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.