Balance of Threat — Student Guide

Welcome. You and your teammates run one of seven countries on two continents. Over many turns (your teacher may not say how many — play as if there's always a next one) you will tax, build, spy, ally, threaten, trade, and sometimes fight — trying to come out of it prosperous, secure, and stable. This guide tells you how to play. It does not tell you how to win. Half the point of the game is discovering that for yourself, and finding that it is harder than it looks.

The game is named for a real idea from international relations: states react to the threat they perceive, not to the power that actually exists. You will never see the truth about your rivals — only your analysts' best guess. That one fact shapes everything.

The short version

• New to the game? Play Basic training from the home page first: a five-turn tutorial that walks you through taxes, the fog, alliances and force, one step at a time. There is also a five-turn campaign tutorial, The long game, to play before your first long campaign.
• You control a country. Your team shares one seat.
• Each turn you set a budget and issue orders, then Submit.
• A turn resolves when everyone has submitted (or the deadline passes).
• You are scored on three things: Prosperity, Security, Stability.
• You see every country's economy (GDP), but only an estimate of anyone else's military.
• Playing the long solo campaign? It adds extra rules that apply only there; see The long campaign near the end of this guide.
• Talking to the other teams — alliances, deals, threats, bluffs — happens in the game's Chat (the gold speech-bubble button at the top; World, your Team, and a private line to each other student-played country) or in your class's own group chat. Your teacher can read the in-game chat. The game is where you turn those conversations into orders.

How a turn works

1. Open your team's link and pick a display name. Everyone on your team sees the same private view. A rival's true strength is never shown to you, and yours is never shown to them.
2. Draft your orders. Nothing happens until you submit, so experiment freely — drag the tax slider, line up an attack, propose a pact — and watch the projections update. You can Save draft and come back.
3. Submit orders before the deadline. Changed your mind? Unsubmit and edit, as long as the deadline hasn't passed.
4. The turn resolves. Everyone's orders are applied at once — this is simultaneous, so what your neighbour does this turn happens at the same time as what you do, not in response to it.
5. Read what happened and plan the next turn.

If you miss a deadline, your last budget simply repeats and you take no new actions. Doing nothing is not safe — it just means the world moves and you don't. Show up every turn.

Your three goals

At the top of the screen, three cards track how you're doing. Your final score is an index of exactly these — nothing else.

These three pull against each other on purpose. Money spent on the army is money not growing your economy. Taxing hard to afford both can crack your stability. There is no setting that maxes all three — the game is the trade-off. Getting comfortable with that tension is the lesson.

Security means enough, not most. Once you and your allies could hold off your most dangerous neighbour, more weapons add nothing to your score, but they still cost your economy and alarm your neighbours. An ally who would fight beside you counts just like your own army. Real states spend a small share of their economy on the military in peace (2–5% is normal) and much more only in war; the Budget tab shows where your spending stands against them.

Reading the situation room

The screen has three columns.

Left — your orders. Four tabs:

• Budget — your tax rate, projected growth, the budget meter, spending, and your economic postures.
• Military — your forces, the mobilize switch, and attacks.
• Diplomacy — every deal, threat, and act of statecraft.
• Decrees — unilateral actions your government can take on its own, without anyone's agreement: putting the economy on a war footing, fast-tracking talent, tightening surveillance, policing the world's trade routes, and more. They're paid for in your own political capital, so an autocrat can decree cheaply where a democracy pays dearly for the same act.

Center — the map. Click any country for its dossier (what you know about it). Right-click for quick actions. Urgent news — an attack on you, an incoming threat, a demand from your public — pops up as an alert over the map; you can act on it right there or dismiss it.

Right — what you know.

• Intelligence — a bar for each rival showing the range your analysts believe their military falls in. The wider the bar, the less you know. Your own true strength is the bright line.
• Your nation — your real numbers: stability, treasury, tech, and your economic readouts. At the top is your Human development index: how well your citizens live, combining living standard (your economy after arms spending), knowledge (civilian research), and health & safety (stability, war, displacement, sanctions), with a few lines on daily life. It also appears in the final standings, but it is not part of the score.
• World news — what happened last turn.

Fighting terrorism. Insurgencies grow in unstable countries and feed a shared terror threat, which hits the troubled country and its neighbours hardest. You have three tools. The Counterterror fund (Budget tab) pays for international policing and intelligence, the cheapest tool per dollar. Aid (Diplomacy tab) to a country fighting an insurgency restores its stability, and an insurgency burns out once its country is stable again. A counterterror raid (Military tab) hits a named group directly: alongside an ally's forces it works well; without the host's consent it violates their sovereignty, costs you reputation, and some of the group grows back as new recruits.

Your flag and your newspaper. On your first visit a national briefing tells you who your country is, what you want, and how the region sees each of your neighbours; click your flag in the top bar to read it again. At the start of every turn your country's own newspaper (The Solace Ledger, The Vorsk Standard, and so on) reports the news. Its size tells you how big the turn was for you: on a quiet turn only the headline appears (above the map), an ordinary turn brings the paper folded (click Unfold for the rest), and a big one brings a full EXTRA! edition. The full page has the biggest story of the turn, other headlines, your economy and public mood at home, and the news in brief. Each story ends with a line on what it means. The Paper button in the top bar brings it back. When the game ends, the paper prints a final edition: the story of the whole game, the final standings and your nation's record. The paper only prints what your country knows: it can't report what your intelligence never saw.

The Cabinet button at the top opens a briefing from your three ministers: finance, defense and foreign affairs. Each describes your situation in plain language and suggests a couple of moves. They argue from their own priorities, so their advice can conflict; deciding between them is your job. They know only what your intelligence knows, so their estimates can be wrong. (Your teacher may switch the Cabinet off.)

The Joint Chiefs button beside it opens your military leaders' war plans. Pick any country and the chiefs lay out every way you could fight it: an air campaign, punitive strikes, a show of force, a strike on a nuclear programme your spies found, invasions of three sizes, a coalition offensive with your allies, and your nuclear options if you have them. Each plan has a codename, the steps turn by turn, what it needs, its odds, its risks and a rating: viable, risky, not viable or not possible. The Chairman sums up which plan they would choose, or advises against war. Like the Cabinet, the chiefs only know what your spies know. A rival's dossier has a War plans link that opens the chiefs on that country.

At the very bottom, the action bar always shows Submit orders. You never have to scroll to find it.

The one rule that changes everything: the fog

You can see every country's GDP. You cannot see anyone's true military — only an estimated band, and that estimate is biased. Your analysts might consistently over- or under-rate a particular neighbour, and that mistake will stick from turn to turn until you pay to fix it. You can't just average across turns to find the truth.

To sharpen what you know:

• Spy on a rival (Diplomacy tab) to narrow the band and, over time, correct a bad read.
• Exchange ambassadors — a mutual deal that makes both of you clearer to each other. Transparency as a substitute for spying.
• Invest in intelligence research in your budget.

Because you're reacting to a guess, you may arm against a neighbour who was never a threat — and they may do the same to you. If everyone arms out of caution, everyone ends up poorer without being any safer. That trap has a name (the security dilemma), and you'll feel it before you can name it. Watch for it.

One thing you can always see: when a neighbour mobilizes their army, it shows on the map. Massing troops can't be hidden — but whether it's meant for defense or for an attack on you is exactly the ambiguity you have to judge.

The budget: guns versus butter

Everything is paid for here.

• Tax rate. Higher tax gives you more to spend now but slows your economy's growth — and taxing above your public's tolerance drains stability. The projected growth figure updates live as you drag the slider.
• The budget meter. A single bar shows what you've allocated (from the left), the slice reserved for military upkeep (hatched, on the right), and a marker for the most you can safely spend. The line beneath reads "allocated · free to spend · upkeep." Keep your spending left of the marker: spend past it and you can't pay your army's upkeep, so units disband.
• Spending lines. Build army / navy / air, fund research (civilian growth, military, or intelligence), run covert operations, and contribute to international bodies. Every military unit you build adds permanent upkeep, so arming is a lasting cost, not a one-time buy.
• Doctrines. Once a research track is advanced enough, you commit — once, permanently — to a specialization (for example military offense vs defense). Choose in the Budget pane.
• Capital openness. How open your economy is to foreign investment. Open attracts capital that compounds into extra growth — but that growth flows only through a working, open trade order, and open leaves you exposed: if you turn belligerent your capital flees, and if the world's order breaks down while nobody protects your routes, your commerce bleeds (see "The open world isn't free"). Open is the road to wealth in a well-ordered world and a liability in a chaotic one. Staying closed forgoes that upside but is the hedge in disorder. Foreign capital works hardest in a smaller economy, so a middle power gains more from opening up than the leading power does — the way postwar Japan and Korea grew. Rule of thumb: open up when you're at peace and either the world order is healthy or you guard your own trade; stay mostly closed if you're planning a war or you're exposed in a chaotic world. Sanctions against you slow the market's recovery but don't freeze it — your own sabre-rattling does. (Note: the dial sets a target; your actual openness drifts toward it — slowly when you open up, fast when you slam shut — so the two won't always match, and the projected-growth figure reflects the real, order-adjusted number.)

Your military

• Building takes a turn and adds upkeep forever after. Army fights over land borders; navy carries force across the sea; air supports both and enables surprise strikes.
• The ocean. Between the two continents lies an ocean, and water stops armies. To invade across it you need a navy about as big as your army to carry it, and even then the army lands weakened (short of ships, it barely lands at all). Strikes from home reach across at half strength, and an ally's help crossing the ocean arrives weakened too. A carrier off their coast or a base nearby puts your strikes back at full strength. So a country can dominate its own continent far more easily than the other one.
• Mobilize (Military tab) readies your army for a full assault and buffs your defense too — but it's visible to everyone, costs stability to hold, and telegraphs that you might attack. To launch a full assault for conquest, you must have mobilized first.
• A surprise strike (navy + air, no mobilizing) hits an unready rival without warning — but it destroys forces rather than taking territory, and a mobilized defender is ready for it. (In a campaign, or if your teacher turns on the strike menu, you choose what a strike hits: see "Choosing what a strike hits".)
• Attacks come in commitment tiers — a small incursion, a limited operation, or an all-out full assault. The tier decides who comes to the defender's aid: an incursion draws in no one, a limited operation brings the defender's own allies at half strength, and a full assault brings its allies and its whole bloc (see "Alliances and blocs"). A smaller bite is a surer, cheaper gamble; a full assault risks more to take more.
• Defending is easier than attacking. Dug-in defenders have the advantage, and a defender's allies may come to their aid. Conquest is possible but rarely cheap — which is exactly why threats, deterrence, and alliances matter.

Attacking has costs beyond the battle: your reputation drops, war wearies your public, and occupying conquered land strains your stability. Hitting back at someone who attacked you costs far less — the world doesn't brand a country that defends itself. But whoever strikes first pays the full price.

Conquered land: occupy, annex, or give it back

Every country is made of provinces (Aurelia's are Solace, the Marchlands, the Narrows Coast and the Harbour Coast). When you win an assault, the provinces nearest you change hands: a full assault usually takes one, and smaller attacks add up. A capital is never taken, so no country is ever wiped off the map. If you win back land you lost, your own provinces come back first.

To see the provinces, press Provinces on the map. The countries' names step aside and every province is named, with a ★ on each capital. Press it again to go back to the countries. Land that has changed hands is striped (occupied) or drawn in its new owner's colour (annexed) in either view, and its name says who holds it; zoom in if a name is hidden under a country's label.

Land you take is occupied: it's striped on the map in its rightful owner's colour. Holding it costs you a little stability every turn, and its owner keeps its claim, so a war to take it back counts as provoked. In the Diplomacy tab's Territory section you decide what to do with it:

• Annex it. The border moves for good and the occupation stops costing you, but the world won't recognise it: you lose reputation, other countries' publics demand that their governments respond, and the owner never forgets. (Russia and Crimea, 2014.)
• Give it back. The land and the wealth you took return to its owner. You gain reputation, and the owner's claim against you ends. (Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt, 1979.)
• Keep occupying it and decide later, paying for it every turn.

You can decide for the whole country at once, or province by province: click a province to annex it, click again to give it back. You might keep a coastline and hand back the rest. Annexing costs more reputation the more provinces you take at once, and handing back part of the land earns part of the credit (the owner keeps its claim on the rest).

When a capital falls. A capital can only be taken in a last stand: once all a country's other land is lost, the next winning full assault takes it. Then both governments decide. The victor chooses the peace:

• a harsh peace: an indemnity, and it keeps the land it took (France paid Germany five billion francs in 1871);
• a generous peace: give everything back and help it rebuild;
• install a new government: a friendly government takes over, and the beaten country becomes your ally (Japan in 1945, Iraq in 2003). This is only possible against a country run by the computer: a team of students is never turned into its conqueror's puppet;
• annex the whole country: the world won't recognise it and a resistance rises (Iraq and Kuwait, 1990).

The beaten government chooses to accept, to fight on from exile, or to accept and appeal to the world, which blackens the victor's name. Fighting on only blocks a harsh peace, which needs the beaten government's signature. The capital then stays occupied, a resistance rises against the occupier, and the occupier may still annex the whole country or install a new government later, from the Territory section (Napoleon took Moscow in 1812 and still lost the war). A new government needs no one's consent: the old one has fled, though if it fights on from exile its partisans will fight the new government.

A government in exile. A country that has lost all of its land governs from abroad. The day it falls, its army at home surrenders. Its air force and navy escape to an ally if it has one; with no ally to take them in, they're scuttled or interned. Its carriers sail to an ally's waters or are scuttled; a conqueror never captures them. While in exile it can't attack or strike from home, only from a base or carriers near the target. It raises only a quarter of its usual taxes, and no one can attack it, because it has no territory left. The economy it leaves behind splits: part of it flees (money and skilled people leave, more so in an advanced economy), a little goes into exile with the government, and the rest passes to whoever holds its land, and goes back if the land is ever returned. Once any of its land comes back, its government comes home. (The Free French, Dutch and Norwegian navies sailed for Britain in 1940; the French fleet at Toulon scuttled itself in 1942.) No country ever disappears: even annexed, its government fights on in exile, and a coalition that liberates it brings it home.

Coalitions: checking a rising power together

Sooner or later one country starts to run away with the game — out-growing, out- arming, or out-conquering everyone. Here's the trap: you usually can't stop it alone. Dug-in defenders have the edge, so a lone attacker rarely beats a strong power — and even if you did, you'd just become the new giant everyone else fears. Force by itself doesn't check a hegemon. Balancing does — ganging up.

When allies attack the same target together, their forces combine into one assault. A coalition is an alliance pooling its strength — and hitting a power on several fronts at once erodes the defender's home-ground advantage (the two-front problem). That combination is what lets a coalition crack an entrenched leader no single member could touch.

And a coalition victory is punitive, not a land-grab: it destroys much of the target's power and divides little, so it cuts the leader down to size rather than crowning whoever landed the blow. Balancing de-concentrates the board — that's the point.

To organize one, open the coalition planner — the "call your allies to a joint attack" button in the Military tab, or right-click the target. Pick which allies join and you'll see a shared-intelligence forecast of whether the coalition can actually win (read through your combined fog, so it's still a judgment call, not a certainty). Then:

• Bot allies you call will honour the strike and converge on the target.
• Human allies get an invite — they see the same forecast and choose to Commit or Decline (coordinate the timing in your class chat; everyone who's committing should mobilize so they're ready to strike the same turn).
• An ally with no border of its own can still join as an expeditionary force through a partner's front.
• Tick "only strike if the coalition can win" so you hold back rather than attack alone if partners fall out at the last moment.

This is the other half of the game's central question — balance or bandwagon? Gang up on the strongest, or join them and share the spoils. Organizing the coalition is itself the hard part: someone has to lead it, and allies may decline, hesitate, or quietly hope you'll pay the cost of confronting the giant. But a well-timed coalition is the surest way to stop any one team from winning the whole board.

Diplomacy and statecraft

All of this lives in the Diplomacy tab (and most also on right-click). Every pact is a mutual deal: your proposal is a request the other team accepts (or proposes back to seal). Actually negotiating happens in Chat (or your class's own group chat) — this is where you lock the agreement in. Remember that words are cheap: a promise in chat binds no one until the orders say so.

• Alliance — a mutual defense pact; allies may help fight off an attacker. Breaking one, or attacking your own ally, costs reputation. Three or more chained allies form a bloc (see "Alliances and blocs" below).
• Ambassador exchange — narrows both sides' estimates of each other.
• Arms-limitation treaty — both freeze their militaries. Cheating is only caught if the other side has enough intelligence to notice — arms control is only as strong as verification.
• Trade agreement — both economies grow faster (the smaller partner gains proportionally more). But going to war with — or sanctioning — a trade partner ruptures the tie and hurts you. The deeper the relationship, the more it would cost you to turn on them.
• Ultimatum — coerce a rival: "do X or I do Y," resolved next turn. Comply and you win the point; defy and you must follow through — a threat you can't actually carry out is an empty bluff that costs you reputation. Credibility is capability.
• Spy / Sponsor unrest — sharpen your picture of a rival, or covertly fund insurgents inside one.
• Sanction — a standing economic embargo (pick a severity). It stacks with other sanctioners and squeezes the target's economy — and a bit of yours. You can also rally your allies to join a sanction you hold, turning a solo squeeze into a coalition (they can accept or decline — expect both).
• Aid / subsidy — send money to another country: buy an alliance, prop up a friend, fund a partner's defense.

Alliances and blocs

An alliance is between two countries. But alliances chain together: if you are allied with Bhastra and Bhastra is allied with Corvane, the three of you form a bloc, even though you and Corvane never signed anything. Once a chain links three or more countries, the bloc gets a name, shown in the bloc bar above the map. A bloc is NATO's Article 5 in miniature: an all-out attack on any member is an attack on all.

Who comes to help depends on how hard the attacker hits:

So a bloc deters invasion, not nibbling. A rival can still take small bites without bringing the whole bloc down on itself. That is salami tactics, and it is why a bloc doesn't make you safe from everything.

Help is partial, too. An ally lends a share of its forces, never its whole army, and less if it is across the ocean. A bloc of weak friends is still weak. Check your own estimate, not the bloc's size.

Seeing the blocs. Switch on Alliances on the map. The map turns plain and colours the world from your country's point of view: gold is you, green your allies, pale green the rest of your bloc (countries you are tied to through someone else), and dark grey everyone else. Click any country to see its alliances instead.

When a bloc turns on itself. Sometimes one member attacks another. Then:

• The attacker breaks its alliance. If it attacks a country it is directly allied with, that alliance ends after the battle, and the attacker loses reputation for the broken treaty on top of the usual cost of attacking.
• The defender's own allies still defend it. If you are allied to the victim, you are pulled into its defense, even if you are also allied to the attacker. Defending doesn't count as attacking, so your alliance with the attacker survives (whether it survives what comes next is up to you both).
• Countries tied in only through the attacker stay out. A bloc is the victim's network of friends, not the attacker's. Say the chain runs Estara – Aurelia – Bhastra – Corvane, and Aurelia invades Corvane. Bhastra defends Corvane (its direct ally). Estara sits it out: its only link to Corvane runs through Aurelia, the aggressor, and no one is forced to fight its only ally.
• No one is ever dragged onto the attacker's side. The bloc only ever defends. Joining an attack is always your own choice (see "Coalitions").

In the long campaign a bloc never spans the ideological divide: a revolutionary state and its enemies can still sign a direct alliance, but it doesn't chain them into one bloc. In a crisis scenario such as the Gulf there are no blocs at all; an alliance defends its direct partner only.

Rule by decree

The Decrees tab is where your government acts alone — no other country has to agree. But nothing is free at home either. Every decree spends political capital: the more accountable your government, the more a unilateral act costs you in stability. An autocracy can rule by decree cheaply; a democracy pays dearly for the same move. Watch the cost preview on each decree — your regime type is printed right there, and it's a real strategic difference between the seven nations.

Two kinds of decree:

Standing postures — held turn after turn, each draining a little stability for as long as you keep it up:

• Contested-Frontier Enforcement — forward deterrence. Your forces dig in on a disputed border, adding a big defensive bonus if you're attacked. (Coastal nations see this as Freedom-of-Navigation Enforcement, and a nation with no coast as Forward Frontier Deterrence — same idea, your geography.) The catch: staring down a neighbour can spark an incident (see below).
• Homeland Surveillance Directive — sharpen your intelligence on every rival at once and make yourself harder to subvert from within. The price is at home: a standing strain on a free society.
• Emergency War-Production Footing — put the economy on a war footing for extra growth each turn you hold it.

One-off decrees — enacted once, for an immediate effect:

• STEM & Tech Fast-Track Decree — a durable, permanent bump to your growth. It stacks if you repeat it, but only up to a ceiling — past that it adds nothing but cost, so you can't simply spam your way to a runaway lead.
• Preemptive Cyber Neutralization — reach into a chosen rival and degrade their air readiness now. Like the frontier posture, it risks an incident.
• Emergency Stabilization Decree — crack down to restore stability and crush an insurgency immediately. It works, but heavy-handed rule costs you reputation and spooks the foreign investors whose capital you may be relying on.

There's a sixth decree — Secure the Commons — that's a world unto itself; the next section is about it.

Incidents, not automatic wars. Two of these (holding the frontier, launching a cyber strike) can provoke an incident — a standoff that lands on your alerts. It is never an automatic war. You get a one-turn choice: escalate it into a strike (now cheaper, because the incident gives you the pretext) or stand down and let it cool. The dice can start a crisis; only you can turn it into a war.

The open world isn't free

Trade agreements and open capital make you richer — but only while the world's trade routes stay open. Ships have to reach port; goods have to cross borders safely. That safety isn't automatic. Someone has to police the commons — the sea lanes and overland corridors that everyone's commerce runs through — and it costs them real money and real risk to do it.

The game opens on a fragile, inherited order — not a blank slate, but not a finished peace either. Left alone, it decays fast. With nobody holding it up, a neglected commons can slide from healthy into "breaking down" in just a few turns, and every war, blockade, and act of terror shoves it lower still. As it frays, the growth everyone earns from trade and investment shrinks with it. Watch its health under Global order in the right-hand panel: healthy, strained, or breaking down, and whether it's rising or falling this turn.

A broken world hurts an open economy — and you'll see it coming. If your economy is open and the order slips into the red while nobody protects the routes you depend on, your commerce bleeds: your capital flees, your shipping is raided (once the order is deep in the red, an exposed trader is hit every turn), and your growth sags. You don't have to be surprised by it — the projected-growth figure on your tax slider already shows the depressed number, with a note telling you a disordered commons is cutting your growth and what to do about it.

You have three honest responses:

• Police the commons (the Secure the Commons decree, Decrees tab). Flying the flag isn't enough — you must commit real forces to the patrol (ships if you're coastal, troops on the overland corridors if you're landlocked). How big a patrol you need scales with your economy: the more trade you have, the more force it takes to protect it, so a small power secures its lanes cheaply while a great trading power must field a real navy. The forces you commit are a patrol detachment, not a stand-down — they stay part of your fleet or army and remain fully available to attack and defend; you're assigning them to patrol, not retiring them (a patrol that comes under fire takes light losses). Commit enough and you secure your own trade — the raids and capital flight stop and your growth recovers — regardless of what the rest of the world does. But policing draws fire: your patrol will be attacked by hostile states or by the militants and pirate fleets that haunt a lawless commons, and each incident forces a hard choice — strike back to keep the routes open, or stand down and let the disorder spread.
• Retreat to autarky (close your economy on the Budget tab). A closed economy is insulated from the raids and flight — the hedge in a chaotic world — but it forgoes the growth an open economy enjoys when the order holds.
• Free-ride — stay open and hope someone else pays to keep the routes safe. It works right up until no one does, and then you bleed.

Securing your own trade is not the same as fixing the world. Your own patrol protects your commerce, but lifting the whole world's order back up takes far more — several guarantors together, or allies sharing the load. One power rarely fixes a broken world alone (the Global Order panel even estimates how much more force it would take). The country strong enough to gain the most from an open world is usually the one that ends up paying to keep it open — and often finds the multinational firms on its own soil demanding it do exactly that. That pattern has a name (hegemonic stability), and deciding whether to be that guarantor, to close up, or to gamble that someone else steps up is one of the sharpest choices in the game.

The Global order panel is your dashboard for all of this: the order's health and trend, who is policing the commons, your own contribution (and whether it's enough to secure your trade), the stateless raider fleets preying on the lawless routes, and a rough estimate of the force still needed to steady the world. The game flags you when the order shifts or your trade is disrupted — but the panel is always there.

When things go wrong

• Unrest. If your stability falls below the danger line, an insurgency erupts — it drains your economy and ties down army units until you suppress it. Watch the stability card, and don't overtax.
• Atrocities and demands. War crimes, sponsored terror, or a blockade held for years (four turns or more in a row: the population starves, as Iraq's did in the 1990s) get a country condemned worldwide, and outraged publics — including your own — raise demands their government must answer (with a condemnation, a sanction, or otherwise) or lose stability. Democracies feel this hardest.
• Capital flight. Turn belligerent while your economy is open and foreign investors pull out — an immediate GDP hit. Peace and openness earn the dividend; war spends it.
• Being sanctioned. Others can gang up on you economically, too. Reputation and relationships are worth protecting before you need them.

Late game: nuclear weapons

If a country pushes its military research far enough, it can commit to a strategic doctrine: build toward nuclear weapons, or build missile defense to intercept them. Committing is only the start — a weapons programme takes time to mature before it can field a single warhead, and that lag is the whole drama. A nuclear programme in progress is covert, but it can be detected if a rival spends enough on intelligence — so if you're chasing the bomb, expect to be watched, and if you fear a neighbour is, invest in espionage to catch it early. That window is when a programme can be stopped: you can issue a "halt your nuclear programme" ultimatum (comply and they abandon it; defy and you make good — including, if you can reach them, a preventive strike on the programme before it's finished). Get to the finish line and you have the bomb.

Nuclear strikes are devastating and taboo — using them turns the world against you. Because arsenals are hidden like everything else, a first strike can never fully disarm an enemy, so the threat of retaliation tends to keep everyone's finger off the button. Most games never see a launch. If your neighbour goes nuclear, think hard about deterrence — and about missile defense.

A strike that answers a nuclear attack, on you or on one of your allies, is a reprisal, not a first strike: your public backs you and the world doesn't condemn you the way it condemns a bolt from the blue. That is what a nuclear umbrella means, and why a nuclear ally is worth having. A first strike out of nowhere turns your own people against you.

The world: Valmera and Gorgon

Seven countries share two continents with an ocean between them. Valmera, in the west, is compact and crowded: Aurelia, Bhastra, Corvane and Estara, every one bordering at least two of the others. Gorgon, in the east, is larger: the great plains of Galloway, with the garrison state of Dhelmar and the sea republic of Ferrun on either side of it. The continents come closest at two straits, the Narrows in the north and the Tessel Passage in the south, and the Tessel Isles run across the ocean between them.

How it got this way. For two centuries the Concordat, an empire ruled from the Aurelian port of Solace, held all of Valmera and reached across the ocean to Gorgon. Its great settler dominion there broke away first and became Galloway, whose founders swore that Valmera's quarrels were not theirs. Eighty years ago the rest of the empire collapsed in the Sundering, and the Treaty of Varn split it into six countries along borders nobody living there chose, leaving families on both sides of the ocean. Twenty years later they fought the Winter War over those borders; nobody won, and Galloway stayed out and grew. Today the world lives under the Varn Settlement, an informal web of trade rules and restraint that no one enforces. That's the "world order" you start with, and it wears away unless someone holds it up.

Ideas that cross borders. Five movements recruit in every country. Most of their followers are peaceful; in hard times, their radicals take up arms.

• Restorationism wants the old empire back.
• The Levelling is a revolutionary creed from the mining towns: the land and the mines to those who work them.
• The Old Rite is Valmera's ancestral faith. Its apocalyptic fringe, the Rite of Cinders, preaches that the successor states must burn before the world can be renewed.
• The Green Wardens defend rivers, forests and farmland against dams and mines.
• The Free Coasts claim that islands and harbour towns owe nothing to inland capitals. Its hardliners drift into piracy.

The seven nations. Every country faces a different problem; that's why the seven teams want different things. When you're assigned one, read its dossier in the game. Each nation below lists the insurgent groups that can rise there. Which one appears depends on why unrest breaks out: a rival funding it, a rival holding your land, or hardship at home.

• Aurelia (capital Solace, Valmera) — the largest economy but a thin army for its size. Rich enough to be the obvious target, with a public that won't tolerate heavy taxes for long. Its hill country, the Marchlands, has kin across the ocean in Dhelmar. Groups: the Marchland Liberation Army, the Ledger Breakers, the Restoration of Solace, the Harbour Brotherhood.
• Bhastra (capital Kesh, Valmera) — central, bordered on three sides, with only a frozen northern coast. Can't ignore any neighbour's buildup; the security dilemma is hardest here. A federation of seven mountain cantons that the capital rarely controls. Groups: the Canton Freedom Front, the People's Vanguard of the Plateau, the Crossroads Covenant, the Seventh Canton.
• Corvane (capital Vorsk, Valmera) — resource-rich and repressive. Can tax far harder than anyone without immediate unrest, but starts closest to the unrest line and falls fastest once it crosses. Its mining provinces, the Saltmarch, have never forgiven the capital, and its Tarn minority has kin across the ocean in Ferrun. Groups: the Saltmarch Red Brigades, the Quiet Hand, the Tarn Independence Council, the Cinder Pilgrims.
• Dhelmar (capital Garrow, Gorgon) — the smallest economy and the strongest army, with a giant for a neighbour. Time is against it: its position erodes every turn it waits, a textbook incentive to strike early. The garrison the old empire built to watch Galloway, where every young man serves. Groups: the Deserters' Legion, the Veterans' Covenant, the Ash Front, the Free Coast Movement.
• Estara (capital Lindra, Valmera) — technologically ahead, with a small modern army, two land neighbours and a coast facing only the open western ocean. Its choice between arming and buying security through alliances is the sharpest in the game. A proud, quarrelsome democracy of universities and great river dams. Groups: the Verdant Accord, the Unseen Network, the Upper Veld League, the Hearthkeepers.
• Ferrun (capital Maren, Gorgon) — the foremost naval power, with a fleet big enough to carry its army across the water that stops everyone else. A coveted ally, and a threat that can arrive from the sea. Its Tessel Isles, strung across the ocean, have been restless since the Treaty handed them to Maren, and it shares the Tarn minority with Corvane. Groups: the Free Isles Movement, the Dockers' Uprising, the Tidewater Brotherhood, the Tarn Brothers.
• Galloway (capital Westhaven, Gorgon) — a continent-sized republic with the largest economy in the world, the strongest army on its continent, and an ocean between it and Valmera's quarrels. Its only neighbours, Dhelmar and Ferrun, must choose between following its lead and finding a protector across the ocean. It can make its own continent its sphere; then it must decide whether to stay out of Valmera, or cross the ocean to stop anyone there from becoming its equal. Groups: the Ironback Free State, the Grange Levellers, the Dominion League, the Borderland Rangers.

Beyond any country's control, corsair fleets descended from the old empire's privateers haunt the Outer Passage and the Tessel Sea whenever the world order weakens.

Extra systems your teacher may switch on

When your teacher creates a game, they can add three systems from the long campaign. If they're on, you'll see them; if not, nothing in this section applies.

• Forward bases. Station troops in an ally (Military tab, Forces abroad). They defend your ally at full strength against any attack, even a small incursion, and an attack on them counts as an attack on you: a tripwire. A base also lets you strike your ally's neighbours. But troops abroad don't defend home, and they cost more to keep. Bases show on the map with their owner's flag.
• Crisis decisions. If your spies uncover a rival's secret nuclear programme, a card asks what you'll do: strike it, sabotage it, or contain it with sanctions. If your programme is struck, you choose how to answer. A coastal country can also close its strait from the Decrees tab: every other team then decides whether to escort convoys through (helping every trader, including those who do nothing), strike the coastal sites, share the cost in a maritime coalition, or wait. Only enough escorts together can force it open.
• Strike menu. A strike can hit their forces, their infrastructure (their economy burns, but their public tends to rally), a detected nuclear programme, or just send a limited signal. You can also strike while mobilized, instead of invading.

The details are the same as in the campaign: see "The breakout crisis", "Forward bases", "When a strait is closed" and "Choosing what a strike hits" below.

The long campaign (solo campaign only)

Only in the long campaign. Everything in this section applies only to the long campaign: the solo game you start from the home page with Start a campaign. Classroom games, quick games and ordinary solo games play by the rules in the rest of this guide and have none of what follows.

A campaign runs 100 to 250 turns. Think of each turn as roughly a year, so a campaign is a century or two of history. The five-turn tutorial The long game (on the home page) shows the main extras before you start: standing orders, world events and their second acts, a rival's secret bomb, and save points. The basics are the same (budget, tax, military, diplomacy, decrees, the fog), but a long game adds rules that only make sense over generations.

Save points and "what if" branches

The Timeline button (⏱) keeps save points: automatic ones at the start and every ten turns, plus up to ten of your own. Replay from here starts a branch, a separate copy of the campaign from that turn with the same world and the same luck, so you can test a different decision. Your original game stays as it was, and the Timeline charts your economy in every branch so you can compare them.

Standing orders and the decade in review

Two switches in the Budget tab save you re-entering the same orders every turn. Keep my budget starts each new turn with last turn's budget filled in (never one-off actions like an attack). Hold my forces steady builds at least enough to replace the units that retire each turn (see Armies age below). Both start switched on; you still review your orders and submit.

Every ten turns your paper prints the decade in review: how the seven powers rank by the size of their economies now and ten turns ago, how your own country fared, and the decade's biggest stories.

Growth over a century

• No one outgrows the world forever. The world's technology advances at a steady pace. You can race ahead of it for a while with good policy, but the further ahead you get, the harder the next percent of growth comes. Good policy buys a higher level of wealth, not endless compounding. Your projected growth figure in the Budget tab includes this, and a note tells you when you've run ahead of the world or are catching up.
• Laggards catch up, and ruined countries rebuild. A country far behind can borrow what the leaders already invented, and a country smaller than it started rebuilds fast. An early lead won't hold on its own.
• Dominance is expensive. A power holding a big share of the world's wealth pays rising costs to keep it: garrisons, client states, allies who free-ride. Expect the lead to change hands during a campaign.
• Armies age. About 2% of your forces retire every turn unless you replace them, and each new formation costs more as the world gets richer (soldiers' pay and weapons prices rise). Keeping a big army means paying for it, turn after turn.

World events

Every 6 to 12 turns something shakes the world. What happens, and where, depends on the state of the world: a spectacular terror attack, a revolution, a revisionist creed spreading, seizing a country or collapsing, a financial crash, a pandemic, or a technological revolution that opens a new era and raises the research ceiling.

The big events are two-act stories. When one touches your country, an event card (with the event's photograph and the story of what happened) asks you to choose one of three policies; the alert's Decide button reopens it. Two turns later a follow-up (marked ↪) arrives that depends on what you chose, with two new options. If you don't answer, there is no response and no follow-up. Every event goes into the Chronicle panel on the right, so by the end you can read your campaign as a history.

A depression discredits the government. After a financial crash, people blame the governments that let it happen, yours included. While their faith is low (the Faith in the government line on your Politics card), both revolutionary creeds recruit, strikes drain your stability every turn, and the world's next upheaval comes soon, as the 1930s followed 1929. How you answer the crash matters: spending your way out restores faith fastest, while austerity deepens the despair the extremists feed on.

Warning signs at home. If your stability stays below 30, a red warning counts the turns. After 2 turns a radical movement could seize power; after 4, a revolution could topple your government. Pull stability back up (lower taxes, end a war, use the Stabilize decree) and the danger passes. If you're toppled, you keep playing under the new regime.

Ages of revolution

Two revolutionary creeds from Valmera's history can take over countries:

At least once in every campaign a revolutionary age arrives. It unfolds like this:

1. A revolutionary tide. A creed surges in the shakiest countries. Strikes and street battles plunge them into turmoil.
2. Takeovers. A country that stays in turmoil can fall to the creed. It gets a named leader, turns expansionist, and raises armies cheaply.
3. Revolution spreads. A revolutionary country stirs unrest in its weak neighbours. States of the same creed ally automatically and form an axis, shown in red above the map.
4. The Gathering Storm. When an axis forms, every other government chooses: lead a Grand Alliance against it, appease it, or stay neutral. Alliance members defend one another, fight the axis harder, and their people rally while at war with it (shown in blue above the map). Appeasing buys time while the axis grows.
5. How it ends. A revolutionary regime that fails, grows old, or is beaten on its own soil falls, and its leader flees, is tried, or is shot. If both camps get nuclear weapons, open war freezes into a Cold War of arms races and proxy wars, until one side collapses from the strain.

The two creeds hate each other, like fascism and communism, but their leaders may sign a cynical pact to divide a neighbour. It won't last.

Revolutionary leaders are dangerous. Through zeal, tactical genius, or their enemies' complacency, a leader can win a battle the odds were against. It happens only in a close fight, never a hopeless one. Bring more than "just enough" force against them.

Politics at home: the Weimar trap

Every country has popular support for each creed, shown for your own country in the Politics gauge under Your nation. Hard times raise both creeds, and when one rises, frightened people rally to the other, as in Weimar Germany, Italy after 1919, and Spain in 1936. When both are strong the country is polarized, and street battles drain its stability every turn. If your country falls into turmoil, the stronger creed there is the one that seizes power.

When a creed organizes inside your country, you'll be asked how to respond:

• Crack down: fast, but heavy-handed.
• Address the grievances: slower, and it drains the creed's appeal.
• Ignore it, and hope it fades.
• Bring the rival creed into government to crush it (Hindenburg's bargain). It works, but two turns later your partners demand emergency powers. Refuse and the streets turn violent; grant them and the country is theirs.
• Take up the cause and lead it yourself. Your government becomes the revolution. Your people accept heavier taxes and your armies come cheaper, but investors flee, your old allies walk away, and much of the world turns against you. A new Export the revolution order in the Decrees tab then lets you stir revolt in a neighbour.

Fighting a revolutionary regime from outside

Besides war, alliances and sanctions, you can sponsor unrest inside a revolutionary country (Diplomacy tab). You choose whom you arm:

• The rival creed's partisans: faster, but if the regime falls while they're strong, they may take power themselves, as Tito's partisans did in Yugoslavia in 1945.
• A democratic resistance: slower, but a fall brings a democracy.

If a regime falls while you're backing its resistance, the world credits you, and the new government offers you its friendship: an alliance, aid to rebuild, or stepping back.

Defeat, the peace, and revenge

A country beaten in war carries a national grievance that fades only slowly, over decades. It feeds the Restoration, so a defeat can lie quiet until a later crisis ignites it. After a coalition victory, the winners choose the peace: a harsh peace (reparations for years; a deeper grievance), a generous peace (help the loser rebuild; the grievance is mostly defused), or withdrawing without terms. The peace comes when the war ends: when you click Make peace (Military tab, Ending wars), when the loser sues for peace, or after four turns with no new victory. A peace treaty then holds for 15 turns, and attacking again breaks the peace. If the Restoration later takes power in a humiliated country, it swears revenge on those who humiliated it. Think about Versailles and the Marshall Plan before you choose. Your own grievance shows in the Politics card.

The Cinder Dominion

Where an insurgency festers in a failed country, the Rite of Cinders can seize part of it and proclaim the Cinder Dominion, with a named leader. It raises the terror threat, sends fighters across the borders, occasionally launches a lightning offensive, and never gives up on its own. The world decides whether to join a coalition against it, arm the local forces, or stay out. It falls only when it's ground down.

You can see it on the map: its strongholds are charred black and ember-red, and they spread with each offensive. Its army is listed in the Military tab's Counterterror operations as the Rite of Cinders, with how many more fighters must be killed or captured before it collapses. There are two ways to bring it down: raid its fighters (with the host country's consent if it's your ally), or take its strongholds by force. Each stronghold a country's army takes kills or scatters a large share of its fighters, and when the last one falls, so does the Dominion (Mosul and Raqqa, 2017). Its surviving fighters go underground as an ordinary insurgency. It can also rise in its host's land that a rival occupies or has annexed. If that rival is you, you already hold the ground, so the way to break it is to raid its fighters.

Nuclear weapons and ceasefires

In a campaign the world won't let a nuclear feud run forever. If you're struck first, you keep your right to answer. Once the exchange is over (or two turns later, if the victim doesn't answer), the great powers impose a ceasefire, and both governments decide how to meet it: accept it, accept it and rebuild, or defy the world. Breaking a ceasefire brings sanctions from every other country and turns your own people against you.

The bomb, then the shield

In a campaign, nuclear weapons and missile defence are two separate steps. At Military level 2 you can begin a nuclear weapons programme (secret, but a rival's spies may catch it). At Military level 4 you can begin a missile shield, with or without the bomb. Both are under Doctrines in the Budget tab.

A shield is public, and every nuclear rival that isn't your ally will see it as an attempt to cancel out its deterrent. Expect one of three answers: an arms race (more warheads to overwhelm your shield), a treaty offer (you cap your shield and they cut their arsenal), or a warning that your shield is a threat, which makes an attack on you look like self-defence. If you hold the bomb and build a shield, rivals will suspect you are preparing to strike first. And if a rival builds a shield against you, you face the same choice.

The breakout crisis

When your intelligence uncovers a rival's secret nuclear programme, you choose: strike the facilities, sabotage them, or contain the programme with sanctions. A strike's result is uncertain, and you only get an estimate of how far it set them back. Each strike on the same programme does less, and a strike after the bomb is built does nothing. Untraced sabotage leaves nobody to blame.

If your programme is struck, you choose how to answer: close your strait (or your overland corridors; it costs every trading nation, you included, and the world may use force to reopen it), send your proxies after the striker and its allies, or absorb the blow and push on toward the bomb. Save first on the Timeline if you want to compare what each choice leads to.

Forward bases

In a campaign you can station troops in an ally (Military tab, Forces abroad). They defend your ally at full strength against any attack, even a small incursion, and an attack on them is an attack on you: a tripwire. A base also lets you attack or strike your ally's neighbours. But troops abroad don't defend your own country, and they cost more to keep. Every base shows on the map with the flag of the country that owns it.

Spheres of influence

This is part of every long campaign, and of a class game when your teacher turns it on. When one country holds about 40% of its continent's wealth, its government is asked what to do with that lead. It can proclaim a doctrine (Galloway's is the Aster Doctrine; Corvane's would be the Greater Valmeran Co-Prosperity Sphere, and every state's has its own name): its continent is closed to the alliances, bases and carriers of powers from across the ocean, and it offers its neighbours protection, which means an alliance and a trade tie in return for a pledge to keep outsiders away, and tribute: a protected neighbour pays about 1% of its economy every turn into its protector's treasury. This is how the United States used the Monroe Doctrine, and how the Soviet Union treated Finland. It can also be a good neighbour, or simply stay out.

If you're the neighbour, you can accept protection, appeal to a great power across the ocean, or stand alone and arm. Accepting ends any alliance you have across the ocean, and signing a new one later breaks your pledge: your reputation suffers, and your protector will count it a betrayal. A revolutionary government accepts protection only from a patron of its own creed: if a revolution of another creed takes power in a client, the new government tears up the pledge, as Cuba did in 1959.

A doctrine is only as good as the power behind it. Every outside alliance, base or carrier on the continent is a test: the holder can stand firm (and the outsider must back down or defy it), negotiate, or let it pass. Each test won makes the doctrine more credible, each one let pass makes it less so, and it can never be more credible than the holder's share of the continent's military power allows. A doctrine lapses when its holder is no longer the leading power. You'll find it all in the Diplomacy tab (Sphere of influence) and in the bar above the map.

When a strait is closed

If a country closes its strait (or its overland routes), every other government chooses: escort the convoys, strike the coastal launch sites, join a maritime coalition (half the cost), or wait. Escorts help every trading nation, even the ones that wait, which is exactly why it's tempting to let someone else do it. Only enough escorts together can force the strait open.

Encounters and battles at sea

When your warships and a rival's share the same waters, the first meeting asks both governments what to do: shadow them, pull back, or propose an Incidents at Sea agreement (it makes close calls much rarer). A close call can flare into an incident at sea, a standoff you can escalate into a battle between the fleets or let cool. In a war, fleets in the same waters fight: your intelligence on the enemy decides whether you can find their ships, and fighting near your own coast adds your land-based aircraft and missiles. Carriers can be sunk.

Choosing what a strike hits

An attack without mobilizing is a strike (navy + air), and it takes no ground. In a campaign you choose its target on the Military tab:

• Their forces: destroys forces caught unready. A rival that has mobilized is dispersed and harder to catch.
• Infrastructure: burns part of their economy and slows its growth for a couple of turns. It costs you more reputation, and their public rallies round its government. Bombing a nation's cities and factories has rarely made it give in: think of the Blitz, or North Vietnam.
• A limited signal: a quarter of the damage, a fraction of the cost. It says "we can hurt you" without starting a real war.
• Their nuclear sites: only against a secret programme your spies have uncovered. It sets the programme back.

If you are mobilized, you choose between a ground assault (invading, as always) and an air strike. Mobilizing readies your army, not your air force, so it doesn't make a strike any stronger.

Two things make strikes hit harder. A carrier stationed off their coast (about +30% damage, +60% with two): from close range its planes fly more missions. And air supremacy: once their air force is all but gone, nothing contests the skies, and a strike on their forces falls on their army too. The military briefing in their dossier tells you when you'd have it (going by your spies' estimate of their air force).

Navies and aircraft carriers

Ferrun starts with an old carrier, the Maren: weaker than a new one and just as costly to keep. It doesn't choose Ferrun's navy for it. A coastal country chooses its navy once (Budget tab, Doctrines): a blue-water navy, the only kind that can build aircraft carriers, or sea denial, a cheaper coastal navy of missiles, mines and fast boats that defends home waters hard and can sink a carrier that raids it. Carriers (Military tab) take four turns to build and cost a lot to keep; your share of the world's wealth sets how many you can run. Station one off an ally to help defend it, off a rival to strike it from the sea, or at home. Every carrier shows on the map.

Tips for a long campaign

• Think in decades. A lead taken early won't hold on its own. Invest in growth that lasts, and don't overpay for an army you'll have to keep replacing.
• Watch your Politics gauge. Polarization is a slow poison. Prosperity and calm are the cure.
• When the storm gathers, decide early. Appeasement buys time, but the axis uses that time too.
• Read the Chronicle. It's your campaign's history, and it tells you what the world is becoming.

Habits of good players

• Talk to your neighbours every turn. Most of the game is negotiation; the app just executes what you agree (or fail to agree) on.
• Watch what you can actually see — GDP, mobilizations, who's allied with whom — and treat force estimates as guesses, not facts.
• Spend on intelligence before you spend on a mistake. Arming against a threat that isn't there is the classic blunder.
• Don't overtax. A cracked home front loses games that no army could.
• Keep your word when it's cheap to, so your word is worth something when it isn't. Reputation and alliances are hard to buy back once spent.
• Notice the traps. When you find yourself arming just because they're arming, or when hitting first looks tempting because waiting feels worse — stop and name what's happening. That recognition is what the class is for.

Each-turn checklist

1. Read World news and your three goal cards.
2. Check Intelligence — did a neighbour grow, mobilize, or shift?
3. Settle any alerts (attacks, threats, demands from your public, incidents on your patrols, the state of world order).
4. Set your tax and budget — stay left of the upkeep marker.
5. Do your diplomacy — the deals you agreed on in chat.
6. Line up any military or covert moves.
7. Submit before the deadline.

Good luck. The world is watching what you build — and guessing at the rest.