Many nations: diplomacy, alliances, rebels and fronts that move

The living world is no longer a duel. Start a world with up to eight nations, and watch them trade, ally, fall out, split apart and go to war in waves.

Six nations at dusk, year 95: each its colour and its towns named in its own tongue, a front glowing between two of them.
Six nations au crépuscule, an 95 : chacune sa couleur et ses villes nommées dans sa langue, un front allumé entre deux d'entre elles.

Many nations

• Pick 2 to 8 nations in the menu. Beyond two, each nation is drawn from the map's seed: a name in its own tongue, towns named in that language, and a colour as far as possible from the others.
• A new god power founds a nation on land nobody holds.
• Borders are sharp lines again, even where three nations meet.
• Click a nation's chip, its panel or the name of one of its towns: its card drops down with its ruler, wars, people, stores and yearly output, relations, army, reserve and arsenal. It works in every mode, the duel and the war mode included.

A nation's card: its war and why it began, its stores, its relations (partner, ally, rival), its army and its arsenal. The wars going on are listed on the left.
La fiche d'une nation : sa guerre et sa cause, ses stocks, ses relations (partenaire, alliée, rivale), son armée et son arsenal. Les guerres en cours sont listées à gauche.

Neighbours are not enemies

• A shared border no longer leads to war by itself. Tension comes from causes: a warlike or greedy ruler, a nation short of land, a grudge after a defeat.
• Nations trade every year: food for timber or ore, paid with what they have too much of. Trade binds them, near or far.
• Friends of long standing sign a defence pact. When one is attacked, the other comes to its aid, and an aggressor whose target is backed by a stronger bloc thinks better of it.

Wars come in waves

• When a war breaks out, a nation at odds with either side may join it the same day, one on each side at most.
• Once the guns fall silent, a peace congress meets in a free town and signs a general peace for fifteen to twenty-five years. If wars drag on for twenty-five years without a break, the congress imposes it.
• The first nuclear bomb of a war drags every other nation in: each one must choose a side. The nation that dropped it turns the world against it, and only its allies stand by it.

Rebels and new nations

• A big nation may split, more often in a famine, after a defeat or once its ruler has been overthrown. Its far towns break away as a nation of their own, and the old one wants them back: a war of independence follows.
• Free communities close together may unite into a new nation.

Fronts that move

• Nations keep a standing army in reserve, bought in peace and mobilised at the crisis, so a war no longer opens with a handful of tanks.
• Troops hold the ground where they outweigh the enemy, assaults press on under fire, infantry blow up the bunker at their feet, and guns and bombers go for the defences first.
• A starving nation now finds a way out: its settlers found villages without food, and with no room left for a farm it pulls down a sawmill or a mine it has plenty of.

A front that moves: the ground held by the troops glows in their colour, a border town burns.
Un front qui bouge : le terrain tenu par les troupes s'allume à leur couleur, une ville frontière brûle.

Also: the top panels fold down to the nations' names, like the other panels.