Horns of Dominion

The Lands beyond the rainbow have kept no single crown since the Accord broke centuries ago. They remain divided into five constantly warring noble realms — Crimson Mane, Sunmane Reach, Verdant Glade, Azure Spire and Violet Veil — their cities strung along the old roads between them.

You are the king of one of these realms, living in one of three periods of the Mazurian Age where total conquest and unification were the only solution. Twenty cities. One crown. No second place.

THREE SCENARIOS TO FIGHT IN

I. Rise of the Golden Horn · Year 13312 — a close-packed map where every realm is a neighbour.
II. The Broken Accord · Year 13986 — a real split into two areas bridged by just two cities.
III. The Radiant Spire · Year 14001 — more roads than any age before, and longer.

Every campaign of a given age is fought on the same land, so two kings can compare their wars. Time runs in the Mazurian Age: thirteen months of twenty-eight days, Auriel through Lunaris. A road takes about a week to walk, a warband takes six days to muster, and your campaign is scored in the days it took you to conquer the whole of it.

PLAYING

It is real time, with a pause. Nothing waits for you, but you can stop the world and think.

Click your city → raise a warband. It costs 💎 gold and 👥 populace, and takes time.
Click your warband → it marches at your word (the cursor turns to a crosshair).
Click a city → go there, however many roads away; the march finds its own path.
Click an enemy host → go and meet it on the road between you.
Click anywhere else → stand down.
Space pauses, 1–4 set the pace, M mutes. Drag to pan, pinch to zoom.

Gold comes from the cities you hold, so every wall you take pays for the next army. Warriors come from the people, and a city drafted hard has fewer of them to give.

WHAT EVERY COMMANDER LEARNS

🔱 Footmen are raised anywhere. 🦄 Unicorns and 🐘 behemoths are bred, and only two cities in a realm breed them — its capital and its next greatest city. Take those and the pens come with them.

On a road a host fights at the pace it marches: outrun what you land on and you caught it strung out, so unicorns break footmen, footmen break behemoths, and unicorns maul behemoths worst of all. Behind walls, speed counts for nothing — behemoths breach in a fraction of the time and unicorns are no siege engine at all. Catching a behemoth column between cities is the best thing a unicorn will ever do.

Numbers are health. Every muster is the same forty bodies whatever it raises, and damage comes off bodies while a kind's strength only multiplies what it deals. Fifty behemoths lose to a hundred footmen for the same gold. A behemoth is a siege arm, not a strong generalist.

Warriors tire. Marching wearies a host; fighting wearies it four times faster, and it sheds that only by standing still. Winded, it moves at half pace — which usually means it cannot get away. Breaking off a fight costs a quarter of the host on top, so the time to retreat is before you need to.

A city never fights for itself. Two hosts on a city trade as they would on the road outside it, less the speed and plus home ground: men on a city of their own realm swing twenty percent harder, knowing the streets and the wells. A city spends its defence on the siege instead — and only once there is nobody left to fight, at which point it is a tax in blood on the besiegers while the wall points set the clock.

A city remembers its original banner. Conquer it and it seethes, riots, and throws you out — no mob, no siege, it simply goes home — unless you leave men enough to sit on it. Roughly one warrior for every seven souls will hold the lid down, and twice that will calm it quickly. Those are men not marching on the next wall. A realm ground down to a rump rallies nobody, so its lost cities finally settle and a conquest can end.

Walls mend themselves, slowly, and only while no enemy stands at the gates. There is nothing to order and nothing to pay.

The fog hides intent, never ground. You always see the roads and the cities; what walks them is another matter. You see a city while you hold it, border it, or stand a host on it — elsewhere, hosts in the dark are invisible, and so are the battles fought there.

FOUR RUNGS

Dreamer, Duelist, Warlord and Tyrant scale what your enemies get: their economy, how many decisions they make a turn, how large an army they will keep standing, and how firmly they hold what they conquer. Yours never change. Warlord is the default, and it does not flinch.

NO ASSETS

Every pixel of this is generated: the land, the cities, the warbands, the music and the sound of battle. There are no image files and no audio files, because there is no room for any — the whole game is 13,312 bytes, which is also, not by accident, the year the first age opens on.