This game is a grand strategy enthusiast's attempt to find a purified core loop of decision-making. All needless repetitive tasks are unceremoniously discarded. Instead, you get 10 actions that consume or convert 9 primary resources. Each turn, you (and each AI-controlled faction) get to take one action. The complexity comes from a dynamic world with many interactive systems.

The actions you can take:

• Respond to foreign invasions and natural calamities.

• Trade one resource for another.

• Recruit soldiers or labourers from your population.

• Nurture a city to boost its production.

• Steal resources from your neighbours.

• Infiltrate cities in preparation for an attack.

• Capture foreign cities by force.

• Negotiate to induce cities to join you peacefully.

• Build or restore unique landmarks.

• Excavate in search of resources and unique relics.

Some example considerations that you'll need to juggle:

• Each of the 32 playable factions has asymmetric starting conditions and unique goals.

• Cities are populated by various combinations of different cultures, which produce and require different resources.

• Actions affect relations with AI-controlled factions, which modify how they act toward you.

• There are no formal truces or alliances, and any faction can attack any other faction at any time (with a few story-related exceptions).

• Some cities are subaquatic, and require a different resource to capture or raid.

• Cities can be affected by random or circumstance-driven events.

• 67 unique landmarks can be built or restored to give a powerful bonus.

• A faction's capital cannot be relocated, and losing it destroys the faction entirely.

• Capturing another faction's capital lets you seize any relics they own, which are otherwise random finds.