Between Empires

Two centuries. One state. Every decision leaves a scar.

   Between Empires is a historical grand strategy game about governing a state through more than two centuries of upheaval from the dynastic world of 1700 to the fractured international order of 1936.

   You will not simply move armies and paint the map. Appoint ministers, balance competing interests, finance institutions, reshape the law, direct trade and industry, negotiate with rival powers, and decide which crises your government can survive.

   A concession made to save the treasury in 1700 may empower an elite faction in 1780, reshape a revolution in 1848, and determine your alliances in 1914.

   Ministers are not decorative portraits. Their ability, loyalty, office, and political position determine what your government can accomplish. Fill the great offices of state, manage rival personalities, and build a cabinet capable of carrying your plans through reform, war, and succession.

   The strongest policy on paper can still fail when the people responsible for it trust neither you nor one another.

   The National Fate system treats major decisions as part of your state's memory not as disposable bonuses. Reforms empower institutions. Compromises create factions. Emergency measures outlive the emergency. Their consequences may return years or generations later in new political, economic, and diplomatic forms.

   Alternative history is possible, but never free. To change the course of an empire, you must build the capacity, coalition, and legitimacy to survive the reaction that follows.

   Guide your country through five historical ages, from dynastic courts and mercantile rivalry to industrial power, mass politics, and total war. Develop technology, reorganize taxation, reform the law, expand production, and decide who benefits from modernization.

   Every gain creates pressure elsewhere. A richer state may become harder to govern. A stronger army may acquire political power. A reform that pacifies one province may set another ablaze.

   Compete across 2,000 provinces with 133 starting powers. Forge alliances and dynastic marriages, issue guarantees, create subject relationships, bargain over trade and territory, deploy spies, and wage war on land and at sea.

   Rulers, ministers, political movements, and rival states pursue interests of their own. History will not follow a script simply because you recognize the date.

• Lead a continuous campaign from 1700 to 1936.

• Govern through ministers, cabinet offices, laws, reforms, and institutions.

• Balance taxation, production, trade, technology, and the competing demands of modernization.

• Conduct diplomacy through alliances, guarantees, influence, subjects, negotiation, and espionage.

• Raise armies, command fleets, and fight wars shaped by manpower, terrain, fortifications, logistics, and political endurance.

• Follow the delayed consequences of your choices through events, cabinet meetings, and the world gazette.

• Preserve the old order, reform it from within or build a state history never recorded.