Phase 1, Crisis. Three powers are one mistake from war. Keep world tension under 100 for 10 days to win the peace. You get 3 political capital each day to spend on talks, pacts, intel and speeches. Each power moves at the end of the day, and how it moves depends on how much it trusts you.
Pacts. Once a power's trust reaches 50 you can sign a secret pact. If war comes anyway, that power spares one of your supply sites. Each rival spares a different one: your water, your fuel or your food.
Submarines. Each rival hides a missile submarine near your coast, and its missiles arrive with very little warning. Attack submarines can sink enemy boats before they fire. Your own missile submarines deter rivals and guarantee you can strike back. If your most hostile rival's trust is below 40, it will fire a nuclear torpedo at your coastal refinery in a war. Only attack submarines can stop one.
Space. Orbital interceptors (a Cold War idea now being revived) hit missiles right after launch. Orbital tungsten rods let you destroy a rival's silos before a war, but every power will see it as an act of war in all but name.
Offense and information. Hack rivals, fly bombers as a warning, or build weapons that survive a first strike, like mobile launchers and missiles with several warheads each. A rival with very low trust may fire an EMP over you, and hardened infrastructure protects against it. Deepfake videos can start a crisis; a counter-disinformation unit catches them.
Rival arsenals. Your rivals build weapons too, and hostile ones build faster. Public tests show up in the feed. Secret builds (subs, drone swarms, cyber armies, EMPs, torpedoes) stay hidden until an intel sweep finds them. The threat board in the Arsenal lists what you know about and what counters each weapon. Anything you haven't countered will be used against you in a war.
Situation room, objectives and medals. Your advisor flags what needs attention, with one-click actions. Each game has 3 secret objectives worth +150 score each. Medals carry over between games; see them with the Medals button. Turn on real-time mode for a 45-second clock on each day. Your game saves automatically.
The story. You lead a cabinet of four: a hawkish general, a dovish foreign minister, an intelligence chief and a science adviser. Each gives you a bonus and speaks up every day. One of them is secretly leaking your plans. Watch who pushes you toward war, follow the intelligence, and tap a face to accuse them, but a wrong guess costs you that adviser. Newspapers mark the turning points, and every ending tells you what became of everyone.
Hardball. Each nation has a once-per-game ability (shown on the nation screen) and a trait that helps in the wasteland. With a secure second strike (missile subs, mobile launchers or multiple-warhead missiles), "Face them down" can make a rival back off. Fail, and tension jumps. When the missiles fly, you choose one city to shield. Catching the mole, exposing the Broker or breaking up terror cells calms the world and earns you capital.
Non-aligned powers. Aravalli, Kharaz, Kanem and Merapura belong to no bloc. Win them with envoys, trade, arms sales or covert operations. At 70 influence with a 15-point lead they join you, bringing oil, rare earths, ports or nuclear missiles. Let a rival win one and that strength is turned on you.
The World Council. Every four days the Council votes. Table a ceasefire, sanctions or inspections, lobby the undecided members, then call the vote. You need five of the eight votes.
Phase 4, Exodus. Rebuild well and the story jumps fifty years ahead. The first child born after the war is president, and your nation races for space: a spaceport, an orbital station, asteroid mining, a Moon base and the Ark, a colony ship for Mars. Old war debris makes every launch a gamble. Five more endings, and something waiting under the Martian ice.
The Mars Era. Once the colony lands, you can stay and terraform Mars over eight decades: dome cities, greenhouse-gas factories, orbital mirrors, a magnetic shield, comets for water, moss, forests, and at last a city where people walk outside without suits.
The Asteroid Ark. Mars comes first, with the Ark. Once the colony is down, if you're mining the belt and windows remain, you can look further: hollow out an asteroid beyond Mars, bolt on boosters, fit air systems and gardens, and send a thousand people to Titan or Europa. It never comes back near Earth.
The Shipyard. In Phase 4, build spacecraft and orbital systems like you built weapons in Phase 1: reusable and super-heavy rockets, crew capsules, debris lasers and tugs, station modules, a Mars probe, a nuclear engine for the Ark, and armed patrol craft. Each one costs industry and science and changes how the race plays out. The Colony tab decides what waits for the settlers on Mars: cargo sent ahead, an oxygen and fuel plant, habitats printed from Martian soil, domes, reactors and seeds.
Fate. Every game deals a hidden world: one secret card for each phase (a hair-trigger general, an oil shock, a longer winter, a richer valley, ice-rich Mars and many more), leaders with their own temperaments, and slightly different rules. You'll see signs of it as you play. The end screen reveals the world you were dealt.
Multiplayer. Tap Multiplayer, create a room and share its 4-letter code. Two to four leaders each take a bloc, give orders in secret, and the day plays out for everyone at once. Chat, sign pacts, vote in the Council, and if the hidden Broker is on, find Corvane's agent before they start a war.
Phase 3, Rebuild. Survive the wasteland and you can rebuild for eight years. Choose a government, fund farms, power, rail and radio with materials, and win over the settlements around you, or unite with them. In year 2 the Continuity Conclave arrives: the people Croft really worked for, who sat out the war in sealed estates and want what you built. Bargain, resist or give in. Seven more endings wait there.
Motor pool. Buggies, armored carriers, tanks, mortar carriers and sometimes a helicopter survive in the bunker, depending on how ready you were. They scout for free, win assaults, defend your walls and shell enemy camps, but they burn fuel every month. Run out and they're parked.
Sealed bunkers and enclaves. Bunker 7 and Bunker 9 sit a short drive apart. Knock and they may open up, or breach the blast doors. Ironwood Ranch and Halcyon Estate are survivalist compounds with private security and deep stores: trade with them, hire their guards, or try your luck raiding them.
The final siege. A second nuclear winter arrives in month 11, and in month 12 the Broker's mercenaries attack your walls. Build up your guards and defenses before then.
Daily challenge. Every day there's one shared scenario for everyone: the same nation, rivals and twist. Keep your streak going and share your result.
Endings and reckoning. There are 14 endings to find; the Endings button shows which you've seen. Your choices are quietly tracked, and every game ends with a verdict on what kind of leader you were.
Your nation. You can play any of the four powers. Each has its own cities and a small bonus, and the other three become your rivals.
Phase 2, Survival. If the missiles fly, you lead what is left from a bunker. Split your survivors into work crews (farmers, water crews, engineers, guards, medics) and change them any time; idle crews hurt morale. You get 3 orders a month to scout, scavenge, seize, build and trade, and you can sign one law each month. You lose if water, food, survivors or morale reaches zero.
The wasteland. Nuclear winter halves farm output and burns heating fuel, and ash summer brings thirst and raids. Fallout causes radiation sickness unless medics treat it. Three armed camps hold the edges of the map: a breakaway army militia, a civilian coastal commune, and one foreign force, either a pact partner's stranded relief mission or your worst enemy's landing force. How you played the crisis decides which are friendly. Hostile camps take sectors and attack yours. Build over 20 kinds of infrastructure, from water towers to wind turbines, and watch your settlement grow on the map. Win by surviving 12 months, by rebuilding a "New Dawn", or by destroying every hostile camp.
Readiness. Mobilizing raises tension, but at 60% readiness or more the other powers escalate less. It also gives you more fighters and warheads after a war.
Defense grid. You start with 15 budget and get 5 more each day. Spend it on real-world defenses, submarines, space systems and offensive weapons. Each incoming weapon has to get past every layer you've deployed. Big strategic systems such as midcourse interceptors and space sensors raise tension, because rivals see them as a threat to their deterrent. Counter-drone systems also carry into the wasteland.
Controls. Hover over the map for details, and click a rival city to jump to that power's card. During a strike, click incoming weapons to fire your manual interceptors. Some decisions are on a timer. Keys: E end the day or month, I intel sweep, S security sweep, M mute, 1–3 choose in pop-ups.
Terror cells. Sleeper cells slip into the country, and they bomb, hack and sabotage. Their attacks are often made to look like one of the three powers did it, so check before you hit back. Use sweeps to find them, border screening to keep them out, and hardened infrastructure to blunt their attacks. Cells still active when war starts can knock out defenses, and some get into the bunker with the survivors.
Unclaimed incidents. Not every incident in the feed has an obvious source. Intel sweeps sometimes find more than anyone expects.
Spacecraft and orbital systems for the Exodus program. Each one costs industry and science, not a directive, and stays in service for the rest of the game.
Defenses, offensive weapons, submarines and space systems. Each incoming weapon has to get past every defense layer you've deployed. Each number is your chance of stopping each incoming weapon of that type, and it applies to every weapon in the salvo, not just one. Below it: how many of a typical war's salvo you'd expect to stop.