How to play Banners of Yunhe

Six houses share Yunhe, a realm of 18 cities. You lead one of them. You win when your house holds all 18 cities and every other house has fallen. You lose if your house loses its last city, or if your sovereign is lost and nobody is left to take their place. There is no time limit.

On the title screen choose a house, a difficulty and a seed, then press Begin campaign.

• Standard is the normal game.
• Resolute gives every computer-held city an extra 50 gold and 500 grain each month. Nothing else changes.
• The seed decides every random event. The same seed and the same orders always give the same game.

• Top bar: your house, the date, and the totals of your cities, gold, grain and soldiers. On the right are End month, Guide, Save / Load and Settings.
• Left: the list of cities, with yours first, and details of the selected city. A ring (○) means the city is still waiting for orders. A tick (✓) means its orders are finished.
• Centre: the map. Click a city to select it. Roads join neighbouring cities, and only neighbours can be reached directly.
• Right: the orders for the selected city, in groups. An order you cannot give is greyed out, with the reason written underneath.
• Bottom: the chronicle of what has happened.

1. Pick one of your cities and give its orders.
2. Press End orders for (city) when you have finished with it.
3. Repeat for your other cities. You can switch between unfinished cities at any time.
4. Press End month in the top bar. Cities you have delegated act on their own, then the other houses take their turns, and the next month begins.

Each officer may do one thing a month. Officers who have acted show “already acted this month” until the month ends. Officers busy on a project stay busy until it finishes. Injured officers cannot act until they recover.

• Month 1: gold taxes come in, soldiers are paid and officers age a year.
• Month 7: the grain harvest comes in, and cultivation resets to 0.
• Every month: soldiers eat 1 grain each per 10 soldiers, each officer is paid 2 gold, trust and population change, there may be floods, drought or sickness, and market prices change.

Officers have five attributes:

• Intellect: scouting, and resisting enemy scouts.
• Valor: fighting strength and training speed.
• Politics: projects and searching.
• Presence: relief, recruiting, diplomacy and rallying.
• Command: leadership of an army, and protecting convoys.

Heirlooms add to an attribute, and the bonus is shown in green.

Loyalty matters. An officer below 25 may resign. Rewards raise loyalty. Unpaid salaries cost 8 loyalty each month they go unpaid.

Govern

• Develop: pay for 1–3 months of work on:
  • Workshops: economy, which raises gold taxes.
  • Terrace fields: farmland.
  • Waterworks: irrigation and levees.
  • Planting: cultivation.
• Relief: give grain to raise trust.
• Tax rate: the governor sets it from 0 to 80, once a month.
• Levy: emergency gold now, at the cost of 12 trust.
• Market: sell grain, buy grain, buy bow sets and mounts.
• Projects: see or stop projects. Stopping one refunds the months not yet worked.

Muster

• Draft: cheap new soldiers, but with low training and some lost trust.
• Hire: dearer veterans.
• Reassign: share soldiers out between officers.
• Train: a training project.
• Rally: raise morale for 20 gold.

Court

• Search: look for free officers in the city.
• Recruit: offer a free officer a place in your house.
• Approach rival: tempt a disloyal officer away from a neighbouring enemy. You need a current report on their city.
• Reward: give gold to raise an officer's loyalty.
• Appoint: change an officer's role.
• Dismiss: send an officer away.
• Heirlooms: give or take back heirlooms.

Relations (sent from your sovereign's city; the answer comes next month)

• Alliance: a 12-month pact.
• Gift: lowers hostility.
• Request aid: ask an ally for gold or grain.
• Demand surrender: only works if you are overwhelmingly stronger.
• Break alliance: ends a pact.

Logistics

• Move officers: to a neighbouring city of yours or an unclaimed one, with their soldiers and any supplies you send. Moving into an unclaimed city claims it.
• Convoy: send goods along your own roads with an escort. There is a small risk of bandits.

Intelligence

• Scout: get a report on a neighbouring enemy city. Reports last 3 months and do not update.
• Reports: read your current reports.

Campaign

• Invade: march up to four officers and their soldiers on a neighbouring enemy city. Choose each unit's formation:
  • Foot needs nothing.
  • Archers need one bow set per 100 soldiers.
  • Cavalry need one mount per 100 soldiers.

Delegation. In the city panel you can hand a city to its governor's standing orders:

• Balanced: a bit of everything.
• Prosperity: development and relief.
• Defence: troops and training.

Delegated cities act on their own when you end the month.

A battle is fought on a field of hexes over at most 20 days. The attacker deploys on the left, the defender behind the walls on the right.

The keep stands behind the gate. The attacker wins by ending a turn with a unit in the keep, or by destroying or driving off every defending unit. The defender wins by lasting 20 days or by beating the attackers.

Deployment. Click a unit, then a highlighted hex. A defender also chooses formations here. Press Begin battle when ready.

Each day. Every unit may move once and take one action:

• Move: click a green hex, check the path, then press Confirm. You cannot move through the hexes next to an enemy (hatched red), and entering one ends the move.
• Attack: click a ringed enemy next to you. The exact damage each side takes is shown before you confirm. Both sides strike at once.
• Volley: archers only, at 2–3 hexes. Forest, hills and walls block the line. There is no reply.
• Attack gate: batter the gate. It has 300 strength.
• Rally: spend 15 stamina for 8 morale.
• Hold: recover 5 stamina.
• Retreat: leave the field from your own deployment area.

End side finishes your turn; units you did not use simply hold. Withdraw all takes every unit off the field and loses the battle.

Supplies. Each side eats 1 grain per 20 soldiers each day. Without grain, units lose soldiers and morale. A unit whose morale reaches 0 flees.

Afterwards. The winner decides each prisoner's fate: Release them or Offer service, with the chance shown.

• Save / Load has ten slots and an autosave. The game autosaves at the start of each of your turns and before each battle.
• Export to file and Import from file move a save between computers, and between the browser and the desktop versions.
• Your settings (volume, mute, reduced motion) are kept separately from saves.

• Tab and Shift+Tab: move between controls.
• Arrow keys: move within lists.
• Space: tick or untick a choice.
• Enter: press the focused button.
• Escape: close a dialog without acting.

Everything can be done with the keyboard alone. On the battlefield, use the Move to list and the target buttons in the side panel.