Match Flow

Match start, win condition, eliminated-player spoils, defensive comeback bonus, and fog of war — the rules that shape a match's arc from T=0 to victory screen.

Match Setup

Player count

1–24. Any mix of human and AI; configurable per slot.

Teams

1–12 teams of 1–12 players (any combo summing to ≤24). Free-for-all default.

Loadout

Choose 1 leader, 1 army (faction), plus cosmetics (post-MVP).

AI

Up to 23 opponents. Difficulty tiers TBD; AI complexity scales with development phase.

Starting State (Match T=0)

When a match begins, each player owns just their home base at level 6, placed by map gen at a spread perimeter tile. The starting unit pool and default paths are faction-specific — each army definition carries a StartingUnitBundle that determines what's already on the home base when the match begins.

Starting tile

• 1 home base at level 6.
• Permanent Home Base rule (passively trickles all 4 resource slots + spawns the faction's DefaultHomeBaseProducesType at level rate). Home Base is the only tile owned at T=0.
• Type Generic. Inherits Tower mechanics on top of the Home Base rule (1-Scout regen + 4-hex vision aura).

Starting unit bundle (faction-set)

Pre-spawned on the home base at T=0, drawn from the faction's StartingUnitBundle:

• Army, Gather, Engineer, Defender units in faction-specific counts.
• Army count is constrained to ≥ 6 × (units-to-claim-a-tile) so the default 6 length-1 Army paths can actually claim the surrounding hexes.
• 1 Scout from the home base's intrinsic Tower mechanic — the only Scout in the bundle, since the Tower rule (not StartingUnitBundle) is what produces scouts.
• Plus a faction-specific StartingStockpile in the home base's per-tile stockpile (per-resource starting amounts).

Default paths

• Army: 6 length-1 paths fanning out from home base, one to each neighbor, even FlowWeight. Spends the L6 home base's Army budget (6) entirely on the opening expansion.
• Gather, Engineer, Defender: all empty. The player draws these once the surrounding ring is claimed and the network needs them.

Match-start sequence

1. Army units in the bundle walk outward via the default paths and claim the adjacent 6 hexes (units consumed in the claim per M0 mechanics).
2. Gather / Engineer / Defender units sit on the home base until the player draws their respective path trees.
3. The starting Scout is under direct control — the player commands it to recon any direction to plan expansion.
4. The home base trickles resources into its stockpile, gating subsequent unit production.

The opening literally teaches the game: watch your army claim adjacent tiles, then go configure those tiles + draw the supply-chain paths to put your idle workers to work.

Leader spawn window

The leader does not spawn at T=0. It becomes available at T = 2 minutes, at which point the player picks any owned tile as the new home base via the one-time relocation swap (Home Base rule, stockpile, and starting properties move with the swap; both tiles' paths reset).

The first two minutes are a planning phase

No leader, no incursions yet possible. The player's job is to claim the starting ring with the default Army paths, configure tile rules on the captured tiles, draw Gather and Engineer paths to put the idle workers to work, scout with the starting Scout, and pick a forward base location for the T=2:00 relocation.

All starting defaults are editable immediately

Players can change the home base's default Army paths and weights from T=0, draw any of the other 3 path trees, queue an engineer project to swap the home base's DefaultHomeBaseProducesType sub-config (the rule itself is permanent; the unit-type knob is not), and command the starting Scout. Defaults are defaults, not locks.

Win Condition

Last home base standing.

• Eliminate other players by destroying their home bases.
• Home bases follow standard tile-destruction mechanics but with much higher per-level HP than normal tiles (5× normal — see HP curve).
• A home base, like all tiles, only takes damage from path-ends — not from units passing through.

Eliminated Player's Tiles — Dormant State

When a player is eliminated (home base destroyed), all their tiles enter Dormant state. Type, level, rule, sub-config, and stockpile are preserved — in-flight units, garrisons, paths, and tile self-defense are removed. Surviving players race to occupy dormant tiles via an occupation timer rather than a claim-HP grind. See Combat & Units for the full dormant capture sequence.

Defensive Bonus (Comeback Mechanic)

The fewer tiles a player holds, the stronger their defensive bonus on remaining tiles. Cornered players defend harder, creating tension in finishing off a near-eliminated opponent and discouraging snowball steamrolls.

• Curve specifics TBD playtest.
• Targeted lock at M14 — N-player support — when balance behavior across player counts becomes observable.

Fog of War & Replication

Visibility — six sources

Enemy units in any of those visibility windows are visible. Lost tiles re-fog, hiding what was previously visible there.

Gather, Engineer, and Defender path-tile vision is intentionally absent — logistics paths covering the whole map shouldn't trivialize fog. Tactical recon stays tied to combat presence, scouts, towers, and the leader.

Strategic implication

Players cannot see enemy paths or enemy tile rules. They can only infer enemy strategy from observed unit movement within their visibility window. Information warfare is a real layer.

Replication architecture

• Server-authoritative. The server holds full match state.
• Clients receive only what their fog permits. Dramatically reduces replication bandwidth, important for 12-player matches.
• Cheating via memory inspection is mostly defanged — the client doesn't have data on enemy paths or out-of-fog tiles.

Networking model (dedicated servers vs. host-as-server) TBD.