What is a free-for-all?#
Rule of thumb: 3, 4 or 5 players, every one for themselves. The last player holding cities wins.
There are no teams: every other player is an enemy, and there is no chat. There's no second place either. One player wins, and everyone else loses.
Where you start is dealt at random when the game starts, unless the host turns random starting spots off.
What happens when three armies march in at once?#
Rule of thumb: everyone who marches in rolls once, in proportion to strength. The winner then hits whoever was holding it.
When stacks from three or more players enter the same province in the same step, they all fight in one roll. As in any battle, win chance grows faster than strength: strengths 10, 5 and 5 win 67%, 17% and 17%. Every side that loses the roll takes losses and falls back, or is destroyed, like any loser.
If someone was already in the province, the winner of the roll then fights them as an ordinary battle, with terrain, rivers and digging in all counting for the defender. If nobody was there, the roll alone decides the province.
Artillery support and air strikes on the province count for their side in both fights.
The odds on your order only count the enemies you can see. They can't know who else will march in the same step.
What happens to a player who's knocked out?#
Rule of thumb: lose your last city and you're out. Your armies and land turn neutral and hold in place.
The knocked-out player's stacks become gray neutral garrisons where they stand, and their provinces turn neutral. Like any garrison, they never move, never attack and earn nothing, and a beaten one is destroyed. To take a province one of them holds, someone has to beat it. See Neutral cities.
Conceding does the same, so a player who gives up never hands their land to a neighbor.
How do I win a free-for-all?#
Rule of thumb: don't be the leader too early.
- Watch your back. Every border is a front. An army sent far away leaves a city open to someone else.
- Let your rivals bleed each other. Two players at war both get weaker. Every battle you stay out of is one you don't pay for.
- Don't look like the winner too soon. The biggest player is everyone's target. Grow quietly, and strike when the others are worn down.