Warstead

Warstead combines settlement building, resource management, research, diplomacy and tactical real-time combat. You gather resources, build an economy and decide how to defend your settlement against rivals: through production and fortifications, trade, diplomacy or military force.

Build your settlement

Buildings form a network of resource gathering, crafting and supply. Businesses need workers, goods need storage, and production chains depend on one another. Carriers physically move resources and finished products between workplaces and storage buildings, so short routes help keep the economy running. A shortage of one important material can halt an entire production chain, making building location and order important.

Your settlers need a reliable food supply to stay alive; without food, they gradually starve. Food quality also affects population growth: higher-quality food makes your population grow faster. Developing food production supports new workers, businesses and a larger settlement.

Trade and diplomacy

Use your trading house to buy missing goods, sell surplus and cover shortages. Purchased goods must still be transported and stored after they arrive. Across the map, gnomes, goblins and moslings offer different food, tools and resources in exchange for coins. A destroyed trading partner cannot supply you later.

Trade can improve your standing with other factions and open opportunities for alliances or peace negotiations. Whether another faction agrees depends on your relationship and its personality. Neighbors can become enemies or allies.

Research your strengths

At the Scholar’s House, develop your settlement in four areas: Military, Trade, Production and Technology. Research can increase mine output, reduce production costs, improve sales revenue, boost your troops’ damage, attack speed or range, and unlock production options.

Specializations are limited, and some research paths exclude one another. You must choose which advantages fit your strategy, such as faster production or lower material consumption, stronger archers or better-trained musketeers.

Command your army

Control swordsmen, archers and musketeers in real time. Combine melee and ranged units, protect your shooters and secure important positions. Attacking enemy production buildings can damage a rival’s economy, but your own settlement remains vulnerable while your troops are away. Choose when to attack, what to defend and when to retreat rather than risk a costly victory. Your military strength depends on the economy behind it.

Explore by sea

Build a ship, load supplies at the harbor and set out on dangerous expeditions. Your supplies and decisions affect whether you return with discoveries. Expeditions can uncover 30 items across five rarity tiers; equip them in the Village Centre to boost eligible buildings. The expedition system is integrated into both single-player and multiplayer.

Shape each map

Procedurally generated maps change the positions of forests, coastlines, bodies of water and resource deposits, affecting where you expand and which routes you need to secure. You can adjust map size, water coverage, forest density and ore deposits. Map seeds let you recreate the same starting world and try a different strategy.

Choose AI opponents, difficulty levels and personalities. Traders, builders and warlords have different priorities, and an adjustable peace period gives you time to prepare before conflict can begin.

Choose your victory

Warstead has four victory options:

• Domination: defeat your rivals and win the struggle for power.
• Wealth: reach the set goals for coins and population before your competitors.
• Score: earn the highest score before the selected game time ends. Population, buildings, stored goods and coins contribute to your result.
• Endless Mode: continue building without a fixed victory condition and experiment with different economic and research paths.