, and you must break it before their turn begins. Even with your capital lost you fight on from the field, for as long as one company of yours survives.
Immediate priorities
Three things decide the first turns. Secure what you hold: a captured or contested castle begins unsecured and pays nothing until you stand a company beside it across owning turns. Watch the wage bill: the first unpaid turn is grace, but every one after erodes the readiness of your whole army. And raise Footmen early — every secured castle can, and they are the spine every other troop attaches to.
Beyond that: keep your forces on the road network where they are supplied, claim the specialist terrain (woodland for Archers, pasture for Cavalry) before a rival does, and read the rival houses' doctrines before you bet a campaign on their behaving like you would.
Saving, and where it runs
Campaigns are saved locally in your browser, on the device where you play them — no account, no upload, nothing leaves the machine. The war is exactly where you left it when you return.
The campaign asks for a desktop or laptop browser: a wide window and a precise pointer. Phones and tablets are not supported for play yet, though everything in this Codex reads anywhere.
Rules, exactly
Exact values from the current build — not advice, not flavour.
- Starting treasury
- 120 gold — the gold your house begins the campaign with
- March allowance
- 3 points per turn — every company, every turn; fields and roads 1, woods and hills 2
- Wage grace
- 1 turn — the first unpaid turn costs no readiness; each further one drops every formation a band
- Securing a castle
- 2 control points — one per owning-turn start with any friendly company present