Seven States

The Zhou king is a figurehead in Luoyi and the covenants of the old order are dead. Qin presses east from the Wei valley under a reformed army and a bureaucracy of law. Chu sprawls across the south, richest in men and grain but slow to move. Zhao breeds the finest cavalry in the world and has Li Mu and Lian Po to lead it. Wei and Han hold the central plains and the roads every army must cross. Qi guards the wealth of the eastern coast. Yan sits isolated in the north against the steppe. Smaller powers — Song, Lu, Zhongshan, Yue, Ba, Shu and Yiqu — survive by terrain, trade or horsemanship, and every one of them is someone's next conquest. Between and beyond them lie unclaimed mountains, marshes and grassland, drawn in white. Territory is measured in land alone: whichever banner covers the widest ground is winning.

You hold one of fifteen banners in the late Warring States. The Seven States — Qin, Chu, Han, Wei, Zhao, Qi and Yan — command the heart of the board, while the Zhou royal domain, the steppe riders of Yiqu, the mountain kingdoms of Shu and Ba, and the southern power of Yue still fly their own colours. Your lands are drawn in a single flat colour and nothing else. Every cell of the map that no banner holds stays white. Grow your colour until no rival banner remains.

Turns advance one season at a time. Every map cell is owned by exactly one banner, or by no one, and its owner decides the colour drawn on the map — cells with no owner stay white. Armies may only march through cells whose supply line is not cut. Cavalry quality decides open-field battles in the northern plains; walls and earthworks decide sieges. Food scarcity halves the soldiers a faction can field; a bankrupt treasury halves manpower recovery. Territory size rises only by taking cells from a rival banner, and every faction's colour on the map is the whole of its territory. Diplomacy, spies and reform shift loyalty and mandate without a battle. A faction that loses its capital and every cell is removed from the board.