Short answers first, details after. If your question is not here, the how-to-play and features pages go deeper
Your Empire is a strategy game that runs in a web browser. You rule an invented empire on a map of the real Earth, from a young ruler's first year to the day the ruler dies. All you do is choose how to handle the events that arrive, and the world changes around your choices
You start a game, get a random ruler with 2 to 5 real cities, and let time run at one game year per real minute. When an event happens the game pauses and shows 2 to 6 options. You pick one, see the immediate changes as arrows and icons, and carry on until the ruler dies. The how-to-play page has the full walkthrough
How to play Your EmpireYes. It runs in the browser and the current version has no purchases
No download and no sign-up are needed. You can play as a guest with a nickname, and log in later if you want your results on the leaderboards. The layout fits phones and desktops at any screen size
One game takes 1 to 2 hours. At normal speed one real minute is one game year, and a ruler lives 60 to 100 years. You can pause the game or speed it up
Yes. You can pause at any time and run time at x1, x2, x5 or x10. The game also pauses by itself whenever an event needs your answer. Speed changes nothing about what happens, because the server prepares the next event ahead of time
Yes. The server keeps your game, so you can close the tab and return any time, even from a phone
Yes. The game uses 4,396 real cities with their real borders as in our world. Each city owns its real district or province, so all the land is divided. The countries, peoples, rulers and religions around them are invented
Real cities, real bordersNo. Only the cities are real. Empires, nations, rulers and religions are generated and fictional, with names that sound like no real language, so you will not meet real kings or real wars
Anywhere on Earth, at random. You get a made-up country with 2 to 5 neighboring real cities and a young ruler, a man or a woman. The rest of the planet is divided among other generated empires
It starts medieval, with ships already sailing, and has no named eras. Technologies are discovered one by one, and within a single life a country can reach factories and railways. A neighbor may have gunpowder while you do not
Fifteen branches of knowledge, from farming and metallurgy to industry and political thought, unlock concrete inventions such as crop rotation, the windmill, the compass, the printing press, gunpowder, banking, the telescope, muskets, the steam engine, factories and railways. Every empire has its own set, and some inventions come from inventors born in your country
No eras, only discoveriesNo. Faiths are generated, with invented names, invented meaning and strange tenets, and one may hold goats sacred. They spread, split into branches and get founded by prophets, sometimes in your own country
They live on their own. Every other empire is ruled by a bot with the same mechanics, events and decisions as you. Half of a bot's decisions are random and half are the advantageous ones, so great powers rise, fight and collapse without a script. You only get the results, such as a captured city
Not in real time. Your reign is your own and the other empires are bots. You can invite friends, who are added automatically, watch their results and compete with them on a friends leaderboard. Famous rulers of other players can appear as legends in your world
More than 8,500, in 23 kinds. At normal speed you meet 3 to 5 a year, so a 50-year reign sees about 150 to 250 of them, under 3% of the pool. Events depend on your variables and your cities, so games rarely repeat
The 23 kinds of eventsThe game pauses and one event opens, often tied to a city: the camera flies there and the choices open over it. You get 2 to 6 options. Each shows its immediate effects as arrows and icons, like treasury down or army up twice, with no exact numbers and no hint about later consequences. The top bar shows treasury, population, army, stability, the ruler's age and the year
No. The only thing you do is choose in events. Commanders propose attacks, neighbors make demands and advisors bring proposals, and you answer. Every action reaches you as an event, and the choice is the only input the game accepts
Yes, when an event offers it. Forms include tribal chiefdom, feudal monarchy, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, merchant republic, theocracy, military dictatorship, republic, socialist state, communist state and empire. Your title follows, such as chieftain, king, emperor, doge, consul, president or chairman
Forms of governmentYou see only your own cities, your neighbors and your allies. The rest of the world is fog, drawn as plain white paper. Cartography, navigation and spies lift it step by step: first you see the land, later you see what happens on it
Fog of warYes, and they reach you as events. Neighbors attack, your commanders propose attacks, sieges can last for years, and you pick the peace terms. If an enemy is weaker you can seize a city, and if it is stronger you can give one up without a fight
The game ends with the ruler. You then see a final screen with your stats on one shareable card: years of reign, cause of death, peak population, peak area, wars, revolts survived, an epithet earned by your choices and the most interesting facts. A link opens the full chronicle of the reign
The final card, the chronicle and the leaderboardsSeveral ways: old age when the lifespan runs out, illness or an epidemic, a revolt or revolution, a coup by generals, nobles or relatives, poison or a blade in the night, a battle if the ruler leads the army, or an accident such as a fall from a horse. Losing every city also ends the game
A ruler's lifespan is random, between 60 and 100 years, and hidden from you. Stress shortens it, and wars, revolts, plots, famine and hard choices all add stress. Health also falls with age, and high stress late in life makes a ruler's choices strange
Every ruler dies in the end, so you win by what you leave behind: population, land, years of reign, cities conquered, wars won. Survival is likely if you play sensibly. In balance tests on simulated lives, about 4 in 5 sensible rulers reached old age, about 3 in 5 random ones, and about 1 in 2 cruel ones
Yes. The final card is an image made for social media, with a link to a result page. Leaderboards rank peak population, peak area, years of reign, cities conquered, peak treasury, tech level at death and most wars won, for all time, this month and this week. Friends have their own board
Not in any useful way. The whole game runs on the server, and the browser sends only which event you answered and which option you picked. Every number on the final card and the leaderboards comes from the server
English is the source language. The game and its events are being translated into 12 more: Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese. Anything not yet translated shows in English
It looks like papercraft: layers of colored paper, folded mountains, paper ships and soft shadows, all in 2D. The event texts are drama with dark humor, so a starving city and a very bad idea can share a paragraph
The quickest answer is a reign. It takes an hour or two, and most of it is decisions you will want to defend
Plays in your browser on desktop and phone. Guest play, no download
