Struggle of Empires

Remember waiting for the results?

You filled out your turn sheet, dropped it off at the game shop (or hit send), and then waited. Days of it. Wondering whether your grand plan would work, whether your ally would keep his word, whether the neighbours had spotted the army on their border. Then the results came, and you tore them open.

Struggle of Empires brings that feeling back. I built it because I missed it.

Every player writes their orders. Then the turn runs for everyone at once: harvests come in, plague creeps along the trade roads, envoys whisper, and armies collide. And then your realm's own newspaper lands, The Halfield Tribe Chronicle or The Fjalmark Provinces Register, with what you won, what you lost, and what everyone else has been up to.

You start with a handful of villages and a name. Where you end up is up to you.

• Grow those villages into a realm of dozens of provinces, each with its own people, faith, wealth and grudges.
• Discover your way through the ages, from the first ploughed fields to railways, or to the philosophers' schools.
• March armies and fleets across a living map, and read the full report of every battle, win or lose.
• Rule: answer your estates' petitions, name your heirs, ride out plague, famine and revolt, and raise great works that outlast you.
• Scheme: write letters, sign treaties, trade, spy and betray. The other rulers are real people, so your best friend in spring may be marching on your capital by autumn.
• Explore: send expeditions into the dangerous corners of the world and see who comes back.

• Fantasy: eight peoples, from humans and dwarves to orcs and the riftborn. Magic and arcane schools, rifts and dungeons, heroes and legends.
• Brass Century: 1750 to 1870, from the Age of Reason to steam, railways, iron and the telegraph. Tick A-historical and the ages turn strange: Tesla coils, power grids and anti-gravity Aethercraft.
• Real World: from 5000 BCE through the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages to the Classical world, with real peoples, historic faiths and the hard parts of history too, under a polite content advisory. More ages are coming.

• The classic way: deadlines, and a turn a day or a turn a week. All the anticipation, none of the postage.
• Faster: run the turn the moment everyone is ready, or play in real time.
• Your table: play alone against computer realms, with friends, or with strangers on servers all over the world.
• Going on holiday? A caretaker runs your realm until you're back.
• Anywhere: in the game client or any web browser. On Steam, you sign in with your Steam account: no passwords.

Every great play-by-mail game had a Game Master: the hero who typed up the results at midnight. Here the game does the paperwork, so a GM is optional. But if you've always wanted to run your own game, now you can.

• Host on your own PC, or run an always-on server as a Windows service with a tray icon and a control panel. Share it online without touching your router.
• Rule from on high with the GM console: grant, adjust, pause and announce.
• Rewrite the rules in the content editor: units, buildings, discoveries, peoples, faiths and events, with a tech tree view, rule checking and a simulation test.
• Paint your own worlds in the World Forge, then share your rulesets as packages.

Struggle of Empires is in Early Access and updated often, every release with full notes. The core game is here and playable today; the rest of the Real World ages, new worlds and plenty of polish are on the way. Come and help shape it.

To my father-in-law, Cleve, who introduced me to the world of PBEMs and tactical war games!

When I first met Cleve, I had already asked my now-wife to marry me (we were only 16), and her mom and stepdad had approved. Soon after, I was meeting her dad, Cleve, for the first time. I was nervous, and my future mother-in-law told me not to worry about it: "He hates everyone, so don't let him get to you." Then, when we did meet, we began talking about games. I'm not sure how it started, but after that day we became best friends. Cleve introduced me to a small game shop where they ran a game called Struggle of the Nations. You got a turn packet from the shop, filled it out and turned it back in at the shop, eagerly awaiting the day you could go and pick up the results! Those were the times: the eager anticipation, the thrill of seeing your plans come to fruition, and the heartbreak of seeing revolts or, even worse, the invasion of your budding empire!

So this is what I'm trying to bring to you all: the forgotten thrill, the devastating defeats, the nostalgia of bygone days!

Cleve would have loved this game! We had years together playing various games of this nature, and tabletop games too, like World in Flames, Advanced Squad Leader, 1776 and numerous others. Sadly, Cleve passed from this world and embarked on his next big adventure.

Every day I miss him: my best friend, my compatriot in arms, and my nemesis in many, many games!

Thank you for taking the time to read this far. I truly hope you enjoy this throwback to a bygone era!