Help

Every port either of you holds pays both of you, a little over a gold a second each. Six ports between you is six paying two nations, not three paying one. It lands in your income figure, not in a promise.

An allied merchant calling at your quay pays half again the dues a stranger does, and still lands most of its cargo at yours instead of losing the lot. Two nations with fleets are worth more together than apart.

March a column straight through a friend and out the far side. Not one tile of theirs changes hands on the way: it is a road, not a conquest, and you arrive at a border you do not share with anybody.

Click your general and he asks what you want. On the ground, one of three: ATTACK sends him to your biggest advance, and attacks near him cost fewer troops; DIG IN keeps him at his headquarters, where your ground costs the enemy far more and every battalion lasts longer; HOLD THE BORDER keeps sending free battalions to stand guard along your borders with rivals. At sea, one of three or none: HUNT sends free warships after enemy warships; PATROL puts one beside each of your oil fields and fleet yards; BLOCKADE parks them off enemy ports, which then send no trade and earn nothing. Press the lit order again and the fleet chooses for itself. Moving his headquarters is on the card too, and Standing orders, the switch at its foot, makes any click on the map an order for whoever is free.

Right-click an ally's ground and choose Send aid: a card opens in the middle of the screen with a slider for troops or gold. Up to half of what you hold, never more troops than they have room for, and a 45-second cooldown per ally. Both of you see it land. It is an order like any other: the bots see it, the checksum counts it.

Coins bought through PayPal buy cosmetics: seven ground skins that repaint your land for everyone on the map, four missile trails, and a bot that wears your name. Nothing in it sells an advantage - the map is the map for everyone on it. What you own is on your account, on every device you sign in on.

Own a skin or a trail and Wear it puts it on for every war you play; the first one you buy is worn at once. Try it opens a fitting room - a private war with bots that nobody can join or be invited to - with your nation in that skin, and a silo ready if it is a trail you are trying.

Buy the named bot and one ordinary AI nation in every war you play carries the name you entered in the room. Same difficulty, no side, no advantage; the label is the perk, and everyone sees the same one.

Before the war opens the map holds no ground of yours. Click any free land and your capital is founded there, with your starting country grown around it. Run out the clock and you take the randomly dealt spot. The room dial offers 10, 30 or 60 seconds, or plain Random.

Hold every tile of a continent and your economy and enlistment both rise fifteen per cent, per continent, for as long as you hold all of it. The feed announces it won and announces it lost. Islands are worth their tiles; continents are worth a campaign.

Surround a nation completely - no neutral border, no second enemy, no working harbour - and its ground costs you barely half the usual price to take. Only you: a third party attacking the same pocket pays full rate. Seal a bot in long enough and it may hand you the whole country.

Tear up an alliance and you are branded TRAITOR - on the ladder, in the feed, on your next offer. No bot signs with you while it lasts, every bot trusts you less, and your ground pays double gold to whoever takes it. The brand fades; the count underneath never does.

The fourth warhead. A tenth of the map in one flash, 68% through interception, a cooldown you plan a war around - and the one weapon that leaves fallout: the ground it takes earns nothing for anyone and is cheap to walk over for a long while. It fires only from a silo raised to level 5.

Park warships off an enemy harbour and it is strangled: no convoys sail, and the port pays none of its standing income while the ships sit there. The harbour pulses red on every screen - the owner sees what is bleeding them, the blockader sees it working.

Alt over the right button drops a mark only your allies can see - HERE, in your colour, on their map and nobody else's. The cheapest coordination there is: no chat, no typing, one gesture.

Hold Space and the war becomes a chart: every nation outlined in its own colour, coasts included, you heaviest with a pale glow and anyone you are fighting glowing red beneath theirs - over a lettered grid for calling positions out loud.

Minimise the game, read something, come back: in multiplayer the war keeps stepping at full speed while the tab is hidden, and nobody waits on you. A machine that truly stalls hands its nation to the AI after ten seconds - and your first click takes command straight back.