Guides & Articles

Everything written about Era of Conquest, in one place · Operator: Chenyjunny

한국어 (Korean) · About & how to play

Two kinds of pages live here. The gameplay guides below cover the exact rules the game runs on — formulas, thresholds, and costs, verified against how the game actually behaves. The articles are independent reading: real military and political history, and how the same principles show up in this game's systems. You don't need to read either to play, but both make the game make more sense once you have.

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Gameplay guides

About & how to play

What Era of Conquest is, the basic controls, and how to read the map.

Scenario guide

All ten starting scenarios, what each hands you, and why some are far harder than others.

Victory conditions

The four objectives — total conquest, conquest rate, turn limit, era victory — and their exact thresholds.

Combat & economy

The exact capture formula, the amphibious penalty, income, and the penalty for growing too large.

Diplomacy

Opinion, treaty thresholds, betrayal, and the coalition that forms against a runaway leader.

Delegation

Handing your nation to an AI steward, the five conquest stances, and combat handoff.

Difficulty & AI

What the three levels actually change, and the four AI personalities.

Articles: history, strategy, and the genre

Concentration of Force: Napoleon's Real Weapon

Why Napoleon won by being locally stronger, not by having the bigger army overall — and what happened at Waterloo when it failed.

Rome's Web of Alliances

How Rome conquered Italy mostly through treaties with it, and why that alliance network survived Hannibal.

The Mongol Paradox: Unstoppable, Then Unglued

How the fastest-growing empire in history split into four khanates that fought each other.

Bismarck and the Wars of German Unification

Three wars, three isolated enemies, and never more than one front at a time.

The Coalition Problem

Seven coalitions against France in 23 years, and why being the strongest power is its own kind of danger.

Two Fronts, One Grave

Why the same country made the same strategic mistake twice, three decades apart.

From Risk to Grand Strategy

A short history of the conquest game, from a 1950s board game to modern digital grand strategy.

Your First Turn-Based Strategy Game

A field guide for anyone who has never played a turn-based strategy game before.

Vauban's Stars and the Limits of the Fortress

The engineer who reinvented the fortress, and the 20th-century line that proved a fortress can be walked around.

Crossing the Water

Gallipoli, D-Day, and Incheon — three amphibious landings, and the vulnerability that runs under all of them.

Logistics Wins Wars

From the levée en masse to the Arsenal of Democracy — why economies decide wars that battles alone cannot explain.

The Art of Staying Small

Switzerland, Venice, and the Dutch Republic — three small states that outlasted the empires around them.