How to play

Everything on this page is inside the game as well: the round blue button with the i, at the top right, opens the handbook at the page you need.

The handbook (i)

• Everything on this page is also inside the game. Press the round blue (i) button at the top right, or H, or F1. Smaller (i) buttons on the panels and windows open the handbook at the right page. It works in a battle too (the fight waits while you read).
• The first page, "First Steps", is a short tutorial: twelve things to try, each ticked off as you do it.
• The Quest box at the top left always has a small task with a reward.

The world map

• The map is to scale: Britain and Ireland with thousands of villages, linked by roads.
• Every town and village is a real place, where it really stands. The great towns of old (Bristol, Coventry, Norwich ...) are bigger than market towns, and market towns bigger than villages. Your castle keeps the name of the real town it stands in.
• Left-drag to move the map, mouse wheel to zoom (WASD / arrows move it too). Zoom right in to see every village, camp, road and wood; zoom out to see the shires.
• Every town's picture on the map grows as it is built up - from a few huts to a great walled city - so you can see how strong a place is from outside.
• A coloured ring under a place shows who owns it (gold ring = yours).
• Your own places fly your flag, so that you find them at a glance; the flag of your castle is the tallest.
• Your own soldiers on the march stand in a gold ring. Click them to see who they are - and "Call Them Back" turns them round: they march home the way they came, and whatever they set out to do is not done.
• Press Space (or the Home button) to jump back to your castle.
• Click a town, village or resource site to see it in the panel on the right. Click an army to see who marches in it.
• Your towns: build, recruit soldiers, research upgrades, send carts.
• Other towns: scout them first, then Conquer, Raid or Burn them.
• Resource sites (forests, quarries, iron, coal, granges): claim them, send workers, guard them with soldiers, and upgrade carts to haul the goods home.
• GOLD VEINS turn up now and then, a few at a time. They are rare and slow to dig, but the more miners you send the faster the gold comes out. A vein holds only so much: when the last of it is dug, it is gone from the map. Every lord wants them - they race you for a free one and may demand a share of yours - so claim one quickly and guard it well.
• FINDS lie here and there between the places: a stand of timber, a herd of deer, a seam of stone, an outcrop of iron, a pocket of coal, gold in a stream, a wrecked wagon, a buried hoard. Click one to see how much is left, then send carts from a town within reach: they drive out, load up, bring it home and go again until it is all fetched. A find holds only so much, and then it is gone from the map; new ones turn up as time passes, most often near your own lands (the chronicle tells you). The lords send carts for the same finds - be quick, or ambush their loaded carts.
• OUTLAW CAMPS (tents, a fire, a fence of stakes and a black flag) hold a band of robbers and a hoard of loot that grows. They rob carts on the roads near them, raid weak villages and sites, and demand gold from you: pay, and they leave you alone for a while; refuse, and they march on the town they named. Click a camp and attack it like any other place. Win, and the camp is gone for good and your army carries the whole hoard home. New camps appear as time goes by - small bands at first, bigger later - and the lords clear the ones near their own towns. While you are away from the game the camps lie low.
• Ruins: send settlers to found a new village.
• Armies and carts take real time to travel (distances are real). Enemies nearby can see them coming - and so can you. Click an enemy army or cart to intercept or ambush it.
• Keys: H or F1 the handbook, L letters and diplomacy, R battle reports, K your kingdom, C the chronicle, Esc closes things (or opens the settings), F11 full screen.

Your towns (3d)

• Press "Enter Town" to walk into a town in 3D.
• Left-drag pans, right-drag turns, wheel zooms, WASD moves, Q / E turn.
• Click an empty plot to build. Click a building (anywhere on it - roof and all), the keep, the gatehouse or a tower to upgrade them.
• EVERY UPGRADE SHOWS. Each level adds something new to a building or its yard (a vegetable patch, a cart, a hoist, a banner...), and at levels 4, 7 and 10 it is rebuilt grander. Keeps, walls, towers, moats, pits and oil change with every level too.
• FILL YOUR PLOTS AS YOU PLEASE. Farms, orchards, dairies, hunters, woodcutters, quarries, mines, charcoal burners and houses can be built as often as you have plots - and so can Storehouses, Barracks, Archery Ranges, Stables, Siege Workshops and Medical Tents. A second Barracks trains men faster (every level of every Barracks counts); more Storehouses hold more. Only the Market, Church, Inn, Armoury and Harbour are one to a town. Clear a plot with the x beside it; each Keep level adds one more plot.
• Happy people work harder. Feed them, build houses, an inn and a church.
• SOLDIERS EAT TOO. Every soldier is fed by the town he is stationed in - a horseman about three times as much as a spearman. The more troops you keep in a town, the more food it must make. If the food runs out the men begin to desert. The Army tab shows what they eat and what the town has to spare.
• A town you conquer keeps every building at the level its old lord had reached.
• The more people live in a town, the busier its streets: farmers, porters, woodsmen, goodwives, monks, merchants, smiths, children and more go about their work, and they carry on when you build.

Your castle

Every walled town has a castle: the keep, with whatever you build round it. Press "Build the Castle & Post Troops" (Town tab) to open the castle in 3D.

• BUILD IT YOURSELF. Pick a tool on the left and click or drag on the grid: Wall - drag out as much as you like. Attackers must climb it with ladders, ram a gate or smash it with siege engines. Tower - on open ground or on a wall. No ladder can reach the top. Gatehouse - four squares long. Your men can sally out; the enemy needs a ram. Moat - attackers wade through it slowly, under your arrows. Killing Pit - hidden; the first enemy to step on one falls in. Oil Pot - stands on a wall and scalds everyone below. Remove - clears a square (so does a right-click). How many pieces you have comes from your Walls, Towers, Moat, Killing Pits and Boiling Oil levels (Town tab). Upgrade them for more and stronger pieces.
• CLOSE THE RING. The enemy comes from the south (the red arrows). If your walls do not close round the keep - joined up to the back edge of the grounds behind it - attackers simply walk in. The game warns you in red.
• POST YOUR MEN. Pick a kind of soldier on the left and click a square: Archers and crossbowmen - on towers (best: they shoot much further and harder), on walls, on the gatehouse, or on the ground. Foot soldiers - on walls (they fight at the ladder tops and throw the climbers back), on the gatehouse, or on the ground, inside the castle or out in front of it. Horsemen and engines - on the ground. Point straight at the top of the wall or tower you mean: the gold square shows where they will stand. Men you do not post yourself take up sensible posts on their own.
• The castle falls when the enemy holds the keep door. Until then, fight for it!
• WALLS REMEMBER. Walls, towers and gates broken in an assault stay broken - in the town view and in the next battle - and weak walls defend badly. That goes for the walls you smash when you take a town, too. Press "Repair the Walls" (Town tab): it costs wood, stone and gold and takes time. Other lords set their masons to mend theirs too, if they have the stone - so strike again before they have finished.
• "Standard Castle" puts everything back the way your master mason would build it.
• The same castle defends the town while you are away.

Your soldiers

Every kind of soldier has his own arms, armour and way of fighting, drawn from the real Middle Ages, and wears your colours. You get more kinds as you rise in rank and build up the Barracks, Archery Range, Stables and Siege Workshop.

On foot Peasant Levy (pitchfork), Spearman (kite shield and spear), Swordsman, Man-at-Arms (mail and heater shield), Pikeman (long pike), Billman, Halberdier, Royal Guard (for the King or Queen alone). With bows Archer, Longbowman (shoots furthest), Crossbowman and Arbalest (slow to load, but the bolts go through armour), Horse Archer. On horseback Hobelar (light and fast), Mounted Sergeant, Knight (lance, great helm and a horse in your colours), Knight of the Order (needs a great Church as well as great Stables). Engines Battering Ram (gates), Mangonel and Trebuchet (walls and towers), Ballista (a giant crossbow). For hire Sellswords and Genoese Crossbowmen, at the Inn. Of the land Welsh spearmen and bowmen, Highlanders and schiltron spearmen, Irish kerns and gallowglasses, Viking raiders and huscarls. Train them in towns you hold in their own country.

In battle they run, swing, thrust, draw and loose, crank their crossbows, climb ladders, flinch when hit and fall when beaten - watch them close up with the wheel.

• TIERS. Research (in a town with the right building) raises each kind of soldier from Tier I to XV: +6% attack and health and +0.4 armour a tier, in every battle. Every tier also shows on the men - a purse, a knife, your sash, gloves, an arm band, a plume, shoulder plates, greaves, a cloak, gauntlets, a trimmed cloak (or a trapper for the horse), a gilded helm, a crest and at last a gold chain. Their portraits change at tiers IV, VII, X and XIII. Engines gain pennons, shields and gilding. The other lords' men show their tiers the same way.
• NO LIMIT. Send as many men as you like. Across the sea, a host too big for your ships goes over in several crossings, which takes longer.
• THE WOUNDED AND THE MEDICAL TENT. Not every man who falls is dead. When you win a battle about a third of your fallen are only wounded (when you lose, fewer - and only if some of your men get away to carry them). They come home with the army, or stay in the town it has just taken, heal one at a time and go back to the garrison. On their own they mend slowly. Build a MEDICAL TENT (a plot building, listed with the soldiers' buildings) and they heal four times as fast; every level makes it faster, and you can raise more than one in a town. The town's Army tab shows who is wounded and how long they need - and in the town you can see them lying on the camp beds outside the tent, with the healers at work.

Battle reports

• The crossed-swords button at the top (or R) lists every battle you fought in, including attacks that came while you were away: who came, with how many, who won and what was lost.
• Press WATCH to see any of them again in 3D. It ends as the battle really ended: the same side wins and the same men are left, and the count is written under it.

Battles (3d)

• When a battle begins you are asked: "Take Command!" or "Let the Captain Decide". THE CAPTAIN DOES NOT WAIT FOR EVER: if you give no answer within a minute he fights the battle himself, the game goes on, and the battle is kept in the Battle Reports to watch later. Settings has "Captain waits": 30 seconds, 1, 2 or 5 minutes, or for ever.
• Watch the fight, or "Finish Quickly" to let the captains decide.
• Click a soldier to pick his company (Shift-click to add more), or click a company's card at the bottom. The bar on each card shows how many of them are left.
• Right-click the ground to march there, or right-click an enemy to attack it.
• Right-drag or middle-drag turns the camera, wheel zooms, WASD / arrows move it.
• Use Rally, Volley, Fire Arrows, Boiling Oil and Sally Out at the right moment.
• Spearmen beat horsemen. Archers beat slow foot soldiers. Rams break gates. Mangonels and trebuchets break walls and towers.
• Storming a castle: your foot soldiers raise ladders, but defenders on the wall must be beaten at the top. Shoot them off the walls first, break the gate with a ram, or knock a hole in the wall with mangonels and trebuchets. Take the keep door to win. A palisade of stakes is lower than a stone wall and shelters its men far less.
• BLOOD. Battles show blood: a spurt where a blow or an arrow lands, and a stain that spreads under the fallen and stays for the rest of the fight. To play without it, open Settings (the button at the top right of the map, or Esc) and untick "Blood in battles". The game remembers your choice.
• The side that wins cheers; when a wall or tower comes down, everyone on it comes down with it.

If the game runs slowly

• Open Settings and set "Detail" to Medium or Low. Low is the fastest: it leaves out the grass, wild flowers and stones on the ground, and draws fewer trees, fewer townsfolk and plainer shadows. The game remembers your choice. (Phones and tablets start on Low; computers start on High.)

On a phone or tablet

• To put the game on an Android phone or tablet (Android 7 or newer): copy the file "St-Nicholas-Castle.apk" to it, open the file there, allow the phone to install from that source when it asks, and press Install. It is not from the Play Store, so the phone may warn that it does not know the maker: choose "Install anyway".
• Tap to choose, as you would click. Drag one finger to move the map or the view; a list scrolls when you drag it.
• Pinch two fingers to zoom. In a town, the castle designer or a battle, twist two fingers to turn the view, or slide them up and down together to tilt it.
• Hold a finger still on a button, a place or a building to read its note.
• On the map, tap a place twice to fly to it. While you choose where to send soldiers, a Cancel button stands at the foot of the screen.
• In battle: tap one of your soldiers (or his card) to pick his company, then tap the ground to send it there or an enemy to send it at him. "None" lets go of every company; with "Add" on, each tap adds a company to those already picked.
• In the castle designer the Remove tool does what the right button does on a computer, and Look Around lets one finger move the view.
• The buttons along the top do what the keys do. The phone's Back button closes a window, leaves the town or cancels, as Esc does.
• Settings has "Interface size" (bigger writing and buttons) and "Detail" (Low draws fewer trees and plainer shadows, so the game runs smoothly and the battery lasts longer).
• When you switch to another app the game saves itself and the world waits; when you come back, the time away is made up just as it is after Continue.

Sound

• Settings has one slider for the music and one for the sound effects.
• A fight is made of many sounds - steel on steel, on shields and on mail, bowstrings, arrows going home, galloping horses, rams, catapults, falling walls - and the ones heard most come in several versions so they do not repeat.

Gold

• Gold comes from taxes, Markets, Harbours and gold veins. It is kept in your treasury for the whole realm.
• A price you cannot pay is shown in RED, with a line saying what you are short of, and its button turns grey with red words.
• A town with a MARKET can sell any good for gold and BUY any good with gold (Carts tab). Buying always costs more than selling brings; a bigger Market gives better prices both ways.
• WORKS OF THE REALM (Research tab) are bought with gold and a few goods and help every town you hold: better carts, scouts, minting, haggling, crop rotation, tools, masons, strongrooms, roads and drill. Each has ten levels.
• RANK. Honour (from battles, churches and good rule) makes you worthy of the next rank - then you pay the heralds' fee in gold and press the green "Become..." button at the top. A higher rank means a bigger keep, better soldiers and more respect from the lords.

The lords

• Every lord remembers what you do. Gifts make friends, attacks make enemies - and attacking their friends makes them angry too.
• Friends send help and goods. Enemies send scouts, raid you, or burn whole towns.
• THEY WRITE TO YOU. Letters (L) bring offers of trade, peace and alliance, demands for tribute, invitations to feasts, hunts, weddings and tournaments, warnings, news and gossip, jokes, riddles, wagers, dares, boasts, treasure maps, secrets for sale, begging letters, apologies and pleas for mercy. Most letters let you choose an answer, and what you choose changes what he thinks of you - and may cost or win gold, or start a war or end one. A letter left unanswered too long can give offence.
• TOO MANY LETTERS? Tick "Do not trouble me with the lords' letters" at the top of your letters. Small talk, invitations, offers of trade and news are then no longer brought to you; offers of peace or a truce, declarations of war, threats, demands and warnings still are. It has a price: a lord whose letter wanted an answer and got none thinks a little less of you each time.
• The lord answers your answer: at once, later by letter, or not at all. He may write again about what passed between you ("You would not come to my feast...") for up to three turns - or simply stay silent.
• LORDS CAN LIE - sometimes, not always. Schemers most, warmongers and merchants now and then, honourable and pious lords almost never. A lie may be false news, a false warning, a secret or treasure that is not true, a promise never kept, or a warm letter swearing you have nothing to fear. To find out: ask another lord about him, send a rider to see for yourself, send a scout, listen to an honest lord's news, or wait and see. A lie found out goes in the chronicle and the lord is marked "Has lied to you ..." in your letters and on his page.
• Every lord has his own nature and his mood of the day (shown in his letters and on his page). Some are steady; a few are unpredictable and may take the same answer well one day and badly the next.
• You can write first: on a lord's page, send greetings, flatter him, ask the news or his advice, ask what he thinks of another house, thank him, boast, send a joke, propose a wager, ask help against outlaws, call in a favour, apologise, threaten him, call him a liar - or insult him.
• Trade with lords who are open to deals.
• THE REALM STARTS GENTLE AND GROWS HARDER. A new knight is mostly left alone: a few small raids, no wars. As you rise in rank, take more towns and the years go by, the lords raise bigger and better armies, bring siege engines, and send the kind of soldier that beats yours (horsemen against your bowmen, spears against your horse).
• A lord who loses a town to you wants it back. If a place is too strong for one army, he gathers men from all his towns first - watch for armies massing.
• LORDS MAKE WAR CLEVERLY. They fall on a town whose soldiers have marched away, and turn back from one that has been reinforced. Later in the game they may feint (a small army marches on a village to draw your men out, while the main army waits to fall on the town), attack two places at once, or march with their allies.
• Most lords keep their word, and an Honourable lord always does. Others - a Schemer above all - may break a truce or an alliance when it pays them, often just after a friendly letter - and every lord thinks the worse of them for it. An Honourable lord who declares war gives you five minutes' fair warning.
• Grow very strong and your neighbours will fear you: they may join in a league and make war on you together. Keep some of them as friends!
• Winning all of Britain and Ireland takes a long time. Take it shire by shire.

Time keeps passing

• The world goes on while the game is closed. Your towns work, build and train; carts and armies finish their journeys.
• The lords go easier on an empty castle: while you are away nobody declares war on you, burns your towns or demands tribute, and raids are smaller and far apart. But raiders do still come, and a lord who is already at war with you may still march on your towns - so leave a garrison at home, keep the walls up, and make peace before a long absence if you can.
• When you come back, a report tells you what happened, and the Battle Reports let you watch each attack.
• Take the Crown by ruling England. Lose the Crown and your house falls - start again.

Playing online

• An online world is one Britain shared by many players, kept on a server that runs day and night. The old lords are still in it, with their letters, wars and moods - and so are other players, each with a castle and a house of their own. Choose to play online on the title screen, read the rules of the world, make an account (a log-in name and a password) and choose your lord: a name and a house from the lists, and your arms.
• A FORGOTTEN PASSWORD. If the world can send e-mail, the sign-up has a box for an e-mail address. It is optional (ask a grown-up first) and the world keeps it only in scrambled form. With it, "I Forgot My Password" on the log-in screen sends a short code to that address, and with the code you set a new password. Without it, ask the keeper of the world for a new password.
• You begin with a village of your own as your castle. Your castle is never lost: if an enemy storms it they carry off gold and goods, and then it is shielded from every attack for a while. Villages, towns and sites can be won and lost as ever.
• For your first days the newcomer's peace protects you: no other player may attack you, and you may attack none of them. The lords go gently with a newcomer too.
• You can MOVE TO A NEW PLACE. Open the Kingdom window (K) and choose "Move to a New Place", pick a shire, and a free village there becomes your new castle. You keep your name, house, rank, honour, what your scholars have learned and your gold. Your castle, towns, villages and soldiers stay behind, so it is a fresh start - and the newcomer's peace protects you again. You can do it once a day. (When your castle has been plundered, the news of the battle offers it too.)
• Other players are houses on the map like the lords' houses. With them there is alliance, war and peace. Everyone begins at peace. Declare war (click one of their places, then "Alliance, War and Peace") and the war begins some hours later; they are told at once, so they have time to look to their walls. Peace is offered, and accepted or refused, through the post from other players in the letters window (L). A peace that is made holds for a day at least. The post keeps what you were told - an alliance made, an ally under attack. When you have read a thing, the X beside it puts it away, and the button above them ("Put all ... away", with their number) clears everything that needs no answer.
• ALLIES. Offer an alliance from a player's house window; they accept or refuse it in their post. Allies cannot make war on each other. You can send soldiers to STAND GUARD in an ally's castle, town or village, whether your ally is at the game or away: click the place, then "Send Soldiers to Stand Guard". They fight beside the defenders, stay for a day or until you call them home, and you go on feeding and paying them. When an ally is marched upon you are told at once who is coming, against which place, from where, with how many men and when - with a button to go there and one to send soldiers. (The lords can be allies too, but in a world a lord gives his oath only to a very good friend, and does not always come.)
• MESSAGES. NOBODY CAN TYPE A WORD TO ANYBODY. Players talk with ready-made messages: you choose a sentence out of the game's own book - about 650 of them, in chapters (attack, defence and help, alliance, news, plans, questions, answers and more) - and fill its blanks by picking: a place by pressing it on the map, a player, a lord, an amount, a time. Send one from a player's house window ("Send a Message"), from a place ("Message About This Place") or from the Messages tab of Diplomacy (L), where the ones you get are kept, each with quick answers you can send with one press. "Message My Allies" writes to all your allies at once. So nobody can send you unkind words, ask where you live, or trick you with clever writing. Never give your real name, your address, your school or a telephone number to anybody who asks for them in some other way. "Block Their Messages" in a player's house window stops that player's messages reaching you.
• Nothing waits in an online world: every battle is fought by your captains at once. You are told how it went, and you can watch each one afterwards (Battle Reports).
• The Roll of Honour (in the Kingdom window, K) lists the twenty lords of the world with the most honour. The Crown can be won here as it can alone - one head wears it at a time.
• The world never stops and there is nothing to save, no pausing and no faster time. While you are away your lands go on working, and the lords go gently with an empty castle. Settings has Account (to change your password or e-mail) and Leave the World.
• A lord who does not come for a long time gives up his lands to the free folk, but keeps his honour and rank: he is given a new castle when he returns.

Made with Godot Engine. Fonts: Cinzel, Cinzel Decorative and EB Garamond (SIL Open Font License). Place names and positions: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata (CC0). Sounds and music: public-domain (CC0) recordings by Versilian Studios. The licences are in "CREDITS AND LICENCES.txt" and the "Licences" folder that come with the game, and inside the game on the handbook's last page, "Credits & Licences".