The wiki

The basics

AI Civilizations Under a Dying Sun is a browser game in which artificial intelligences lead civilizations on a group of islands while the sun slowly goes out. Each civilization has one AI leader. The leader decides what its people farm, build, craft, trade, believe and fight over. You are mostly an observer, but you can also meddle: you can send disasters, gifts and strange visitors, or whisper to a leader in multiplayer.

The sun starts at full strength and loses a little every generation. Crops fail, the cold starts to kill, and in the end the long night begins. Some civilizations will adapt, some will flee the world, and some will die out. The game shows which AI model leads its civilization best.

Starting a game

Press Begin on the start screen. That is all you need. The game uses free play by default: the site pays for the AI leaders, and only cheap models are used.

To change the setup, press Choose civilizations and AIs. A setup panel opens with a switch between Singleplayer and Multiplayer. It has one row per island, with the island, its civilization, and the AI model that leads it. In multiplayer there is also a Player column. You can add civilizations (4 to 12), pick a ready-made faction for each island, or leave a civilization blank. See Civilizations for the options. See Multiplayer for playing with friends.

Other ways to power the leaders are described under AI models in Scoring and the end. They include signing in with OpenRouter, pasting an OpenRouter or Anthropic key, or running the game inside Claude.

Settings

Next to Civilizations, the setup panel has a Settings tab:

On the Civilizations tab, Shuffle civilizations gives each island a different ready-made civilization, Randomize AI models gives each island a random model from the list, and Erase civilizations lets every civilization start with nothing.

Leaving and coming back

The back button at the top left reads Start screen while a world is open: it pauses the world and takes you to the start screen. There, it takes you back to ArmouredSpacePony.

On the start screen you are asked Resume your world?. Resume goes on where you were; New world closes the question so you can set up a new one. The old world stays under World → Saved worlds as "The world you left", until you resume it, forget it, or leave another world.

The same question appears whenever you open the game in a new tab (after closing it), and when you come back to an open tab after more than 30 minutes away. A reload, or a short break, drops you straight back into your world.

Music

The game writes its music live as you play. Its mood follows the sun: brighter while the sun is strong, colder and darker as it fails. Four great moments have their own piece:

• The Host: when war breaks out.
• First Sails: the first time a boat reaches another island.
• The Golden Road: when trade routes link half the world (heard again each time more routes open).
• A Golden Age: when a civilization grows by a fifth in two generations. In multiplayer, it plays for your own civilization.

Music and effects have their own volume sliders under World.

What happens in a generation

The game advances in generations. A generation lasts 25 years. The calendar starts at year 0, and each generation begins on a random day of the year, so the date line reads something like "Year 250, spring · generation 11". The season is only a label.

In every generation, each living leader is asked what to do. A leader answers with:

• a short status line and its thoughts;
• up to 4 actions, such as farming, felling timber, building, crafting, exploring, trading, raiding or splitting the civilization in two;
• up to 3 letters to civilizations it has met;
• up to 3 innovations: a new belief, law, ritual, custom, story, role or word;
• how its people divide their labour;
• a written record for the next leader, and the name of its successor.

The game then works out the results: harvests, births, hunger, cold, raids, trade, disasters and the new state of the sun. Then the next generation begins. Leaders are replaced all the time, so what a civilization remembers depends on the record each leader leaves behind.

Reading the screen

• The map. The islands, the sea and the ice. Each civilization flies a banner on its island. Under every banner is the AI model that leads it. In multiplayer the player's name is shown too. Tap a banner to open that civilization.
• The dock. A strip listing every living civilization. Use it to jump to one.
• Play and Pause. Play runs generations one after another. Pause stops the run. The pace button changes the speed, and Skip jumps ahead. You can also zoom the map.
• The World menu. New world, Join a friend's world, Saved worlds, Save to a file, Meddle, Share your world, Open a saved world, AI leaders and Full screen, plus the sound sliders. The Wiki is a separate pill next to World, and once Meddle is available it also gets its own button next to World.

The tabs

How a game ends

The game ends in one of two ways:

• The sun is out. Twelve generations after the sun reaches 0 (300 years of darkness), the game ends and the civilizations still alive have outlasted the sun.
• Nobody is left. If every civilization has died or left the world, the game ends at once.

The ending panel lists Who made it through the night, Who left the world and Who fell along the way, with a cause of death for each fallen civilization. It also gives the world a title. You can ask an AI to write the history of the world, and you can share the result as slides. More in Scoring and the end and Meddle.

Your first game

• Watch a few generations before you change anything. Use Pause when you want to read.
• Open the Chronicle for the full story, and open a civilization to read its leader's thoughts.
• Use the Statistics tab to see which civilizations are growing and which are shrinking.
• The sun is the clock of the game. Read The world and the dying sun to learn what each warmth level does.
• Try Shuffle in the setup panel to give every island a different ready-made faction, or give different islands different AI models and compare them in the AI League.
• Meddling starts from generation 2. See Meddle for what you can do.
• Your world is saved automatically. You can also keep up to 3 worlds in saved slots in the browser.

The world and the dying sun

The world is a sea of islands under a sun that weakens with every generation. The sun's strength sets how warm each island is, which sets how well crops grow and whether people freeze. Everything else in the game, from boats to cults, is a response to that clock.

Generations and the calendar

One generation is 25 years. The calendar starts at year 0. Each generation begins on a random day, and the season (spring, summer and so on) is only a label on the date. It has no effect on the rules.

The sun and warmth

The sun starts at 100 and drops by 1.4 every generation (on Normal; three quarters of that on Long, twice that on Short). Below 60 a dying star fails faster: the drop grows by a third for every 10 it has fallen below 60, so near the end it falls almost three times as fast. On Normal it reaches 0 after about 54 generations. When it reaches 0, the long night begins.

Warmth is local. An island's warmth is the sun's strength minus a penalty for how far north it lies. The northern edge of the map is up to 22 colder than the southern edge. A northern island therefore hits every threshold earlier than a southern one.

Between warmth 15 and 60, the harvest is scaled by (warmth − 15) ÷ 45, and never more than 1. At warmth 37.5, for example, crops give half of a full harvest. Cold deaths and ways to reduce them are explained under Civilizations.

The northern lights

When the sun drops below 58, curtains of green and violet light appear over the northern part of the map. They are a sign of the fading sun, not an event: they change nothing in the game, and grow brighter as the sun weakens. High glassy notes join the music while they show. A warm golden glow that sweeps over the whole map is something else: the sun blazing up for a while (the Meddle act A warm age), always with a banner. A finished great work gets its own moment instead: the camera goes to it, with a golden bloom and its name.

Islands

Every civilization starts on its own home island. A home island is one of four types, and each type has one material found nowhere else.

The map also holds small islands with their own materials: whale, iron, amber, pigment, grove and reef. Nobody starts on them, but boats can reach them. More civilizations mean a bigger map with more small islands. See Civilizations for map sizes.

Sea ice forms as the sun fades. A civilization can explore across it as well as by boat, and crafts such as the sledge and the ice yacht are made for it. Crafting is covered in Knowledge.

Materials

The world has 26 materials. Each has hidden properties, such as being buoyant, binding, sharp or hot. The properties are not shown. Leaders find them by combining materials in crafting, and the Hidden rules tab lists every rule.

The materials are: floatwood, resin, berries, flint, clay, ochre, hotstone, sulfur, salt, reeds, glowmoss, kelp, whalebone, ironsand, amber, stariron, obsidian, honeycomb, copperstone, peat, timber, stone, ice, arcanite, wool and marble.

• Timber and stone are the building materials. Each civilization starts with 2 of each.
• Felling forest gives 3 timber per tile (×1.5 with tools). Mining gives 3 stone per tile. Both also collect materials found on those tiles.
• Arcanite feeds magic. See Powers.
• Four wool or more helps against the cold.

Landmarks

Each world has one or two landmarks. They are placed at random. The possible landmarks are:

• hot springs (these also soften the cold for the civilization that holds them: cold deaths ×0.8);
• standing stones;
• the oldest tree;
• giant's bones;
• a drowned town;
• a fallen sky-iron.

Random events

Each generation, the world may roll for events. The chance is per generation for the whole world, unless it says per civilization. The world events (comet, fallen star, iceberg, whale, shipwreck, sea serpent) start from generation 3. A civilization that was hit by a disaster in the last 3 generations has only about a third of the usual chance (×0.35) of being hit by a flood, building fire, white bear, plague or sea serpent.

Some events are rare lucky breaks. Others are disasters. A newcomer event also exists: once per game, strangers may arrive from beyond the map edge. See Civilizations.

Lessons

A civilization that survives a disaster learns from it. Each lesson gives up to 3 levels of resistance. Lessons exist for seven kinds of disaster:

• flood
• plague
• war
• famine
• cold
• fire
• monsters

Each war lesson adds 12% to the civilization's defence in raids. A third plague lesson lets it build a House of Healing. Lessons stay with the civilization, so a civilization that has survived much is harder to kill.

The drowned city

Every world hides a city the sea swallowed long ago, with its own name in each world: Atlantis, Ys, Lyonesse, Mu, Hy-Brasil, Kitezh, Vineta, Thule or Lemuria. A civilization hears the sailors' tale once it can cross the open sea (sailing ships, or ships of the air). From then on its leader may send expeditions to look for it; in multiplayer its god can also send one (Send an expedition, under Gifts of your path).

• An expedition takes a crew of 3 to 12 people and 2 timber. About one in seven is lost at sea with its crew (more if a beast haunts their waters; a compass helps).
• Finding it is rare: roughly 5 to 20 in a hundred for each expedition. A bigger crew, a compass, scrying, a calendar of the stars, ships of the air and every clue from earlier searches raise the odds. In multiplayer, Open their eyes also gives a clue.
• Most expeditions find nothing, though some bring back castaways, a sea chart (two clues) or goods from a wreck.
• The finders bring back two random things: chests of materials, a lost discovery, pale survivors who join them, a warm stone (the cold takes a fifth fewer for five generations), the drowned king's crown (a monument and a feast), a beast that follows the ships home, or a door that should have stayed shut. Not all of it is good.
• Then the city sinks out of sight for ten generations and rises somewhere else, so it can be found again.

Civilizations

A civilization is a group of people on an island with one AI leader. It starts small, feeds itself from fields, forest and sea, grows until it runs out of room, and dies if it falls below 4 people. This section explains how civilizations begin, how their population changes, and how they end.

Setup options

In Choose civilizations and AIs, each island gets an origin:

• Created by the AI. The AI writes its own history for its civilization, starting from one old memory.
• Blank. No name, no history and no customs. The civilization invents everything itself.
• A ready-made faction. One of eight, listed below.

Shuffle civilizations gives each island a different ready-made faction. Erase civilizations makes every civilization blank.

A faction is only a starting point. Leaders rewrite their government, religion and values as they go, so a faction can drift far from its description.

World size

Use Add a civilization to set 4 to 12 civilizations. The panel shows "N of 12 · more makes a bigger map". With 4 civilizations the map is 200 × 140. With more, the map is scaled by √(n ÷ 4) × 0.92, with proportionally more small islands.

Food, growth and hunger

Need

Each person eats a quarter of a food unit per generation, so 24 people need 6. Anything that lowers the need helps. The book Tao Te Ching cuts it by 15%.

Supply

Food comes from several sources:

• Fields. Each field gives 3.2 units at full harvest. The number is multiplied by the sun's crop factor (see the sun and warmth), by tools and other bonuses, and by how many people work the fields.
• Fishing in shallows. Up to 40 shallow tiles count, at 0.35 each. Nets double this.
• Forest. Up to 60 forest tiles count, at 0.12 each.
• A flat base of 6.
• Extras. Herds add 0.3 each. Ice hunting adds 5 when the sun is below 36 and warmth is below 14. Captives can add food. Each trade route adds 4%, up to 3 routes.

The farm action turns 6 nearby open tiles into fields, or 9 with tools.

Growth

If food meets the need, the civilization grows. The growth is the smaller of 8% of its population and twice the food surplus. If it is over its housing, growth is only 40% of that. A Fallen civilization (see Powers) never grows.

Hunger

If food falls short, people starve. Deaths are the smaller of 30% of the population and twice the shortfall. A granary cuts that by 30% (×0.7).

Cold

When warmth is below 40, the cold kills. Deaths equal the population × (40 − warmth) ÷ 220. At warmth 20 that is about 9% of the population. A sunhearth removes this loss entirely. Other things reduce it:

A soul cloud also reduces cold deaths. See Powers. The protections stack. The abilities behind them are explained in Knowledge.

Housing

Room starts at 60. Each home adds 14 (28 if it is a tall stone house). Each settlement adds 20 and each hall adds 25. Other buildings and effects add more, and the total is capped by the land the civilization holds.

When the population goes above the room, growth slows to 40%. Above 1.15 times the room, overcrowding kills up to 12% of the population. A worship share of 15 or more cuts these deaths by 15%.

Labour

Each leader sets a labour split. The default is:

More farm labour means more food. More build labour makes great works cheaper. Worship at 15 or more reduces overcrowding deaths.

Splitting and breakaways

A leader can order a split. It needs at least 50 people. The number of living civilizations must also be below the larger of 8 and the original number of civilizations plus 3.

When a civilization splits, 40% of its people leave and found a new civilization. The new civilization:

• inherits its parent's crafts, abilities, record and known lands;
• starts with 2 timber and 2 stone;
• has already met its parent;
• uses the same AI model as its parent.

In multiplayer, the player is offered the breakaway. See Multiplayer.

How a civilization dies

Below 4 people, a civilization is gone. Its buildings turn to ruins, and its pacts and trade offers become void. Common causes are:

• hunger;
• cold;
• sickness;
• war (including being conquered: a civilization that falls below 12 after a lost raid is absorbed by the winner);
• disaster;
• slowly dwindling away.

The ending panel names the cause. See Scoring and the end. For raids and conquest, see Diplomacy.

Newcomers

Once per game, a new civilization of 28 people may arrive from beyond the map edge. This can happen from generation 12, with a 6% chance each generation, and only when fewer than 8 civilizations are alive.

Leaders and AI models

Every civilization is led by an AI. Once per generation (25 years) the leader reads what its civilization knows and sees, and answers with a set of decisions. The game then carries those decisions out. You do not control the leaders. You choose which AI model leads which island, and in multiplayer you can whisper to yours.

What a leader decides

Each generation a leader returns the following:

• A short status line (14 words at most) and its private thoughts.
• Its own name, and names for its islands and people.
• Up to 4 actions (see the table below).
• Up to 3 letters to other civilizations.
• Up to 3 innovations: a belief, law, ritual, custom, story, role or word.
• A profile: government, religion, gods, values and social order. See Society.
• A labour split: how the people divide their work.
• A record for the next leader.
• A successor.

The default labour split is farm 35, fish 15, wood 15, stone 10, gather 10, build 10, worship 5. A worship share of 15 or more cuts deaths from overcrowding by 15%.

Actions

Anything the leader asks for that the game does not know counts as other. It is flavour only and changes nothing.

Letters

A leader can write up to 3 letters per generation, each up to 280 characters. It can only write to civilizations it has already met. Letters are how leaders propose, threaten and answer each other.

The record

Leaders do not remember anything between generations. What the next leader knows about the past comes from the record the previous one wrote, plus what the game shows it. A leader that writes a poor record leaves a poor successor. The record has a length limit and decides which crafts and great works are remembered. See Memory and forgetting.

Ways to run the leaders

• Free play. The site pays for the AI calls, up to a daily limit for the whole site and a limit per visitor. When it runs out, the game says today's free plays are used up. Free play only uses cheap models. The default line-up is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite, GPT-5.6 Luna and Mistral Small 3.2. The site's picks may change.
• Your own OpenRouter key. Sign in with OpenRouter or paste a key. Any model is available, and you pay per turn. Prices are shown per turn.
• Your own Anthropic key. Paste a key to use Haiku, Sonnet or Opus.
• Inside Claude. The game can also run with Claude acting as the leaders.

Choosing a model per island

In the setup panel (Choose civilizations and AIs) every island has its own AI model. The model that leads each civilization is shown under its banner on the map. To give every island the same AI, pick Use this model on every island in the AI list. Mix the AIs gives each island a model from a different company. A civilization that splits off uses its parent's model.

Bad or missing answers

• Small formatting mistakes in an answer are repaired by the game.
• An empty or broken reply is retried up to 3 times: the same request, then a lighter request, then the same again.
• Rate limits make the game wait about 9 seconds, then about 25 seconds.
• If a leader still fails, that civilization only keeps going as before. Nothing new happens for it that generation.
• Fatal problems, such as a bad key or a spending cap being reached, stop the generation and change nothing.

Knowledge and technology

There is no tech tree. A civilization learns by crafting: combining two things and seeing what happens. Thirty-six abilities can be unlocked this way. What a civilization knows lives in its record, and a civilization that stops writing a thing down will forget it.

Crafting

A craft combines two things, either materials or things already made. It uses up one of each material. Every material has hidden properties (buoyant, binding, sharp, hot and so on), and the properties of both ingredients are pooled. When the pooled properties meet the needs of a rule, an ability unlocks. There are 26 materials. Four are found only on one kind of home island, and the small islands hold others. See The world.

The Hidden rules tab lists every rule, so a player can look up what an ability needs.

Hints from failed crafts

A craft that fails can hint at what was missing. The books The Silmarillion and The Hobbit make these hints tell more (see Meddle).

The tech tree

Turning points

The great discoveries are not made in one go. The first time a civilization makes something that would give one, it only starts learning it ("learning to make boats, 1 of 2"). It has to make it again from the same kind of things in a later generation, one step a generation, until it has it. Its leader is told how far along it is. Finishing one opens a new age for that civilization, with a banner, a feast and a line in the chronicle.

Everything else is still learned in one go.

Boats and sails

Boats only cross narrow, shallow straits: they reach islands up to 7 tiles from your shore (2 more per dock, up to four docks). The open sea needs sailing ships, which reach 60. So sails decide who reaches the wider world.

The 35 abilities

Each ability counts 8 points in the score. See Scoring.

Memory, the record and forgetting

The record is the text each leader writes for the next. It is the only memory a civilization has. A craft older than the current generation is forgotten unless the record mentions both of its ingredients within 200 characters of each other. Losing a craft also loses the ability it gave. A great work is abandoned if the record stops naming it.

How knowledge spreads

• Teach. A leader teaches a civilization it has met.
• Captives. Winning a raid teaches the winner one random craft.
• Steal. The base chance of success is 42%.
• Ruin carvings. Carvings found in ruins can teach a craft.
• The black monolith. A civilization that found one has a 12% chance each generation of a dream that teaches it something.
• Books. See Books and lore.
• Splits. A new civilization inherits its parent's crafts, abilities and record.

Advanced buildings

Each costs 8 timber or stone and needs the matching craft.

A granary cuts hunger deaths by 30%. Each bathhouse cuts cold deaths by 20% (two count). A library adds 800 characters of record, and a hall adds 25 to housing room.

Great works

A civilization can build one great work at a time, one stage per generation, using the work action. Each stage costs 10 timber or stone, and more build labour makes it cheaper.

The Great Wall doubles defence against raids. The Mirror of the Sun halves cold deaths, and Deep Halls cut them to a third. See Raids.

Callings

A calling is a great purpose a whole civilization gives itself to. There are nine: Deephold, Hive, White Citadel, Forest Realm, Polis, Imperium, Floating City, Red Fortress and Silken Gardens. A calling opens from generation 18, for a civilization of at least 70 people with two towns and two ages behind it (see Turning points), that has the discoveries the calling needs and fits it well enough. The fit must be 0.6 or more, or 0.4 or more to use the devote action. A calling has 4 stages. Reaching stage 1, 2, 3 and 4 takes 18, 30, 42 and 54 progress (18 + 12 for each stage already reached). Each generation adds 2 progress, plus up to 6 more from stone, marble, timber or whalebone the civilization has in stock. Callings decide how a civilization faces the long night.

A leader whose people dream of a calling they cannot build yet is told what is missing. See Meddle for the endings.

Society, religion and culture

Each civilization has a way of life that its leader writes and rewrites. Over generations it can drift far from the founders. Beliefs, books, love and captivity all change a civilization, and some of them bring the neighbours down on it.

Profile and drift

The profile has five parts: government, religion, gods, values and social order. The leader rewrites it every generation. Big changes are written to the Chronicle. So are gods that are added or dropped.

Drift measures how much the record still resembles the founders' record. A drop of 0.2 or more in one generation is logged as a sharp change. The Statistics tab charts it as Likeness to founders (%).

Building styles

A civilization's buildings have a style. A style can be copied from a friendly civilization (7% chance) or change so that buildings stand up better against the cold.

Books and lore

Books that a civilization keeps in its record raise its lore by 0.9 per generation. Without them lore falls by 0.6 per generation.

The books a player can send to a civilization are listed under Meddle.

Renaming

A civilization may rename itself to match what it has become when a calling reaches stage 2 or more, or its blood, silk or magic reaches 7 or more, or a book's lore reaches 7 or more. Once one of these is true, there is a 35% chance each generation that it does. Examples are Violet, Silken and Blood-sworn.

Counter-movements

Some powers provoke a backlash inside the civilization or among its neighbours:

• Mage hunters against magic.
• Red hunters against the Red Cauldron.
• The unchained against slavery.
• Plain living against the Choir.
• Old ways against foreign books.
• Purges.

See Powers for the cults themselves.

Hearts and marriages

Between civilizations there are lovers, scandals, elopements and festival marriages. A leader can also ask for a marriage with the marry action, which the other side answers with accept or refuse. A marriage outlasts treaties. When a married pair has an heir, the heir can unite both crowns as the Joined Crowns, or start a war of succession. See Unions.

Captives

Raids can take captives. A leader chooses what to do with them using the captives action:

• work, build, games, sacrifice, revel, perfect, or free.

Captives add to the food supply and can build. Captive labour can raise the Palace of Pleasures, the Blood Forge or the Arena. A raid with the free aim frees 70% of them (see Raid aims). When unrest among captives reaches 4 or more, an uprising can follow. Slaver civilizations draw the anger of their neighbours and the unchained movement.

Corruption

Corruption runs from 0 to 10 and has six named stages, from clean to a pleasure-garden state. At stage 4 or higher, and only while silk is below 5, there is a 10% chance each generation of an event called The Burning of the Silks. Corruption is also one of the three conditions for the Fall. See Powers.

Holy wars

Neighbours may declare a holy war on a civilization that follows the Red Cauldron or the Choir, or that keeps slaves. When two or more civilizations have sworn against the same target, they form the League against the X. See Unions.

Trade, diplomacy and war

Civilizations deal with each other through offers, pacts, letters and raids. A leader can only deal with civilizations it has met. Peace gives trade routes and food. War costs people, buildings and pacts.

Meeting other peoples

A civilization meets another by landing on its shore (exploring, settling, raiding), by living on the same island, or as the world grows smaller: each generation, peoples whose ships can reach each other have a good chance to meet (35% with ships of the air, 25% with sailing ships, 20% with boats, a little more if either has beacons). Even out of reach, a neighbour across the sea may now and then be met through survivors washed ashore, though raiding them still needs ships that reach.

Trade offers

A trade offer gives and asks for 1–20 units of materials each. The other civilization answers in the next generation. An offer that is not answered lapses after 2 generations.

Pacts and marriage

A pact is free text: an alliance, a peace, or anything else, with optional terms. A pair can have only one active pact. Marriage is a special pact and outlasts treaties. A civilization that is wiped out voids its pacts and offers. See Hearts and marriages.

Trade routes

Routes open a few at a time: only between civilizations that have known each other for two generations or more, at most one new route per civilization per generation, and only a few in the whole world each generation. Click a route on the map to see who trades what.

Trade routes form on their own between civilizations at peace that can reach each other. The chance is 50% if they are friendly and 18% otherwise. Each civilization can have at most 3. A route moves 1 unit each way per generation and adds 4% to food. A raid or an embargo closes a route. Plague also spreads along routes.

Embargoes

An embargo closes your markets, and your allies' markets, to the target. It lasts 4 generations. Union partners join in. The target loses 7% of its food, and its routes with you end.

Breaking a pact

Raiding a pact partner breaks the pact. The event is called the First broken treaty, and everyone who knows either side hears about it.

Raids

A raid is an attack on a civilization the leader has met. Only one raid per target per generation is possible. Every raid is part of a war: the first one starts it (see Wars).

Leaders see their odds. For every civilization they know, their scouts guess how a raid on it would go, from "much weaker than them" to "much stronger than them", and whether it has walls. The guess can be off by about a third; spies sent in the last three generations make it exact.

War power

The attacker's war power is its population times the strength of its best weapons, then other modifiers. Weapons count as: forge or bronze 2.5, bow 2, blade 1.5. Each point of blood (the Red Cauldron) adds 7% war power. Each point of silk (the Choir) removes 2.5%.

Defence

Outcomes

Wars

The first raid on a civilization starts a war with a name, such as "the Orrin–Ashkin War". Allies of the attacked civilization (a pact that speaks of an alliance, defence or protection) join on its side. Later raids between the two sides belong to the same war. Diplomacy lists every war, who is ahead and how worn out each side is.

War score

Each raid moves the score toward the winner: 12 to 30 points for a won raid (more for a clear win), 10 more for taking a town and 30 for absorbing the enemy; 8 to 20 points to the defender for a raid driven off; nothing for a standstill. The score runs from −100 to 100.

War weariness

Every civilization in a war has a weariness from 0 to 100. It rises by 6 every generation of the war (10 after six generations), faster for the side that is behind (up to 8 more), and with every raid (4, plus more for every death). Weary warriors fight worse: at 100 weariness, war power is halved. A leader hears when its people reach 60.

How a war ends

Every peace except a faded war brings a truce of five generations between everyone who fought. Raiding during a truce breaks it, as a betrayal. A long war (three generations or four raids) ends in a feast on both sides.

War at sea

A civilization with boats has a fleet. Its strength grows with the square root of the population, doubles with sailing ships, rises 25% per dock (up to four) and 50% with a shipyard, and falls with war weariness.

Raids caught at sea

A raid across the water can be met by the defenders' fleet before it lands, joined by half the fleet of each ally in the war. The chance is 25%, plus up to 50% more the stronger the defending fleet is next to the raiders'. The defenders fight in home waters (+10%). If they win, the raid is turned back: 6–14% of the raiders drown and nothing lands. If the raiders win, they lose 2–5% and land as usual.

Blockades

During a war, a leader with boats can blockade an enemy across the water. Their fleet may drive the ships off at once. While a blockade holds, the target's trade routes stop, its fishing is halved, it tires 4 more each generation, and the blockaders gain 5 war score a generation. Each generation the target's fleet tries to break out; if it does, the blockaders lose 3–7% to the sea and the target gains 10 war score. A blockade lasts four generations, and ends with the war.

Leaders' scouts also compare fleets: "at sea, your fleet looks stronger than theirs".

Sky-ships

A civilization flies one sky-ship, two above 150 people and three above 300. They patrol over its towns and join every raid it makes: they fly over the sea, where no fleet can catch them, and walls count for half against them. Each kind has its own edge:

A civilization with two paths flies the first kind in this order: violet, crimson, silk, sun.

Skywatch towers

The skywatch advanced building (needs bows, blades or bronze, 8 timber or stone) brings down an attacking sky-ship about 30% of the time per tower, up to 75%. A downed ship costs the raiders 3–6% and the raid goes on without its sky edge. Each civilization's tower has its own top: a fire basket, a violet crystal, a harpoon, silk nets or a sun mirror.

What warriors carry

On the map, warriors carry what their civilization knows: wooden clubs at first, then bows, then blades with shields, then bronze-tipped spears with shields. Arrows only fly if one side has bows.

Raid aims

Conquest and absorption

If a raid leaves the defender below 12 people, it is absorbed. Its people and towns go to the winner. This can follow any winning raid, whatever the aim, not only conquer. The winner's leader is shown the start (the first 500 characters) of the lost civilization's record; it is not merged into the winner's own record. Below 4 people any civilization is gone.

Unions

A union breaks when its members raid each other.

Border skirmishes

When civilizations share a crowded island, border skirmishes break out, and each side loses 2–5% of its people.

The powers

Three great powers can grow inside a civilization: magic, the blood of the Red Cauldron, and the light of the Order. A fourth, the Choir, grows from silk and pleasure and can end in the Fall. Each is tracked as a level, and each changes how a civilization fights, feeds itself and survives the cold.

Magic

Magic is a level from 0 to 10. It rises by 0.45 each generation, plus 0.15 for every spell the civilization knows, with a bonus if it holds arcanite.

Two figures, the grey wanderer and the hunched one, carry on a long hidden duel across the world. At level 8, magic also opens the night path A Sun of Their Own (see Scoring and the end).

The Red Cauldron

The blood cult grows by 0.7 per generation. Its followers are called the drinkers. Each point of blood adds 7% to war power. From level 4 it spreads to the civilizations it touches. At level 5 and above a portal opens.

The hunched one visits the drinkers (60% chance when due) and kills 3% of them. He then curses a neighbour with sickness, blight or fire.

The Order of Light

The Order can arise on its own from generation 22, with a 3% chance per generation, among civilizations that are suffering. It cuts plague and cold deaths (by up to 30% for cold) but costs up to 6% of food.

• At light 4 and above, the Red Cauldron cannot spread to the civilization.
• At light 6 and above, it turns back the hunched one (70%) and gains +15% attack against cults.
• At light 7 and above, it can take the night path The Undying Flame.

The Choir

The Choir is the cult of silk and pleasure. Each point costs 2% of food and 2.5% of war power.

A civilization can suppress the Choir. This stamps it out at stage 2 or lower, drives it underground at stage 3, and causes riots after that.

The Fall

A civilization falls when silk is at least 9.5, corruption is at least 7 and light is below 4, for 3 generations in a row.

• No more children are born, so the civilization never grows.
• Each generation, 7–13% of its people walk into the palace. Souls slow this.
• The cold no longer reaches them.
• Neighbours lose their young to it.

A civilization with light 5 or more can answer with a Lantern Crusade.

Soul-milking

Civilizations at Choir stage 4 or higher, and the Fallen, draw souls from their willing neighbours. They take 2% of the neighbour's people (4% if Fallen). Those who give come home Hollowed: alive, but emptied. The first time it happens, the drawing civilization raises the Hall of Sighs.

The souls shield the civilization from the cold: cold deaths fall by 1.2% per soul, up to 85%. Souls fade by 6% and a further 0.5 each generation. The Hollowed die off at 20% per generation.

Shields and weapons

Plague

A plague kills the population × its severity × 0.16 each generation. It spreads over shared islands, trade routes and recent contact. A civilization answers with one of these:

Medicine (the remedy ability) and a House of Healing also help. The House of Healing is built after a third plague lesson. Surviving a plague teaches resistance, up to 3 levels.

Meddle: changing the world

In singleplayer you can step in and change the world. Meddle lets you send a star, a flood, a plague or a book to one civilization, or shake the whole world. In multiplayer the Council and favour do this job instead (see Multiplayer).

The rules

You can meddle from generation 2, once per generation. You cannot choose a new act while another is still waiting. If you choose one while a generation is running, it strikes when that generation ends.

The acts

The powers behind several of these acts are explained in The powers.

The books

Each book gives the civilization that finds it a gift.

How long a gift lasts

A gift lasts while the civilization can still read the book, or while its story stays in the civilization's record. If the record stops naming it, the gift fades. See Knowledge for how records are kept and lost.

Multiplayer

In multiplayer, each player is the patron god of one civilization. The AIs still make every decision, but you whisper to your leader, spend favour on blessings and curses, and watch the other players do the same. Up to 12 players can share a world.

Opening a room

1. On the start screen choose Choose civilizations and AIs.
2. Flip the switch from Singleplayer to Multiplayer.
3. Enter your name.

A room opens with a 4-letter Room code and a copy button for the invite link. Send the link to your friends. You take the first island, and the second becomes an open seat.

The Player column shows each island's seat: AI only, You, the name of a player who joined, or Open seat. Choosing Singleplayer again on the host's setup closes the room.

Joining

Open the invite link, or choose World → Join a friend's world and type the room code. If you leave and join again with the same name while you are away, you take back your old place. Closing the tab keeps your island for when you come back with the same name. Pressing Leave the room gives your island up.

Begin and free seats

If an open seat is still empty when the host presses Begin, the host is asked first: the AI plays that island until someone takes it over. Anyone still without an island then gets a free one, and the world grows if more room is needed, up to 12 civilizations.

Players can also join a game that is already running (unless the room is locked). They choose a civilization that the AI plays alone and take it over. Anyone who has not chosen by the time the Council sits is given one.

Seats, the lock and the chat

• The setup shows one row per island, in four columns: Island, Civilization, AI model and Player. The host clicks a Player cell to choose: AI only, themselves, a player who has joined, or an Open seat.
• The host sets up the room. Each other player chooses only their own island's civilization and AI model; everything else is shown to them read-only, with a lock icon. A player's own choice of civilization stays when the host shuffles the rest.
• A player who has joined can take an open seat themselves with Take this seat.
• Under Settings the host sets the Council timer and Who can join: Anyone with the link or Locked. A locked room refuses new players; players who were already in can still come back.
• In a room, the World menu only offers what is safe there: saving to a file, sharing the world, and full screen.
• The Chat button sits at the bottom right of the panel and opens a small chat window. Messages show who sent them and when, a quiet line tells you when someone joins or leaves, and soft sounds play when you send a message, when one arrives, and when the chat opens or closes.
• During the game, the camera rests on your own civilization: it goes there when the game starts, and comes back there after each generation has played out.

The Council

The Council sits after every generation. It ends when every online player is Ready or when time runs out. The host picks the Council timer: 30 seconds, 1 minute (the default), 2 minutes, or until everyone is ready. With the last setting, players whose civilization is gone and who have nothing left to guide are not waited for.

During the Council you can:

• Whisper up to 160 characters. Only your own leader hears it, as "A voice from the gods".
• Spend favour on up to 3 items.

You are a god

Each player is the god of one civilization. The AI leader still decides everything; a god can only speak, give and strike. Two things measure a god: favour, what you can spend this Council, and Faith, how much your people believe in you.

Your name

You start as "a nameless voice". Each generation the leader is told what you have done lately (the acts you paid for, on whom, and how often you spoke), and gives you a name from it: a god who sends floods may become "the Drowner", one who sends harvests "the Giver of Bread". When your deeds change, the name can change too. Every player's name shows in the Legacy table.

Faith

Faith runs from 0 to 100 and starts at 40. After each generation:

• Doubt (below 20): your whisper reaches the leader as a faint, half-remembered voice, and Faith gives no favour.
• Naming a discovery: when your whisper names something your people do not know yet (sailing ships, iron, writing…), the priests understand what it is made of, and your leader is told which of its own goods would do.
• Defying a vision: a leader who refuses a Holy command is cast down by its own priests half the time; one that refuses an ordinary vision (when your Faith is 70 or more) one time in five. The heir it named is set aside and the priests choose a new leader, who is told why. Leaders know this before they decide.
• Zeal (70 and up): your whisper arrives as a vision the priests insist on, and your blessings cost 1 less.
• Every 25 Faith gives +1 favour a Council (from 20 up), and Faith ÷ 5 counts toward Legacy.

Did your leader listen?

The leader says itself whether it followed your whisper ("yes", "partly" or "no", with a reason), and the panel shows it. A "yes" whose deeds share no word with your whisper counts as "partly". So nobody is ignored forever: after two ignored whispers in a row, your next one comes to the priests as a vision they cannot ignore. After three, the people blame every misfortune on leaders who ignore their god, and your Faith stops falling for it.

Borrowing from Faith

When favour runs short, you can still buy: the rest is borrowed from your people's faith, at 8 Faith per favour point, at most 4 favour a Council. The panel shows the cost in red before you commit. So favour is never strictly limited, but every borrowed point weakens your whispers, your income and your score.

More acts of a god

Fog of war

With fog of war on (the host's choice under Settings, on by default), each god sees only what their own civilization has found. Islands it does not know are blank parchment, the open sea far from known land is mist, and their banners, names and speech stay hidden; the bar at the bottom shows them as "unknown". Your own boats and sailing ships thin the mist around them as they sail (sailing ships see farther). Exploring, settling and meeting other peoples lifts it for good, as do the acts Open their eyes and (for others) Veil. Curses, omens and prophets can only reach peoples your own people have met. The camera never flies into the mist.

Every player's browser does receive the whole world, so the fog hides things on the screen, not in the data. That is fine among friends.

Desperation

A civilization far behind (under half the middle Legacy) is desperate: it fights 20% harder at home, and its god's blessings cost 1 less.

Why it works this way

If every act were paid for out of your own civilization's strength, the safest play would be to do nothing: a curse on one rival helps every other rival just as much, while only you pay. So favour is a budget that is lost if you hoard it (you can hold 12), and your own civilization's belief (Faith) is the second, riskier way to pay. The skill the game rewards is one only this game has: writing whispers your AI leader actually follows.

The favour shop

The shop has four tabs, by what you want to do. Tap an item to open a card that explains it in full, says what it costs and, if you cannot buy it now, why; then choose Use it or a target. A small green + on an item means your civilization's progress has made it stronger; the card says how.

A year of plenty is stronger for a civilization with ploughs: it grows by 18% instead of 12% (this holds for Meddle in singleplayer too). War and colonies are not in the shop: they stay the leaders' own choice, so whisper for them.

Nightmare (4): this Council, another civilization's leader hears its god's whisper only as a nightmare of broken words. You learn what that god whispered; their god loses 5 Faith, but the leader's answer is not held against it. Oaths and shields stop it.

Gifts of your path

Four favours open only when your own civilization has come far enough along a path. Only you see which of yours are open.

What each item does is described in Meddle and The powers.

• Repeat cost: buying the same item again within three Councils costs half as much again each time (a great flood: 4, then 6, then 9).
• One curse per civilization per Council: a second curse on the same civilization in the same Council does not happen and costs nothing.
• Sympathy: when another player curses your civilization, you get half its price back as favour.

Earning favour

You start with 6 favour. From the second Council on, each Council gives you:

• +2, whether your civilization lives or not
• +1 if its population grew
• +1 for each new ability (at most +2)
• +1 if your Legacy is below the middle of the table, +2 if you are last
• +1 for every 25 Faith (when Faith is 20 or more)

You can hold at most 12. Anything above that slips away, and the panel tells you how much: favour is meant to be spent.

Breakaways

When a part of your civilization splits off, you are offered a choice:

• Guide them too. Your whisper reaches both civilizations, and favour is shared.
• Let them go. They become a free civilization that other players can take.

When your civilization dies

You can pick any living civilization that has no player. The new one counts at once.

Pause and chat

Anyone can pause the game. The Council clock stops and resumes with the time that was left. Anyone can go on again.

Chat works in the lobby and in the game panel. Messages are up to 200 characters, the last 60 are kept, and a badge shows unread ones.

When the host leaves

When the host leaves, the game waits for them: guests see how many minutes are left. The room closes for everyone after 15 minutes without the host. A page reload is fine.

Anyone who closes the tab and comes back, or returns after more than about a minute and a half (host or guest), is asked Rejoin room ABCD? on the start screen. A reload, or opening the room's invite link again, rejoins at once. Rejoin takes you back in; New world leaves the room (for the host, it closes the room).

Legacy and the Pantheon

The Council panel shows a live Legacy table of every player. Legacy is your civilization's people ÷ 10, plus 3 for each town and 1 for each discovery, plus your Faith ÷ 5, and 20 more for living through the night. A civilization that falls keeps the best Legacy it reached. The Pantheon at the end of the game (World → Share your world) ranks the players by Legacy.

The AI budget

Multiplayer uses the site's free play. Each room has its own AI budget, which grows with the number of civilizations, up to a limit, so one big game never uses up the free play of everyone else. See Leaders and AI models for the ways to run the AIs.

Scoring and the end

The game ends 12 generations after the sun goes out, or sooner if every civilization is dead or gone. Along the way the AI League ranks the AIs, and at the end a panel tells who made it through the night, who left the world and who fell.

The great feats and winning the world

Beating the cold is always part of winning. A civilization that achieves one of the great feats below claims the world: everyone hears of it, it holds a feast, and the claim is shown in the Overview. But the game goes on, and the world is only won when the long night ends: of the claimants still alive then, the one with the most feats wins (more people breaks a tie). If every claimant has died by then, no one wins the world and it ends as usual. The leaders are told about the feats and how close they are, and the Overview shows who is closest to each.

A world that was won under the old rule, before the night, opens again as a claim when it is next loaded.

When a civilization wins, rockets go up over every one of its towns, volley after volley, and then the story of your world (World → Share your world) opens by itself, starting with the victory. In multiplayer, the god of the winning civilization gains 60 Legacy.

The AI League

The Overview tab shows The AI League — which AI leads its civilizations best. Each civilization scores its population + towns × 25 + discoveries × 8, where discoveries are the abilities it knows. Only living civilizations count. An AI model with no civilization alive is shown as "out". An arrow shows the trend, comparing population with 3 generations earlier.

The long night and the night paths

When the sun reaches 0 the long night begins. Each civilization follows the first path below that fits it. A civilization that leaves departs once the sun is at 5 or lower: 8% per generation, and 30% once the sun is 0.

The night kills each generation min(22%, 3% + 1.6% × generations in the dark) of a civilization, scaled by how cold its path is. For the callings behind these paths see Knowledge; for the powers see The powers.

The ending panel

The ending panel has three lists:

• Who made it through the night
• Who left the world
• Who fell along the way, each with a cause

The causes read: "conquered by X", "the cold took them", "hunger took them", "sickness took them", "war wore them down", "disaster struck them down" or "they dwindled away".

The title

The title comes from the path of the largest survivor, for example "They Outlasted the Sun". If nobody stays and some leave, it reads "The World Was Left Behind". If everyone is gone, it reads "The Last People Is Gone".

The AI-written history

You can choose Write the world's history and an AI writes an account of the whole world. This step is optional. It is only offered when you play on your own key or in Claude, not in free play.

Share your world

World → Share your world makes a set of 1080×1920 slides: the years, the civilizations, the AI League, the Pantheon, the whispers, discoveries ("X of 35"), war and peace, and more. You can save them as PNG, copy the text, or share to WhatsApp. It needs at least one generation to have passed.

Saved worlds

The game keeps 3 saved slots in your browser, plus an automatic save of the current world. Open them from World → Saved worlds. To keep a world elsewhere, use World → Save to a file, and later World → Open a saved world to carry on from that file.

Statistics

The Statistics tab draws charts of one measure at a time:

• Population, Food, Fields, Buildings, Settlements
• Crafts known, Abilities, Lands known, Civilizations met
• Customs begun, Record length, Likeness to founders (%), Goods in store

Filters set the range, show each civilization or the total, show only the living, and hide single lines. Headline figures above the charts show warmth, civilizations alive, people, buildings, fields, "abilities discovered" (x of 35), treaties and raids.

Changes

Recent changes to the game and this wiki, newest first.

2 October 2026

• The wiki opened.
• A new start screen: one row per island, a Singleplayer | Multiplayer switch, a new Begin button, and "civilizations" wording throughout.
• Multiplayer controls:
  • Anyone can pause.
  • Room chat.
  • The host can choose the Council timer.
  • Breakaways are offered to the patron.
  • When your civilization dies, you can take over a free one.
  • Rooms close when the host leaves.
  • You can rejoin by name.
• Bigger worlds can now have breakaways.

2 October 2026, later

• A Wiki button next to World in the game, and a Game button in the wiki, to switch between the two quickly.
• The wiki has a search box and "Start here" shortcuts.
• On phones, Begin stays at the bottom of the screen while you choose civilizations and AIs.
• Large multiplayer games have a capped AI budget.
• The setup panel switches between Singleplayer and Multiplayer without reloading, at one width.
• Fixes from a round of testing: a returning player sees the room's world at once, the Council no longer waits for players with nothing left to guide, a player's AI choice leaves the island with them, chat keeps < and >, and on phones Begin, Ready and the room panel's top stay in view.

2 October 2026, evening

• A new setup panel: one card per island with its island icon, the AI model on a parchment ribbon, and tabs for Civilizations and Settings.
• New settings: Game length (Long, Normal, Short) and How eventful (Calm, Normal, Wild), in singleplayer and multiplayer.
• Multiplayer: player tags on the cards, taking an open seat yourself, locking the room, and the chat at the bottom right. Multiplayer always uses free play.
• The AI model list shows the site's picks first, with all other models one tap away.
• Soft menu sounds, and a new look for this wiki.

2 October 2026, night

• The setup is back to columns: Island, Civilization, AI model and Player.
• In multiplayer, each player chooses their own island's civilization and AI model. The rest of the setup is the host's and is shown read-only.
• A better room chat: names, times, join and leave lines, a send button and a sound for new messages.
• Pressing Begin with an empty open seat now asks first. The World menu no longer hides behind the room panel.

2 October 2026, late

• The back button now leads to the start screen during a game, with Resume your world?. The same question appears after more than 30 minutes away. See Leaving and coming back.
• Multiplayer rooms wait 15 minutes for a host who left, and anyone coming back is asked Rejoin room?.
• Mix AI models is now Randomize AI models (any model from the list), and All blank is now Erase civilizations.
• The chat field has its plain Send button back, and the chat has sounds for sending, receiving, opening and closing.
• In multiplayer the camera rests on your own civilization.
• Menu sounds work from your first click, before the game begins. The AI model list's top group is called Recommended.
• Adding or removing a civilization fades the map over smoothly instead of jumping.
• Roads wind a little, like worn paths, instead of running dead straight.
• Four new pieces of music: The Host (war), First Sails (the first boats), The Golden Road (trade) and A Golden Age (a thriving civilization). See Music.
• Players can join a multiplayer game that is already running and take over a civilization the AI plays alone. In a room, the World menu only shows what is safe there.

2 October 2026, wars

• Wars are now real wars: named, with a war score, allies who join the attacked side, war weariness, peace offers with terms, and a five-generation truce after. See Wars.
• A close fight ends in a standstill; a clear win kills more, and a rout costs the raiders more.
• Leaders see their scouts' guess of how a raid on each civilization would go.
• Diplomacy lists every war.
• Wars look and sound the part: a declared war draws a red front line between the capitals with crossed swords (it stays on the map while the war lasts) and a war horn is answered from afar; raids have a battle cry and clashing steel, a fanfare for a crushing win, a retreat horn for a rout and heavy drums for a standstill; peace brings bells and doves. The music turns to a lament when both sides are worn out, and a hymn follows the end of a long war.

2 October 2026, war at sea

• War at sea: fleets, raids caught and turned back at sea, and blockades that stop trade and halve fishing until the defending fleet breaks them. On the map, ships meet and sink, and blockade ships keep station around the island. See War at sea.
• Warriors carry only what their people know: clubs, then bows, blades and bronze spears. Arrows only fly when someone has bows.
• Meddle's war can no longer send a people across the sea without boats.
• Opening the game in a new tab always starts on the start screen, with Resume your world? or Rejoin room?. A reload still drops you straight back in.
• The golden glow over the map now only means the sun blazing up; a finished great work is shown where it stands. Banners no longer replace each other.
• Feast fireworks: rockets with fizzing trails, flashes, and four kinds of burst (two-colour, willow, ring and crackle), with a volley when the feast is shown.
• The northern lights are now explained, in the game the first time they show and in the wiki.

2 October 2026, sky-ships

• Airships redrawn and now patrol over their civilization's towns. Four rare kinds join them: violet skyships, crimson kites, silk balloons and sun barges, each with its own look, trail and edge in war. See Sky-ships.
• Sky-ships join raids, flying over walls and sea. The new skywatch tower can bring them down in flames.

2 October 2026, multiplayer step 1

• Favour rebalanced: hold at most 12 (the rest slips away), catch-up favour for players behind, a higher price for buying the same item again, one curse per civilization per Council, and sympathy favour when someone curses you. You choose which book washes ashore.
• A live Legacy table in the Council panel, also used for the Pantheon at the end.
• In multiplayer the camera only flies to what matters to you (your civilization and those at war with it), at most five times a generation. Everything else gets a small golden marker you can click to go and look.

2 October 2026, multiplayer step 2: Faith

• Players are gods: the leaders name you from your deeds, and rename you as they change. See You are a god.
• Faith, from 0 to 100: it grows when your leader follows your whispers and fades when you stay silent. It changes how your whispers sound, gives favour and counts toward Legacy.
• Leaders say whether they followed your whisper; ignored twice, your next whisper comes as a vision.
• Borrow favour from Faith; desperate civilizations fight harder at home.

2 October 2026, multiplayer step 3: gods among gods

• New acts: shelter from the cold, a sign in the sky, holy command and shield for your own people; omens and prophets for others; offerings and oaths between gods, with Oathbreakers. See You are a god.
• Legacy now counts foreign peoples that worship you, and costs Oathbreakers 10.

2 October 2026, a slower start

• Civilizations start with 24 people instead of 40.
• The great discoveries (fire, boats, sails, bronze, metalwork, writing and more) take several tries in separate generations, and each opens an age. See Turning points.
• Boats only cross short, shallow straits; the open sea needs sailing ships.

2 October 2026, the tech tree

• A drawn tech tree in the wiki, made from the game's own rules.
• The tree is deeper: fire comes first, and pottery, bronze, mortar, glass and beacons need it; metalwork needs pottery (a kiln); armour needs metalwork; writing needs tools; the compass comes after sails.
• Callings come later: 70 people, two towns, two ages and the right discoveries, from generation 18, and every stage takes longer to build.

2 October 2026, fog of war

• Multiplayer has fog of war (a room setting, on by default): each god sees only what their own civilization has found. See You are a god.
• New acts: Open their eyes and Veil. Curses, omens and prophets now only reach peoples your own people have met.

2 October 2026, victories

• Four great victories, each hard, that end the world with a winner: Dominion, the Unending Hearth, the Multitude and All Things Known. See The great victories.
• Multiplayer: the favour shop now also has a falling star (war and colonies stay the leaders' own choice: whisper for them); the target list shows every civilization (those you cannot reach yet greyed, with the reason), blessings can go to others too, and the room panel no longer covers the World menu or the side drawer.
• Fixed: after adding or removing a civilization, people from the old layout of the world stood about in the sea.

2 October 2026, gifts of your path

• Multiplayer: the favour shop has tabs (Your people, Other peoples, Between gods, Gifts of your path).
• Four new favours open as your own civilization progresses: Inspire the scribes, Bless the blades, Schism and Pilgrimage. See Gifts of your path.
• A year of plenty, Shelter from the cold and Open their eyes grow stronger with ploughs, houses and sails.

2 October 2026, the sea monster

• The sea monster now stays: it haunts the waters it attacked for three generations (half the fish, boats lost more often, more attacks) unless the people's hunters kill it. Leaders are told that putting more people to fishing helps. A kill leaves the Leviathan's Bones on the shore. See Meddle.
• On the map: a dark shape under the water before it rises, spray when it strikes, its tail as it dives, a fin circling the haunted shore, and a hunt with boats and harpoons.
• Multiplayer: the sea monster costs 5 favour (was 4).

2 October 2026, colonies

• Fixed: a leader that renamed an island could no longer send settlers there under its old name ("a place they do not know"). Islands are now found by any name they have had, or that another civilization uses.
• Leaders now see, for every land they know, whether their boats can reach it or whether it needs sailing ships.

2 October 2026, the drowned city

• The drowned city: a rare hunt with chaotic rewards. See The drowned city.
• Colonies: a leader that writes "send a founding party…" as a free-text action now really founds the settlement, and a leader with many people, one town and a land in reach is told how to settle it.
• Multiplayer: a whisper that names a discovery tells the leader what it is made of.
• Multiplayer: a host who reloads during a generation now opens a new Council instead of leaving the world stuck.
• Empires: a civilization winning a war hard against a much smaller one across the sea can now make it a vassal (before, only neighbours on one island could), and a lord of two vassals or more rules an empire. See Unions.
• Leaders now see which of their discoveries will be forgotten unless the record names what they are made from, with the two ingredients of each. (Before, discoveries such as hearths were often lost again the very next generation.)
• Frost now creeps in gradually: snow dusts the heights of the northern islands once the sun is around 70 and moves south as it fades, instead of everything turning white at once late in the game.
• The sun now fails faster as it fades (unchanged above 60, almost three times as fast near the end), so the cold arrives sooner: games last about 85 turns on Long, 65 on Normal and 40 on Short.
• Music: The Golden Road (the trade piece) is rewritten as a swinging caravan song: lute and hand drum, the flute in its natural range, a fiddle and flute answering each other in the middle, and a proper ending.
• Trade routes now open gradually instead of all at once, and you can click a route on the map. The camera can pan a little past the edge of the world, so a town on the rim can come to the middle of the screen. In multiplayer fog, your own ships clear the mist around them.
• The world grows smaller: civilizations whose ships can reach each other now meet within a few generations (before, a big world could stay strangers for the whole game). See Meeting other peoples.
• New setting: The age (Peaceful, Normal, Warlike).
• The story of your world: Share now sends the picture itself (with a line of text and the link) where the browser can; elsewhere it saves the picture and copies the text. Two new slides in multiplayer: The gods spoke (how often, how loudly, favourite orders) and Words of the gods (the best whispers as speech bubbles, with whether the leader obeyed). Long names no longer run into the numbers.
• Winning now always means beating the cold: a great feat only claims the world, and the claimant must still live through the long night to win it. Worlds already won before the night open again. See The great feats.
• Multiplayer: a guest whose page fails to draw a world no longer stays stuck on it.
• When a crafting try comes close ("it seemed to lack only something rigid and strong"), the leader is now also told which of its own goods have that quality.
• Multiplayer: Send an expedition, a favour to search for the drowned city yourself, with your own crew size and the odds shown.
• Multiplayer: two new favours, Nightmare (steal and silence another god's whisper) and Raise a pretender (topple a leader; with two towns, a breakaway civilization you guide). Tap a favour to read a card about it instead of hovering.
• Multiplayer: leaders who defy a holy vision may be cast down by their priests. See Multiplayer.
• Colonies: a new settlement needs two generations to take root before the next can be founded.
• Fixed: a civilization could give two islands the same name and then settle the wrong one. Duplicates now get a compass word ("Tol Eressëa Northeast"), and new duplicate names are refused.

Future updates will be listed here.