This game goes on in a series of turns. Each turn, a kingdom gets to enter commands. On your turn, you will get a menu with several options on it. These are options you can use to do various things such as negotiate or recruit armies. You can also see the statistics of the state. You can use one option each time you are affected by unrest. All of the options are described below.
- Move: Move allows you to move generals around to different states. Use it to move generals around and position them to be ready to attack or defend against an attack.
- War: Begin battle with a neighboring state. You will proceed as follows in the lower section, Combat. If you win the battle, you will conquer the territory.
- Send: Send functions similar to the move command, only instead of moving generals, you move rice and gold.
- Recruit: The recruit command allows you to increase the size of your army or attempt to hire new generals if any "free generals" are available or to convince an enemy general in another state to join your cause.
- View: View allows you to discover information about whichever state you wish to.
- Give: Give allows you to give food to your peasants and generals. It changes people's opinion of you as a ruler. Giving gifts to your generals raises their loyalty which makes it less likely that they will join another master that attempts to get them to leave your service.
- Develop: Developing an area allows you to spend gold on it to reduce the chance of flooding and earn more taxes and rice.
- Train: Training allows you to train your army so they are slightly better warriors.
- Search: Searching allows you to find generals you might need.
- Negotiate: Negotiating allows you to send gifts or make good (or bad) relations with other countries.
Press right or left to access the rest of the available commands.
- Trade: Purchase or sell rice to the merchant if he is available or purchase weapons for your troops (if the state you are in has metal).
- Appoint: Choose which general will govern a state.
- Pass: Skip your turn.
- Quit: Allows you to save and/or exit the current scenario.
- Other: An option menu where you can turn animations or sound on/off, choose whether or not to watch other master's battles and set the wait time to adjust how long before messages disappear.
Sometimes during the course of the game, disasters will occur. Locusts will appear and weaken grain production. Floods will occur and kill people in areas. You can avoid floods by developing your land.
Also, sometimes you will have the event of a general dying. If it is your colony leader that dies, a new leader will be appointed. However, you will not have your old leader to assist you in battle.
Various other disasters can occur during the game. Things that can happen as a result of these disasters are you losing gold and rice, peasants becoming unhappy, military being weakened, and cities being destroyed.
The game ends when one civilization conquers every state or the game's set time period ends. Whoever has the most powerful empire wins the game.