📜 HOW TO PLAY

The idea in one line

Everything runs on one formula — Swarajya = Justice + Trust + Protection + Prosperity — shown top-left as four bars and a grade. Raise it by ruling well, and villages, sardars and whole Deshmukhi holdings choose your banner. Let fear and heavy taxes rule instead, and the same arithmetic delivers the country to Bijapur.

Your first five minutes

1. Restore the broken temples in your starting villages (🛕 button, then click the village) and Donate to the monks (🙏). Watch Trust and Justice climb.
2. Set a just tax — open the Roster (📋 or V) and keep the global rate near 12%. Heavier fills the treasury and empties hearts.
3. Answer the missions (right panel): a tiger at the livestock, bandits looting, a patrol torturing a village — send your selected troops with one click. Each deed moves the formula.
4. Send the Patil (🧾) to collect tax before it piles up — thieves rob villages whose uncollected tax grows fat, and they run for the border with your gold.
5. When hearts are warm, push outward — the neutral middle first, then the Adilshahi north.

Winning hearts (and holdings)

Every village has a sardar — Loyalist, Cautious, Bold or Opportunist — with his own allegiance, shown as a popularity bar above the village. He declares for Swarajya on his own when your legitimacy, his safety and your tax rate convince him. Troops standing in a village can coerce it — but a terrified or hostile village refuses.

Villages group under five Deshmukhi holdings (the hand-drawn boundaries). Win the deshmukh — by deeds, negotiation, or gold if he's corrupt — and his whole holding joins at once. Lose him the same way.

The economy: four resources

The muster & the war

📯 Muster calls every allied sardar to ride on Torna — each decides for himself, weighing his loyalty, his fear, and whether his own village is threatened. Keep the levies fed and concentrated: scattered companies are eaten piecemeal by the Subahdar's war-parties.

Bijapur fights the same war darkly: bribes for wavering sardars, raids that burn and frighten, war-parties that retake undefended villages, thieves after your tax.

The land fights too (ganimi kava)

• Forest hides your men and gives a ×1.5 ambush strike.
• High ground hits harder (up to ×1.45 striking down, ×0.65 climbing) and shoots farther; climbing is slow. Torna's crag is a wall — respect it.
• The river crosses only at the ford, or a bridge you build. The northern range crosses only at its pass.
• Caves: Shivaji meditates there in peace and legitimacy grows.
• 🥷 Sneak (G): a stealthed unit is unseen until it strikes — slip into Torna and sabotage the cistern, granary and armoury (beacons mark them), and free the prison camp.

Three ways to win

1. 🕊 Liberated Without a Sword — hold ≥2 districts and reduce the Adilshahi to ≤2 villages; the unsupplied garrison melts and surrenders.
2. 🥷 Torna Undone from Within — sabotage all three stores; the garrison collapses without a siege.
3. ⚔ Torna Taken by Force — break the garrison in battle and bring Shivaji to the gate.

You lose only by losing the people: every village gone and the army scattered. Shivaji himself is never lost — beaten down, he withdraws to Lal Mahal at a cost to your name.

Controls

▶  Take Torna