At a glance
- ▸ Fantasy-themed 4X strategy and city-building game with a focus on PvP and alliance warfare.
- ▸ Players build and upgrade their own city, train armies, research technologies, and form alliances to compete for dominance on a shared world map.
- ▸ Very aggressive monetization with a wide variety of in-app purchases, but also a surprisingly generous amount of goodies that make for a decent free-to-play experience, allowing players to progress and compete without spending money if they're willing to invest time and effort.
Strengths & weaknesses
Strengths
- + PC Client with cross-play and cross-progression with mobile
- + Very generous free-to-play experience — you can get a lot done without spending money
- + Community is still active, despite the game's age, and is friendlier than other games in the genre
Weaknesses
- − Tons of pop-ups, notifications and offers — can be overwhelming for new players
- − Dated graphics and UI — looks like a mobile game from 2010
- − Pay-to-win reputation is not entirely undeserved — there are definitely advantages to spending money, especially in PvP
- − World map resource gathering and combat can be very time-consuming and grindy. No way to automate — you have to manually send troops and wait for them to arrive every time.
What a day looks like
Core gameplay loop
- ▸ Claim all free rewards (~1 min).
- ▸ Claim VIP and Idle Loot Chest rewards (~1 min).
- ▸ Collect resources from buildings in your city (~1 min).
- ▸ Queue new building upgrades (~1 min).
- ▸ Heal the units in the Hospital (~1 min).
- ▸ Train and equip your army (~1 min).
- ▸ Research new technologies in the research tree (~1 min).
- ▸ Hunt monsters on the world map for resources and rewards (~10 min).
- ▸ Send troops to gather resources on the world map (~1 min).
- ▸ Level up heroes and progress through the adventure questline (~5 min).
- ▸ Alliance help + donations (~1 min).
How the game actually looks
Screenshots
What spending actually looks like
Monetization reality
Free to play
$0 / month
- ▸ Generous amount of free resources, speed-ups, and other goodies through daily logins, events, and achievements. F2P players can progress without spending money if they're willing to invest time and effort. With that said, they are going to be at a significant disadvantage in PvP compared to paying players.
Light spender
$10-30 / month
- ▸ Light spenders can compete more effectively in PvP by unlocking additional resources, speed-ups, and hero shards. They can expect to defeat free-to-play players and be competitive with other light spenders, but they will still struggle to get every hero and unlock all the bonuses that heavy spenders have access to.
Heavy spender
$50-200 / month
- ▸ Heavy spenders can dominate in PvP by unlocking a wide variety of powerful bonuses, resources, speed-ups, and heroes. They will be the server's top players and the main damage dealers when fighting other servers. If you are not part of this group, try to avoid fighting them directly.
Where and when to start
Server & timing advice
- ! Start on a newer server if you want a more level playing field and less entrenched competition. Don't bother joining older servers where long-time players and alliances dominate.
Player fit
Best for
- + Players drawn to fantasy settings.
- + Players who enjoy strategic planning, city-building, and alliance-based PvP combat.
- + Fans of old-school 4X strategy games and mobile city builders.
Avoid if
- − Players who dislike grindy gameplay, aggressive monetization, or time-consuming resource management.
- − Players looking for a modern-looking game.
- − Players who prefer more casual or solo experiences, as the game heavily emphasizes alliance cooperation and PvP combat.
Verdict
Final callGenuinely playable free on a new server — provided you can tolerate the pop-up tsunami and aggressive monetization everyone else is fending off.