Projects
Projects are the actions armies and settlements carry out to build, develop, and grow an empire — everything from founding a new city to throwing a festival to quiet down restless citizens. Most projects share a few common patterns worth knowing up front:
- Stone is an upfront gate, not a drain. If a project requires Stone, the full amount must be available in the Global Equipment Stock the moment the project starts, or it simply cannot begin. There's no partial start, no gradual payment — see Resources for how Stone works as the game's deliberately scarce resource.
- Most army projects demand the army stay still. Moving to a new position cancels the project outright and loses all progress made so far — a pioneer army can't multitask between marching and building.
- Equipment wear is the ongoing cost. Beyond any one-time Stone payment, most army projects also burn a small daily percentage of Support Equipment for as long as they run.
Stone Cost Reference
| Project | Stone Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Army Projects | ||
| Build Farm | 20 | |
| Build Stable | 40 | |
| Improve Terrain | 45 | |
| Build Camp | 50 | |
| Settle Area | 50 | |
| Build Warehouse | 75 | |
| Build Marketplace | 85 | |
| Build Mine | 100 | Same cost as Quarry |
| Build Quarry | 100 | Same cost as Mine |
| Build Church | 125 | |
| Build Barracks | 125 | |
| Settlement Projects | ||
| Build Workshop | 125 | |
| Build Walls | 250 per level | Up to 5 levels — 1,250 total to max out |
| Develop Province | See Province Development | Scales from 100 to 1,200 depending on current PDL |
| No Stone Required | ||
| Expand Territory | — | Claiming land, not construction |
| Festival | — | |
| Grow Forest | — | A natural process, not construction |
| Exercise Army | — | |
| Train General | — | |
| Garrison (cosmetic) | — | |
| Raise Army | — | |
| Replace Governor | — | |
Army Projects
Founding a Settlement
Build Farm and Settle Area together are the two-stage process of turning empty territory into a genuine settlement. See Settlement Types and Founding for the full detail — Build Farm establishes the initial claim, and Settle Area, uniquely among projects, has no fixed time limit at all, running instead on how much Support Equipment the army can burn through.
Building Outposts
Eight projects each construct one specific outpost — Build Mine, Build Quarry, Build Camp, Build Stable, Build Warehouse, Build Barracks, Build Marketplace, and Build Church. Every one of these shares the same basic shape: a Stone cost, a terrain restriction, a requirement of at least 100 combined Infantry and Engineers, and a minimum distance from the nearest existing settlement or outpost. See Outposts for the full build time, terrain restrictions, and equipment wear for each.
Modifying Terrain
Improve Terrain boosts a hex's resource output by ploughing fields and digging wells, increasing the population the hex can support along the way. It takes 240 cycles, works only on Lakes, Plains, Forest, Broken Ground, or Hills, and requires the hex be free of any outpost or settlement and controlled by the empire. Equipment wear while building: 0.15% support equipment/day. See Resources for exactly how much this adds to a hex's output.
Grow Forest is restricted to factions carrying the GROW_FOREST empire spirit — Elves devoted to living in harmony with the land they hold. It transforms a Plains or Broken Ground hex into genuine Forest over 360 cycles, with the same equipment wear and troop requirements as most other terrain projects (0.15%/day, 100 combined Infantry and Engineers).
Managing an Army
Exercise Army trains a garrison or field army toward Trained experience level, capping out at 45% experience before stopping automatically. Experience gain depends on army size and location:
- On open ground, an army gains 0.5% of its maximum experience per day — meaning a 500-strong Infantry force (10,000 maximum experience) reaches 45% in 90 days. Beyond roughly 2,500 Infantry, additional troops no longer speed this up — that's the size limit for full training efficiency on open ground.
- On a Barracks outpost, both the daily gain and the size-efficiency ceiling double: the same army reaches 45% in just 45 days, and the size limit for full efficiency rises to roughly 5,000 Infantry.
Equipment wear while exercising: 0.15% support equipment/day (minimum 1/day). See Leader Age and Experience for how this same kind of training applies to Generals specifically, and Outposts for the Barracks bonus.
Train General sends a General away from their army to the capital's military academy, available only to leaders below skill level 4 in every skill — those at level 4 or higher are considered teachers themselves rather than students. It costs 10 Imperial Influence and takes just 24 cycles to prepare before the journey itself begins. See Leader Age and Experience for the full training sequence and outcomes.
Garrison is a cosmetic project, not a defensive one — worth being careful with the name, since it shares its label with both the City Guard troop type and the broader concept of a settlement's defenders. This project simply hides an idle army from the "idle army" button for up to a year (1,440 cycles), automatically cancelled the moment a hostile army comes within sight range. While it runs, the army's maximum organisation is held at 100.
Settlement Projects
Build Walls raises a settlement's defences by one level, taking 800 cycles — see Sieges for what each wall level actually does in combat. Maximum 5 levels.
Build Workshop adds one workshop to a settlement, taking 260 cycles, limited only by however many workshops that settlement's Province Development Level allows.
Develop Province raises a settlement's PDL by one level — see Province Development for the full requirements and stone costs at every level, and the wide-vs-deep strategic choice this project represents.
Expand Territory is the default, ever-present project — a settlement is always trying to claim its next hex unless something else is actively running, and resumes automatically the moment that other project finishes. The time to claim a new hex follows a clean formula:
Time = 100 × 1.05^(hexes already controlled) × 1.2^(range from settlement), capped at 1,440 cycles
A settlement that's already claimed 8 hexes, reaching for one 3 hexes away, takes 100 × 1.05⁸ × 1.2³ ≈ 229 cycles — a little over two months. The further out and the more hexes already held, the longer each additional claim takes, which is exactly why Province Development's expansion-time modifier matters so much at higher PDL.
Festival is the direct counter to a struggling city's loyalty — running until manually stopped or until loyalty reaches the maximum of 100, adding +0.4 loyalty per day on top of the normal loyalty drift (see Loyalty). The trade-off is real: workshop capacity drops by 25% for as long as the festival runs, and the whole project is cancelled outright if the Governor is harmed while it's underway — a city can't celebrate properly without someone competent actually running it.
Raise Army creates a new army of 100 Basic Infantry on a random unoccupied hex next to the settlement, taking 130 cycles, limited by however many armies the empire is currently allowed to field. If no free hex can be found, the project simply delays by 20 cycles and tries again, repeating indefinitely until space opens up.
Replace Governor removes an underperforming or corrupt Governor and generates a fresh one, costing 30 Imperial Influence and taking 120 cycles. The outgoing Governor must be undamaged to start the process, and their efficiency drops while the replacement is underway — cancelling the project simply restores them to normal. See Leaders and Leader Traits for what you might be hoping to replace them with something better than.
