Ancient China manual

Ancient China is a river city builder that plays in the browser and keeps running on the clock while the tab is closed. You start in the Zhou period with one river wharf and 6,000 cash. You end, a few weeks later, with a great capital of the Silk Road, and then you do it again in another region.

The game has two halves. The live half is what you watch: river junks and barges tie up at your wharves, trade cargo, take on provisions and pay. The come-back half is what happens while you are gone: every building earns cash by the minute into its own bank, builds and upgrades finish on real timers, journeys return, rings of unclaimed land get cleared, and the daily reward resets at midnight. Most of your cash, by a wide margin, comes from the banks. The vessels are the life of the place; the banks are the income.

Nothing is rushed. A tier-1 building takes a minute and a half to open. A tier-4 Silk Road Gate takes four hours, and taking it to level 3 is a twenty-hour project. There is no speed-up button: the game runs at one pace, Pause or 1×. The only accelerator is Heavenly Favor, a premium currency you earn steadily by playing and can also buy. Nothing in the game is gated behind it.

What you do, in one breath

• Build next to the city, inside your plot, and wait for each building to open.
• Tap banks: a glowing coin above a building means it is ready. The cash fly to your counter.
• Serve vessels: give them a wharf with an open side, provisions, a bed and a hot meal, and they pay and trust you.
• Trade: vessels sell what their home city exports and buy what it imports. Set Buy and Sell per good.
• Keep the water running: every building draws water; wells run dry in a drought, great canals do not.
• Grow a town: residents move in when quality of life is high, pay rent and run businesses.
• Expand: clear rings of unclaimed land around the county hall; unlock the next of eight regions.
• Set out: send journeys for charts, cargo, Heavenly Favor and discoveries for the Chronicle.
• Come back: claim missions and achievements, climb the civic ranks, keep the daily streak.

Two clocks

Two kinds of time run at once and it helps to keep them apart. Real time is the wall clock: build timers, bank filling, journeys, ring clearing and the daily reward all run on it, whether or not the game is open. Game time is counted in days: one game day lasts 48 seconds at 1×, and only advances while the game is open and not paused. Vessels, trade, residents, renown drift and dispatches run on game days. The status bar shows income per game day; the Build panel shows your bank rate per real minute.

The game opens a short guided tour the first time you found a city. This chapter walks the same path, so you can read ahead or catch anything you skipped. You can replay the tour later from Settings.

While the building pictures load, the title shows a loading line and Found your city waits for it to reach 100%. Before the tour starts, two things happen. The daily reward sheet opens, because a fresh profile has a reward waiting; claim it or press Later. And the Build button on the left rail starts to pulse: that is the game's first pointer.

1. Welcome, Founder

   The County Hall sits in the middle of the world. Drag to pan and roll the wheel to zoom; 0 fits the city back into view. The dashed line around the County Hall is the edge of your plot: a 7×5 field of 35 cells you can build on.

2. The status bar

   Across the top: Cash with yesterday's income, Heavenly Favor with a + that opens the Store, Water used over supplied, Residents over homes with the boatmen in port, Renown out of five, then your civic rank ring, the daily reward bell and the Pause / 1× control.

3. Open Build

   Press B or click Build. The panel lists four tiers of buildings with their cost, bank rate per minute, water pips and build time. Only tier 1 is open at level 1.

4. Place a River Wharf

   Click the River Wharf card, then a bracketed cell. Vessels need a wharf, and a wharf needs an open side: leave at least one empty cell next to every wharf so vessels can pull up. Your first three tier-1 builds are instant.

5. Water: a Village Well

   Every building draws water; the County Hall supplies 10 and a Village Well adds 6. Dig one now, before the readout turns red.

6. Storage: a Storehouse

   The County Hall holds 50 units of cargo. A Storehouse adds 200. Without room you cannot buy what vessels are carrying, and trade is where the live cash come from.

7. Builds take time from now on

   Your fourth building arrives as a scaffold: a hatched frame, a progress ring and a timer. Tier-1 builds take 90 seconds, tier 2 twelve minutes, tier 3 an hour, tier 4 four hours. Click the scaffold and you can skip the wait for Heavenly Favor: 1 Favor per eight minutes left, so the first skips cost a single Favor.

8. Banks

   Buildings earn into a local bank. When a bank is a quarter full a bobbing coin appears above the building; when it is full the coin grows a halo and nothing more accrues until you collect. Tap the coin. The County Hall's bank is the first one you will see.

9. Vessels and trade

   The first vessel is already on approach. Fleet (F) shows who is moored, holding or departing and what each merchant house trusts you; Market (M) shows prices, your stock and the Buy / Sell policy for every good.

10. Missions and achievements

    Missions (J) keeps three goals live at a time and a second tab of lifetime achievements in bronze, silver and gold. Finishing a goal is not the end of it: come back and press Claim.

11. Territory and the Chinese world

    The hatched, dim field around your plot is unclaimed land. Click it to buy the next ring. Map (G) shows the other seven regions, each with its own river, bias and lock.

12. Journeys

    Journeys (E) sends a vessel from your River Wharf to any region, locked or not. It comes back after 30 minutes to a day with goods, often a chart, sometimes Heavenly Favor or a discovery for the Chronicle.

13. Daily reward, the Store and this manual

    The bell in the status bar is the seven-day streak. The Store offers Heavenly Favor through a secure checkout. The city is yours.

A sensible first session

The Founding chapter of missions is the tutorial's reward track: build a wharf, a storehouse and a well, tap a bank, serve three vessels, read a dispatch, clear your first ring. Together those seven missions pay 35 Heavenly Favor on top of the 20 you start with, plus 4,100 cash. With a Towpath Store and a River Inn down as well, you have a city that earns about 25 cash a minute into its banks and takes visitors' money on the side.

Then leave it. Come back in an hour and the banks are a third full; come back tomorrow and they are at their caps, the ring is cleared and the daily is waiting. That is the shape of the whole game.

The world fills the screen. Everything you touch floats over it: a status bar, a command rail, one panel at a time, a notices column and a context bar. Nothing blocks the world; the camera slides over when a panel would cover the city.

The status bar

• Wordmark and region. The active region's name, then your city name and its register number (AC- and four digits, derived from the name). Click it to open the world map.
• Cash. Your purse, shared across every region. The small triangle and figure beside it is yesterday's net income per game day: green up, red down.
• Heavenly Favor. The premium figure, with a + lozenge that opens the Store.
• Water. Used over supplied, with pips. Blue when healthy, amber with a square during a drought, red with a down-triangle when you are drawing more than you supply.
• Residents. Permanent residents over homes, and under it the visitors in port: the boatmen of every moored vessel.
• Renown. Zero to five, with five pips that fill as it climbs.
• Rank ring. Your rank badge inside an arc that fills toward the next rank. Hover it for the exact XP and what the next rank grants.
• Cloud glyph. The state of your cloud save: blue when synced, pulsing while it syncs, amber when offline or in error. Click it for Settings > Account.
• Daily bell. A dot means today's reward is unclaimed.
• Speed. Pause or 1×. There is no faster setting.

Under the bar, a condition strip appears when something is wrong or special: a river raid or river fever (red), a drought with the days left, or a festival with its spending multiplier.

The command rail

Ten buttons down the left, each with a key: Build B, City S, Market M, Fleet F, Journeys E, Map G, Missions J, Chronicle R, Store, and Settings pinned at the bottom. A key pressed twice closes the panel again. Badges on the rail tell you what is waiting: a count on Missions for claimable missions and achievements, a count on Journeys for returned boatmen, a count on City for ready banks once you can collect them all at once, and a dot on the Store when an offer is on.

Panels

One panel opens at a time, 440 pixels wide, sliding in from the rail. Each has a title, a one-line subtitle with the numbers that matter, sometimes a tab strip, and a scrolling body. The panels in brief:

• Build: four tier shelves of building cards; city rate, water and wharves at the top.
• City: with nothing selected, the overview: quality of life, residents, water, wharves, the banked total with Collect all, the Territory block, income by category and river records. Click a building and the panel becomes its card: bank, build progress, upgrade and demolish.
• Market: every good with its price, your stock, Buy / Sell toggles and a broker button.
• Fleet: vessels in the region by state, then each merchant house's trust bar, office, loan and the goods it brings and buys.
• Journeys: slots, boatmen under way with countdown rings, returned boatmen with Debrief, and the eight destinations.
• Map: the Chinese world as a chart; click a node for its region card.
• Missions with an Achievements tab.
• Chronicle: vessels, peoples and antiquities, dark until found.
• Store and Settings.

Notices and Next up

Toasts stack at the top right, four at most, each with a chip for its kind and often a button: Focus on a finished build, Claim on a completed mission, Debrief on a returned journey. Below them the Next up strip lists the three soonest timers across builds, upgrades, journeys, ring clearings and the daily reward, counting down live. Click a row to jump to the building or open the panel.

The context bar

The bottom bar is the game talking to you. On the left, a hint that changes with the situation: what to do with a placing ghost, why a cell is invalid, that a wharf is blocked, that a coffer is ready, that a journey is back. In the middle, when a building is selected, its quick actions: Collect, Skip for Heavenly Favor while it builds, Upgrade, Focus, Demolish. On the right, the ? button opens the keys reference.

In the world

The city is built on one stone platform laid out as a diamond grid in the same raised three-quarter view as the art, so every building lines up with its neighbours. Each building is a miniature of its picture standing on its cell, with a thin line in its family hue around the cell to keep the grid legible, and neighbouring buildings are joined by covered walkways. Vessels sail the same two diagonals, bow first, and lie broadside to their wharf at the end of a gangplank. Hover a building for a tooltip with its description, bank and water; hover a vessel for its merchant house, captain, boatmen, hold and wants. Click a building to select it; double-click to focus the camera on it.

A moored vessel lies broadside to its wharf at the end of a gangplank, and two to five figures walk across: boatmen from river junks and great barges, passengers from tower junks, traders from Panyu and Dunhuang vessels, a crossbowman when you have a Crossbow Post, porters with a handcart when cargo moves at a storehouse. Vessels waiting for a wharf hold midstream beyond the far wharves with a HOLD tag and the days waited. The figures need the effects tier at High and a zoom above 0.9, and stay home under reduced motion.

Tier 1: the river village kit

Six buildings are open from the first minute. Together they are a wharf, a hold, water, provisions, beds and meals: everything a passing river junk asks for.

Placement rules

Pick a card, then click a cell. A cell is valid when all of these hold, and the hint tells you which one failed:

• It is empty.
• It is inside your plot. Unclaimed land is hatched; clear the ring first (Territory).
• The building's tier is open: tier 2 needs city level 2, tier 3 level 3, tier 4 level 4.
• You can afford it. Cards you cannot afford dim their cost and show how much more you need.
• It touches the city: at least one of its four neighbours is already occupied. A building still under construction counts as a neighbour.

The placing ghost is the building's own picture at half strength: clear on a valid cell, hatched red on an invalid one. Placing deducts the cost at once. Press Esc or right-click to stop placing; running out of cash stops it for you. The first three tier-1 builds of a brand-new profile finish instantly; every build after that runs on its timer.

Wharves and the open side

A River Wharf only works if it has an empty cell next to it. Vessels pull up to the empty neighbour farthest from the County Hall; that cell is the mooring. Box a wharf in on all four sides and it still counts as a building, still draws water and still fills its bank, but no vessel can use it. The tooltip and the City panel say Wharf blocked when this happens, and the context bar nags you about it. The County Hall has a wharf of its own under the same rule.

Timers, scaffolds and skips

A building under construction is a scaffold: its miniature dimmed and greyed under a hatched frame, with a progress ring and a timer. While it builds it draws water and counts as a neighbour, but it has no wharf, beds, storage or bank, and it does not count toward your city level. When the ring closes the building opens with a chime, a toast offers Focus, and the level is recomputed.

Click a scaffold (or select it and use the context bar) to skip the rest for Heavenly Favor. The cost is the same everywhere a timer runs: 1 Favor for every 8 minutes remaining, rounded up, minimum 1. Ninety seconds costs 1 Favor; twelve minutes, 2; an hour, 8; four hours, 30; a twenty-hour level-3 gate, 150.

Far regions are the last four in unlock order: Jiangnan, Panyu, Shu and Dunhuang. Their builds, upgrades and ring clearings all take half again as long.

Upgrades

Every building except the County Hall has three levels. Select it and press Upgrade. Level 2 costs twice the building's price and takes twice its build time; level 3 costs five times the price and takes five times the build time. The building keeps working at its current level while the scaffold runs, and the upgrade can be skipped like any build. Each level raises the bank rate and cap, and some buildings gain more:

• River Wharf: vessels are served in 85% of the time at level 2 and 70% at level 3.
• River Inn and Courtyard Houses: 25% more beds or homes at level 2, 50% more at level 3.
• Village Well (lined into a larger cistern) and Great Canal: 25% more water at level 2, 50% more at level 3.

Upgrades also count toward your city level, at half a building per level gained.

Demolishing

Select a building and press Demolish. You get half the cost back, and anything in its bank is lost; the confirm says how much. You cannot demolish the County Hall, a wharf with a vessel at it, or any building whose removal would cut other buildings off from the County Hall.

The roster

Rates are cash per real minute at level 1; caps are the level-1 bank ceiling, three hours of rate. Water is per building: positive supplies, negative draws.

Level-2 and level-3 bank rates are 1.6× and 2.4× the level-1 rate, with caps of 4 and 6 hours of the new rate: a River Wharf goes 5 → 8 → 12 cash a minute with caps of 900 → 1,920 → 4,320. In far regions multiply every time in this table by 1.5.

Every building with a rate earns cash per real minute into its own bank, which the game also calls a coffer. Banks fill whether or not the game is open, up to a cap. Tapping them is the single most satisfying act in the game, and it is where most of your money comes from.

Rates and caps

At level 1 a building's rate is its cost divided by 150 per minute, rounded: a River Wharf earns 5, an Great Canal 20, a Silk Road Gate 80. The County Hall earns 3. Its cap is 180 minutes of rate, so three hours after you last collected, the bank is full and stops. Level 2 multiplies the rate by 1.6 and raises the cap to 240 minutes of the new rate; level 3 multiplies the level-1 rate by 2.4 with a cap of 360 minutes.

A building under construction banks nothing; a building upgrading keeps banking at its old level until the scaffold closes. Civic rank 5, Magistrate, adds 5% to every rate and cap.

Collecting

At a quarter full a coin appears above the miniature and the building counts as ready. At the cap the coin grows and gains a halo: full, nothing more accrues. Click the coin, or select the building and press Collect. The whole-coin part of the bank flies to your counter, and you earn 1 rank XP for every 100 cash collected (fractions carry over).

Shift-click any cell to collect every ready bank within three cells of it. From civic rank 3, River Warden, the City panel's Collect all button and the Collect all on the while-you-were-away sheet empty every bank in the city at once, and the City rail button badges the ready count.

While you were away

On every load the game settles what happened since you left, in every region you own:

• Banks accrue for the time you were gone, up to 24 hours per bank and never past the cap.
• Builds, upgrades, ring clearings and journeys finish by the wall clock. Scaffolds you left running are buildings when you return.
• The active region also replays up to two hours of game time in a fast catch-up (150 game days), so vessels moored, prices drifted and dispatches arrived while you were out. Dispatches that need a decision wait for you.

If you were gone a minute or more, a While you were away sheet sums it up: cash banked, vessels served, builds finished, journeys back, with a Collect all button once you have the rank for it. Shorter gaps settle silently.

While you play, the regions you are not looking at keep banking too, refreshed every five seconds, so a trip to another city never costs the one you left.

The daily ledger

Income per game day, shown beside Cash in the status bar and broken down in the City panel, is the live half: mooring and services, cargo bought and sold, tariffs, resident rent, Shop Street business, boatmen's spending, Animal Park tickets, office leases and loan repayments, less upkeep. Upkeep is 0.4% of every building's cost plus one coin per resident, per game day, scaled like the rest. Bank collections appear in the breakdown as banks on the day you collect.

Vessels are the live half of the city. They arrive from the edge of the region, take a wharf, pay their fees, sell what their home city exports, buy what it imports, stay a while and leave. Every visit nudges how much their merchant house trusts you.

Arrivals

How often vessels appear depends on you. The base rate is 0.9 per game day, plus 0.6 for every star of renown, plus 4 times your traffic bonus (each Courier Relay adds 0.15, so 0.6 per relay), plus 0.4 per house office and 0.5 per active contract. A Silk Road Gate multiplies the whole thing by 1.25, and by 2.5 in Dunhuang. During a weekly Convoy window traffic is ×1.5. At most 16 vessels are in the region at once.

Which merchant house sends the vessel is weighted by trust (1 + trust / 50) and by the region's bias toward its home fleets. The Dunhuang Grand Caravan only appears once you have a Silk Road Gate.

Wharves and the queue

A vessel heads for a free wharf: a River Wharf or the County Hall with an empty side. If none is free it holds midstream; the Fleet panel shows the days waited. If two vessels are already holding, further arrivals divert elsewhere, which counts against your renown. A vessel that waits three game days gives up: its house loses 6 trust and your renown takes the hit. A vessel that waited more than a day before mooring also costs 2 trust per whole day waited.

What a vessel pays

Everything happens the moment a vessel moors. It pays its mooring fee, buys provisions if you have a Towpath Store (60 base, scaled by hull size; two towpath stores add 30%), and six times in ten pays for repairs if you have a Boatyard (150 base, scaled by hull). All of these are multiplied by your water efficiency and by the live factor of 0.06. A standing contract discounts fees 15%.

Then it trades. For each good in its hold that your policy says Buy, you pay 65% of the effective price (less 5 points per Walled Market, which lowers what you pay), limited by storage room and your cash. Then it buys what its home city imports, at 105% of the price plus 5 points per Walled Market, splitting its hold across the goods you have. Spare hold space it fills on spec with anything else you sell, at 85% plus margin, most valuable first. If you have a Toll House, every unit traded in either direction pays 1.5 cash of tariff per house. The vessel then stays for its service time, shortened 15% or 30% by an upgraded wharf, and departs.

Holds and fees are listed before the 0.06 live factor: in play a River Junk carries 5 units and pays about 17 cash to moor. Boatmen counts are not scaled; they are the visitors who eat, sleep and spend.

The merchant houses

Seven trading houses, each with a home city that sets what its vessels bring and what they want. The Fleet panel shows every house's trust out of 100, whether it keeps an office, any loan outstanding, and the goods it brings and buys.

Trust, offices and contracts

Every house starts at 40 trust. Each vessel served adds 2, or 3 if you have a Boatyard, less 2 for every whole game day it waited once the wait passed a day. At 75 the house opens a permanent office in the city: regular traffic (+0.4 to the arrival rate) and an 80-cash lease per game day, scaled. A Trade Contract dispatch offers ten days of extra vessels from one house for a 15% fee discount; signing it adds 10 trust and two vessels at once. Trust also weights which house shows up next and sets your loan rate.

Loans

With a Counting House, the Fleet panel gains a Lend button per house. The minimum loan is 500 cash and a house carries one at a time. The rate is 25% minus a tenth of the house's trust: 21% at 40 trust, 17.5% at 75, 15% at 100. Principal plus interest is repaid in ten equal daily parts. Each day there is a chance of default equal to (100 − trust) × 0.025%; a default writes off what is left and costs the house 15 trust; a loan repaid in full adds 8. Loans are player money and are never scaled down.

The Market

Twelve goods, each with a base price. Every game day a price drifts up to 6% at random and reverts 8% of the way toward base, staying between half and 1.8 times base. The region's bias multiplies some goods (copper and bronze +40% in Guanzhong, for instance). A Trade Boom triples one good for four days; a Market Glut halves one for four days. The Market panel shows every good with its picture, the current price, your stock, a Buy / Sell toggle and a broker button that sells your whole stock of a good to a passing broker at half price.

Storage and production

The County Hall holds 50 units and each Storehouse 200. Millet Fields add 4 grain a day; a Bronze Foundry turns 6 copper ore into 3 bronze ingots a day (half again as much bronze in Zhongtiao). Residents eat 0.15 grain each per day, fruit if the grain runs out. Journey cargo and daily crates go into the same stock; whatever does not fit is brokered at half price on the spot.

Water is a budget, not a resource you store. The status bar shows what your buildings draw over what you supply. Stay under it and nothing happens; go over it and everything slows down.

Supplying and drawing

The County Hall supplies 10. A Village Well supplies 6 (7.5 at level 2, 9 at level 3, rounded in the total). An Great Canal supplies 25 (31 and 38 upgraded). Every other building draws between 1 and 6, and the Silk Road Gate draws 15. A building under construction already draws its water. The Build panel's cards show the draw as pips so you can see the cost before you place.

Shortage

When draw exceeds supply the city runs at an efficiency of supply divided by draw, never below 30%. Efficiency multiplies mooring fees, provisions and repair income, resident rent, boatmen's spending and the quality-of-life score, and a shortage knocks 0.6 off the renown target every day it lasts. The water readout turns red with a down-triangle, the miniatures take on a grey cast, the context bar tells you, and the log reminds you every three days. Dig a Village Well or build an Great Canal.

Droughts

A Drought dispatch runs every Village Well dry for three game days. Great Canals are unaffected. The condition strip counts the days down and the water readout goes amber. In Guanzhong droughts come twice as often, which is the region's way of telling you to build a great canal early.

Dispatches

Every four to eight game days (the first between days 4 and 7) a dispatch arrives and pauses the simulation until you read it. Most just happen; two ask for a decision. Their weights are shaped by the region, and some only occur once your city is big enough.

Weights are relative draws from the pool of dispatches your level allows. Reading a dispatch counts toward the Incoming Dispatch mission.

Pirates, in detail

One Crossbow Post halves raid losses (35% of stock becomes 17.5%); two posts stop raids entirely. In Jiangnan, where raids are twice as likely, two posts are not optional. A raid also shakes the camera and raises the red condition strip for a few seconds.

Two kinds of people are in the city. Visitors are the boatmen of moored vessels: they are counted on the status bar as in port, they need beds and meals, and they spend. Residents are permanent: they need homes, they pay rent, and they only come when the city feels like a place to live.

Quality of life

The City panel shows a ring and four rows. Each row is a coverage from 0 to 100%, and the score is their weighted sum, multiplied by your water efficiency:

• Food (35%): food capacity over everyone in port. The County Hall feeds 10, a Cookshop 30, Millet Fields 40.
• Beds for boatmen (20%): visitor beds over visitors. The County Hall has 6, a River Inn 20 (25 and 30 upgraded).
• Entertainment (25%): forty people per venue. Venues are the Music Pavilion, the Shop Street and the Animal Park. With nobody in port, one venue counts as full coverage and none as half.
• Health care (20%): 100% with an Healing Hall; without one, 70%, falling to 40% once more than 20 people are in port.

The score drives three things: how much visitors spend, whether residents arrive or leave, and 2.4 of the 5 points of your renown target. The Good Landing mission asks for 70%.

Visitors

Every game day each visitor spends about 6 cash times (0.5 + 0.6 food + 0.4 beds + 0.9 fun) times efficiency, doubled during a festival and scaled by the live factor. A well-kept city with a Music Pavilion earns roughly three times as much from its boatmen as a bare one.

Residents

Residents need homes: Courtyard Houses hold 15 (19 and 23 upgraded). Each game day, if there is a free home and the quality-of-life score is above 55%, there is a 70% chance that new residents arrive: at least one, and otherwise 8% of the visitors in port times the score, doubled with an Academy, and multiplied by the region's growth bias (twice in Shu; none ever settle in Zhongtiao). If the score falls below 35%, 5% of your residents leave every day. River fever without an Healing Hall sends a quarter of them away at once.

Residents pay 6 cash of rent each per game day, times efficiency, times the region's rent bias (+30% in Shu), scaled; with a Shop Street they add 3 cash each of business a day, doubled in a festival. They eat 0.15 grain each per day. Each resident adds a coin of upkeep.

The status bar's Residents readout shows residents over homes. Having any residents at all adds 0.4 to the renown target, and towns of 10 and 50 are mission goals; the Town Planner achievement counts your peak at one city.

Renown is a number from 0 to 5 that drifts toward a target every game day. City level is a threshold on building count and renown together. Levels open new building tiers and new regions, and once reached they never fall.

How renown moves

Each game day the target is computed and your renown moves 12% of the way toward it. The target is the sum of:

• 2.4 × the quality-of-life score;
• up to 1.0 for variety: the number of different building kinds you have built, out of 14;
• 0.4 if anyone lives in the city;
• 0.5 per Spirit Terrace, up to 1.0;
• 0.3 with a Silk Road Gate;
• minus 0.25 per vessel recently turned away or diverted (fading by a quarter each day), up to 1.2;
• minus 0.8 while you are in debt; minus 0.6 while water is short.

Dispatches move it directly: the traveller adds 0.5 (1.0 with a Spirit Terrace); river fever without an Healing Hall costs 0.5; refugees add 0.5 or cost 0.1 or 0.15. Renown feeds back into traffic, 0.6 arrivals per day per star.

The five tiers

The building count excludes the County Hall and anything still under construction, and adds half a building for every upgrade level above 1. A level is reached when both numbers are met; the city then celebrates, you earn 100 rank XP, and the Build panel's next shelf unlocks. Region unlocks look at the best level you have reached in any region.

Every city starts on a 7×5 plot of 35 cells around its County Hall. The rest of the region grid is unclaimed: dim, hatched, overgrown with scrub. You buy it one ring at a time, and workers clear it on a timer.

How rings work

Click any unclaimed cell, or press Expand in the City panel's Territory block. The confirm shows the next ring's cells, cost and time; Clear pays the cash and starts the clock, Clear now pays the cash and skips the clock for Heavenly Favor at the usual rate. Rings are cleared one at a time, in order, whichever cell you clicked. While a ring clears, a band sweeps along the plot's edge, a timer sits under it, and Next up lists it.

Ring k costs 4,000 × 2.2^(k−1) cash and takes 15 min × 1.9^(k−1), half again as long in far regions. A ring grows the plot by one cell on each side the grid allows; on the wide home grid the width grows every ring and the height every other ring, which is why the plot goes 7×5, 9×7, 11×7, 13×9, 15×9.

Skip prices are for a ring started from scratch; the game charges for the minutes actually left. The Territory block in the City panel reads "Starting plot" before the first ring, then "Ring k of 4" on a 15×9 grid (of 5 on 17×9, 15×11 and 17×11; of 6 on 19×11).

Clearing your first ring is a Founding mission (Clear Your First Ring, 1,500 cash, 5 Favor); ring 4 is a Town mission (Room to Grow, 12,000 cash, 8 Favor). The Landholder achievement counts rings cleared across every city you own: 2, 10 and 30.

When no empty cell inside the plot touches the city, the Build panel's tier heads say Needs more plot. That is your cue.

There are eight regions, each with its own river, its own economy bias and its own city. You start in Central Plains. The others are visible from day one on the map, with their locks. Unlocking one is a journey in itself: a new county hall on a new plot.

One purse, many cities

Cash is shared across every region. Each city keeps its own name and register, grid, plot, buildings, renown, level, stock, merchant houses and log. Banks fill in every region at once. Heavenly Favor, rank, missions, achievements, charts and the Chronicle belong to you, not to a city.

To travel, open the Map, pick an owned region and press Travel. The new city's banks and timers are settled as you arrive. The panel stays open on return so you can hop straight back.

Unlocking a region

Each region asks for three things: a city level you have reached in any region, a cash price, and for some, charts of that region brought home by journeys. Guanzhong can also be opened at once for 60 Heavenly Favor, and Dunhuang by the Region Pass; the pass opens every region. The map's lock text tells you exactly what is missing.

"Timers ×1.5" means builds, upgrades and ring clearings in that region take half again as long. A house multiplier weights how often its vessels choose that region.

What the pacing expects

The prices are set for a founder who plays three sessions of about fifteen minutes a day and taps the banks each time. On that pace the tuning run reached Guanzhong on day 2, Zhongtiao on day 4, Qi on day 9, Jiangnan on day 14, Panyu on day 21, Shu on day 27 and Dunhuang on day 36, with level 4 arriving around day 22. Play more often and the banks cap you; play less and nothing is lost, the timers just finish without you.

Each new city starts the same way: a county hall, 7×5 of plot, tier 1 open, and the tutorial's three instant builds already spent. The new city's name comes from the region's own list; rename it in the City panel if you like.

A journey is a vessel sent from your wharves to any region, locked or not. It takes real time, from half an hour to a full day, and comes back with cargo, usually a chart, and sometimes Heavenly Favor, cash or a discovery for the Chronicle.

Slots and requirements

You need an active River Wharf. You have one slot, a second with a Courier Relay and a third with a Boatyard; three is the most. Only one vessel can be out to a given region at a time. Launching costs cash up front; the vessel sails from whatever city you launched it from, and the haul comes home to the city you are at when you debrief.

Cost is 400 cash plus 200 per step out from home. Return brings boatmen home early at 1 Favor per eight minutes left; the price shown is for a vessel that has only just left.

The debrief

When the vessel is back the Journeys rail badge lights, Next up says Debrief, and a toast offers it. Pressing Debrief rolls the haul and plays it as a row of chips:

• Cargo, always: 20 to 80 units split evenly across the region's three goods, into your current city's stock. Whatever does not fit is brokered at half price.
• A chart, 60% of the time, and guaranteed on every third claimed run to that region (the 3rd, 6th, 9th). Three charts fully chart a region; Zhongtiao, Jiangnan, Panyu and Dunhuang need one, one, two and three to unlock.
• Heavenly Favor, 35% of the time: 1 to 8, weighted toward the low end.
• A discovery, 45% of the time: a vessel, people or antiquity from that region's pool, drawn common 6 : rare 3 : epic 1, and always something you have not found yet while any remain.
• Cash, 20% of the time: five to fifteen minutes of your total city rate.

Every debrief pays 20 rank XP and counts toward the Navigator achievement; charts count toward Cartographer. The panel keeps your last five debriefs.

Every region is laid out the same way: open land, then one long row of riverfront, then the river. The County Hall stands one row above it, and nothing can be built on the river.

Riverfront is kept for the buildings that work with vessels. River Wharf must stand on it. Storehouse, Towpath Store, Toll House, Walled Market, Boatyard and Silk Road Gate may stand there too, or inland. Anything else is refused, and the hint under your cursor says why.

What the ground gives

A building on the right ground does more of what it does, and its bank earns a smaller part of the same bonus: 30% of it.

Each region has its own ground

The land behind the shore differs from region to region, and it never changes once you have seen it. These are the shares of each region's open land.

A building tier now needs two things: the city level it always needed, and the discovery that opens its era. Open Eras from the rail to see what you know and what comes next.

How study works

• One study runs at a time, and you pay for it when it starts.
• It runs on a real timer, like a build, and it finishes while the tab is closed. With notifications on in Settings, you get one when it does.
• Heavenly Favor can finish a study at the same price as skipping a build.
• What you have studied is never lost, and it holds in every city you found.

Almost every building hires workers. The County Hall's own households supply 18, which covers the whole opening, and every resident after that is one more pair of hands. The readout beside your residents shows households at work against jobs on offer.

A building short of workers runs at its share: half its workers means half its output and half its bank. A scaffold hires nobody until it opens. The County Hall and houses hire nobody at all.

The hiring order

When there are not enough households to go round, the groups are served in this order. Open Workers from the readout to move a group up or down; Reset puts them back.

No one settles in Zhongtiao, so 60 hired hands from elsewhere work it on top of the usual households.

Heaven's approval is a score from 0 to 100 that starts at 50. An omen is reported about 5 game days after founding, and then 7 to 12 game days after each policy ends. Press D or open the Mandate from the rail.

Each omen offers two responses. Each is a temporary policy with a price and a length in game days, and each raises the Mandate by its own amount. Only one policy runs at a time. Nothing stops while an omen waits for you.

• Ignoring an omen costs 5 Mandate.
• At 70 or more: +2% earnings. At 30 or less: −2% earnings.
• A full Mandate founds a new reign in good order and lifts your renown. An empty one passes to new hands, your renown slips and the city carries on. Either way the score returns to 50.

Missions are chapter goals for the city you are at; achievements are lifetime milestones across your whole career. Both pay out only when you come back and press Claim, and the Missions rail button counts everything waiting.

Missions

Fifty missions in seven chapters. Three are active at a time: the next unclaimed mission of each open chapter, in chapter order, with a fourth slot from civic rank 4. A chapter opens when its first mission's prerequisite is met. Progress is checked a few times a second as you play; a completed mission toasts you with a Claim button, and claiming flies the cash and Heavenly Favor to the status bar. Altogether the missions pay 344,600 cash, 411 Heavenly Favor and 4,980 rank XP.

Build and level goals count the city you are at; region, chart and Chronicle goals count your profile. Convoy Season needs the weekly Convoy window: 48 hours every seven days, counted from when your profile was created, starting with the second week.

Achievements

Twenty-four lifetime achievements, each with a bronze, silver and gold tier. Bronze pays 5 Heavenly Favor, silver 15, gold 40, and the nine hardest golds pay 60: 1,600 Heavenly Favor in all. They track your whole profile, every region included, and one tier is claimed per press of Claim.

Two systems reward simply showing up: a daily streak that resets at local midnight, and a civic rank that grows with everything you do and is yours across every region.

The daily reward

Once per calendar day, in your local time, a reward is claimable: from the sheet that opens when you start, from the bell in the status bar, or from the Next up strip. Claim on consecutive days and the streak climbs through a seven-day loop, then starts again at day 1 with the streak count still rising.

Miss a single day and nothing happens: claiming the day after continues the streak. Miss two days or more and the streak is broken; your next claim starts again at day 1, unless you repair it for 5 Heavenly Favor. The repair offer appears on the daily sheet for 48 hours from the moment the streak broke (the start of the second missed day). Daily claims count toward the Regular achievement.

Civic rank

Rank is experience, earned profile-wide and never lost. You gain 1 XP for every 100 cash collected from banks, 5 for every vessel served, 20 for every journey debriefed, 15 for every first discovery, 100 for every city level reached, and the XP a mission lists. Each promotion pays Heavenly Favor equal to ten times the new rank and celebrates across the screen with the new badge. That badge then sits in the status bar's ring, which fills toward the next rank; hover it for the exact figures and the next grant.

Ranks 6 to 10 are 3,000 XP apart. The three rank achievements, Rising Official, Senior Official and Legend of the Yellow River, pay out alongside the promotions.

The Chronicle (R) is your collection: fifty-two things to find, each with two lines of story, shown dark behind a lock until you log them, then in colour. Click any card for its full picture and story. Sets pay Heavenly Favor and a title.

Vessels

Twenty-four hulls across the seven houses. The twelve standard vessels are logged the first time you serve one of that house and class, from the Nanyang Great Barge to the Dunhuang Tower Junk. Six notable hulls appear when a house's tenth vessel moors at the city you are at: the Anvil of Nanyang, Swift Swallow, Green Serpent, Harvest Moon, Storm Runner and Deep Tide. The other six come home with journeys: Ore-Mother from Central Plains or Guanzhong, Blue Shrike from Guanzhong, Brine Queen from Qi, Ember of Wu from Jiangnan, Plenty of Shu from Shu, and the epic Glory of Dunhuang from Dunhuang.

Peoples

Twelve peoples of the Chinese world and the Silk Road, written as the cultures they were. Six are met by serving five vessels of a house: Nanyang Smiths (Nanyang), Shu Farmers (Chengdu), Guanzhong Potters (Chang'an), Mariners of Lai (Linzi), Merchants of Yue (Gusu) and Nanyue Boatwrights (Panyu). The Sogdian Merchants step off the first tower junk. Five are met only by journeys: Xiongnu Riders in Zhongtiao, Gojoseon Smiths in Qi, Shanyue Elders in Jiangnan, Dian Bronze-Casters in Panyu and the epic Envoys of Parthia in Dunhuang.

Antiquities

Sixteen antiquities and sacred relics, two per region, journeys only. The second relic of each region is rarer than the first; the Lost Boatman's Slips, the Luoyue Bronze Drum and The Silk Map are epic. A discovery you already hold counts again on its card but is only drawn when the region has nothing new left for you.

Sets

A set completes the moment its last item is logged; the Heavenly Favor and the title are granted at once and a toast tells you. The Complete Set mission pays a further 25 Favor for your first.

Sixteen sets, 440 Heavenly Favor in all. Every first discovery also pays 15 rank XP and counts toward Collector.

Heavenly Favor is the premium currency. It is violet wherever it appears, you start with 20, and the game pays it out steadily for playing. It buys time, never access: every building, region, mission and achievement is reachable with cash and patience.

Earning it

• Missions: 2 to 50 each, 411 across all fifty. The tutorial chapter alone pays 35.
• Achievements: 5, 15 and 40 per tier (60 for the hardest golds), 1,600 in all.
• Daily reward: 5, 10 and 25 on days 3, 6 and 7 of the streak.
• Journeys: 1 to 8 about one debrief in three.
• Chronicle sets: 20 to 60 each, 440 in all.
• Promotions: ten times the new rank, 540 from Villager to Chancellor of the Realm.

Spending it

• Skip any timer: builds, upgrades, ring clearings and journeys, at 1 Favor per eight minutes left, minimum 1.
• Open Guanzhong now: 60 Favor instead of level 2 and 90,000 cash.
• Repair a daily streak: 5 Favor within 48 hours of the break.
• Relief convoy: 10 Favor for 30 minutes of your whole city's rate in cash, delivered now, from the Store's Boosts shelf.

The Store

Prices are in US dollars. Heavenly Favor is a game currency with no cash value and cannot be refunded or transferred. Cash boosts and the Relief convoy are measured against the rate of the city you are at. It is an ordinary payment, and the price is shown before you pay.

Banners

A banner dresses the city: the lit rim around the platform, the lights along its walkways and gangplanks, the line around each cell and the County Hall's glow take its colours, while every building keeps its own picture. Choose one under Settings > Banner: a preview strip shows the active banner and a card for each of the eight. Standard is everyone's. The six region banners (Guanzhong, Zhongtiao, Qi, Jiangnan, Panyu and Shu) come as a set from the Store, or one at a time for a banner token, the day-seven daily reward. Founder's Cinnabar comes with the Founder's Banner. Your choice is saved with the profile, and nothing about the game changes with it.

A four-hour tier-4 build skips for 30 Favor; at the 140 pack that is about a dollar. That is the whole monetisation: patience is free, haste costs a little, and nobody is locked out.

Your profile

Everything you own is one profile: every region's city, your purse, Heavenly Favor, rank, missions, achievements, charts, Chronicle, entitlements and settings. It is saved in this browser's local storage every ten seconds while you play and again the moment you switch tabs, hide the window or leave the page. One browser holds one profile. Clearing the browser's site data removes it, so export now and then.

Because timers run on the clock, the save is not a snapshot of a paused world. Open the game a day later and the profile is settled forward: banks filled to their caps, scaffolds finished, journeys back, the active city replayed through up to two hours of game time.

Export and import

In Settings > Save data, Export save writes your whole profile as text into the box below the buttons; copy it anywhere safe. Import save reads a profile pasted into that box and replaces the one in this browser after a confirm. That is how you move to another computer without an account.

Abandon and reset

Abandon this city starts a fresh city in the current region; your rank, Heavenly Favor, other regions and everything profile-wide stay. Reset profile erases everything, after a double confirm. New profile on the title screen does the same.

Cloud saves

Sign in from the Sign in lozenge on the title band or from Settings > Account:

• You sign in with an email and password (at least ten characters) from the title screen. No third-party sign-in.
• Creating an account hands you a recovery phrase of ten words, shown once. Save it before you dismiss the sheet: it is one of two ways back in without your password. The other is Forgot your password? on the sign-in tab, which emails a link good for 30 minutes to set a new one; either route signs out every other device and issues a fresh phrase.
• One cloud save per account holds the whole profile. The game pushes twenty seconds after any change, at once when you switch region, buy, or claim a mission or achievement, and when you leave the page.
• Opening the game on a second device pulls the newer save. If both the browser and the cloud have moved since the last sync, or you sign in on a browser that already holds a profile, a chooser shows both, with day, level, cash, Heavenly Favor and regions, and you pick which to keep.
• A cloud glyph after the rank ring shows the sync state. Signing out leaves the local profile in place.

Notifications

The Notifications shelf offers a browser notification when a build, upgrade, journey or ring clearing finishes. Turning Notify me when something finishes on asks the browser for permission; once it is on, a Daily reward reminder (nine in the morning, local time) and Send a test notification appear under it. The chip beside the switch reads On, Off, Connecting, Blocked when the browser refused, Offline when the service cannot be reached, or Unavailable in a browser without push.

Devices

Ancient China plays on desktop, tablet and phone, and needs WebGL. The reference layout is 1440×900; at 1180 and below the rail collapses to icons and the panel narrows. Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari are supported.

Everything can be reached from the keyboard, and the keys reference is one press away on ?. Keys do nothing while you are typing in a field or while a dialog is open, apart from Esc.

Pointer

A four-pixel threshold separates a drag from a click, so a wobbly tap still counts as a tap. The camera stays inside the region grid inflated by six cells, slides aside when a panel would cover the city, and drifts gently on the title screen only.

Reading the screen

Status is never carried by colour alone: the water readout adds a square or a down-triangle to its hue, trust bars carry a word, chips carry a shape. Body text in the game is 14 pixels or larger, numbers 16, labels 12. Every control is at least 32 pixels tall and shows a two-pixel ring when focused from the keyboard. Nothing flashes faster than three times a second.

Motion

Settings > Motion offers System, Reduced and Full. System follows your operating system's reduced-motion preference. Reduced keeps every tween under 120 milliseconds, drops the panel sweeps, the coin flights (cash simply arrives), the camera drift and the bloom pulsing, and skips the boot sequence.

Performance

The world renders in WebGL and measures itself. Effects tier is Auto by default: the game steps down from High to Medium to Low when it falls under 45 frames a second, trimming particle counts, bloom quality, wakes and sparkle in that order. Pin a tier yourself if you prefer, and turn on Show performance readout to see frames per second and the tier in the context bar. Sound is procedural, with separate switches and volumes for interface effects and the landing ambience; both respect a hidden tab.

Sizes

The screen is laid out for 1440×900 and works from 1180×700. A landscape tablet at 1024×768 gets the rail collapsed to icons; on a phone (portrait, 360 pixels and up) the rail becomes a bottom bar of Build, City, Map, Missions and More, the panels open as sheets you can drag down, the status-bar menu holds the daily reward and the other readouts, and the world pans by drag and zooms by pinch.

Heavenly Favor (Favor)

The premium currency, always violet. Earned by play, offered in the Store, spent on time: skips, early returns, one early region, a streak repair.

Bank, coffer

A building's own store of cash, filling by the real minute up to a cap. A coin above the building means it is at least a quarter full; a halo means it is full.

Chart

Proof of a journey to a region. Three charts fully chart it; some regions need one, two or three to unlock.

Clearing

The timer on the next ring of plot after you have paid for it. Workers clear it; Heavenly Favor skips it.

Civic rank

Your profile-wide level from 1, Villager, to 10, Chancellor of the Realm, built from XP. Ranks 3, 4 and 5 grant powers.

Condition

The strip under the status bar during a drought, a festival, a raid or an outbreak.

Convoy window

Forty-eight hours every seven days from your profile's creation, from the second week on, with traffic ×1.5. One mission and one achievement count vessels served inside it.

Debrief

Opening a returned journey's haul. Nothing is rolled until you press it.

Dispatch

An event. Most simply happen; two ask you to decide. The simulation waits until you have read it.

Cash

The ordinary currency, one purse across every region.

Efficiency

Supply over draw when water is short, floored at 30%. It scales fees, rent, spending and quality of life.

Far region

Jiangnan, Panyu, Shu and Dunhuang, where builds, upgrades and clearings take 1.5× as long.

Game day

Forty-eight seconds of real time at 1×, and only while the game is open. Vessels, trade, residents, prices, renown and dispatches run on game days.

Gangplank

The ramp a moored vessel lowers to its wharf. Two to five figures walk it: boatmen, passengers, traders, a crossbowman, porters with a handcart.

Level, tier

A city's rank from L1 River Village to L5 Great Capital, set by building count and renown together. Building tiers 1 to 4 open at levels 1 to 4.

Live economy

Everything vessels, visitors and residents pay in the moment, scaled by a factor of 0.06 so that the banks lead.

Next up

The strip under the toasts with the three soonest timers.

Plot, ring

The cells you may build on, starting 7×5 around the County Hall and growing one ring at a time to the whole region grid.

Quality of life

The weighted coverage of food, beds, entertainment and health care, times efficiency. It drives spending, residents and renown.

Wharf

The River Wharf or the County Hall, with the empty cell beside it where a vessel pulls up. A wharf with no empty side is blocked.

Rate, cap

What a bank earns per real minute and the most it will hold: 180, 240 or 360 minutes of rate by level.

Region

One of eight parts of the Chinese world, each with its own river, bias and city.

Renown

Zero to five stars, drifting daily toward a target set by quality of life, variety, residents, terraces and how well vessels were served.

Scaffold

A building still on its build or upgrade timer: its miniature dimmed under a hatched frame, a ring and a countdown.

Skip

Finishing any timer now for Heavenly Favor: one Favor per eight minutes remaining, rounded up.

Trust

A merchant house's opinion of your city from 0 to 100, starting at 40. It sets how often they come, when they open an office and what they pay to borrow.

Visitors

The boatmen of moored vessels, counted as in port. They need beds and meals and they spend.

Water

What buildings draw and wells, cisterns and great canals supply. Run short and everything slows.