Choose New campaign on the title screen, then a beginning:

• Low Water (Year 1): six small bands, each with a leader, two or three companions and one place.
• The Third Warning (Year 6): larger bands with two places each, stronger garrisons and weaker dikes.

Then say how many people play (none to four), let each player choose a different leader, and choose Easy, Normal or Hard. The computer leads every band nobody chose.

Each turn is a month. Each month your band gives one task to each place it holds, and one more where its leader is. Choose a place on the map with the arrow keys or a click, press Enter, pick a task and who does it, check the preview (what it costs, the chance, what happens) and confirm. Each person does one task a month. Tab finds the places still waiting; E ends the turn.

Every 10 men and every person eat 1 rice a month. Without rice, men leave and loyalty falls. Places you hold pay rice in the ninth month and silver in the twelfth, more where people think well of you.

Boats go two links downstream in a month but only one upstream, and each traveller needs a boat. The seasons change the routes:

• Spring: the flood channels through the marshes open; the fords are under water.
• Summer: storms may close the river at a place for a month.
• Autumn: the fords are open; the upper streams are too low for boats going up.
• Winter: the upper river freezes and can be walked.

Press Enter (or P) on a place outside your turn to see its links this month, and why any is closed.

What you do becomes a tale. Tales travel one link a month downstream, and upstream or by road every second month, and they fade with distance and time. Tales of kindness and daring raise a town's goodwill toward your band; cruelty and slander lower it. Press V for the Tales view of the map, and T for the tales told at a place. The Intendant's criers spread slander about the band people like best, and the Tolls Supervisor silences good tales near her toll gate.

Every dike decays a little each month, more in summer, and the Intendancy never mends them. Repair them with rice. A summer storm may break a dike below 20; the Great Flood breaks every dike below 50, flooding its place and the next one downstream. V twice shows the Dikes view.

An official falls when exposed, turned or captured in battle. O lists them, with the evidence your band holds.

• Petition: hold 3 items of evidence, have goodwill of 50 or more in 8 places, and petition the court at Jade Lock with your leader.
• Uprising: hold Jade Lock and the Tide Gate for 12 months running.
• Amnesty: when 4 of the 5 officials have fallen, the band that brought down the most (2 at least) is pardoned.

If nobody has won by the end of the twentieth year, everyone has failed. A band whose leader is captured or killed is out of the game.

A raid on a garrison or another band, or Luo Tie's march, starts a battle on a 12 by 8 hex field with a river across it. When your band is attacked you can fight, let the computer fight, or withdraw and give up the place.

• The attackers place their units in the two left columns (A places them all).
• Days have a morning, afternoon and night; in each, every attacking unit acts, then every defending one.
• Click a unit to choose it, a lit hex to move, an enemy to attack. 1 ordinary, 2 arrows (archers, two or three hexes, not at night), 3 charge (after moving), 4 ambush (from hiding in the reeds).
• H halt (in reeds the unit hides), W board or land a boat, X burn a bridge, reeds or an enemy boat, B bribe an enemy crew, R bring up a reserve, F flee, A let the computer finish.
• Boats drift downstream at night unless a Boatman leads them.
• Take the enemy commander, or hold the fort for two phases running. The defender wins when the days run out.

Afterwards you decide what becomes of your prisoners: recruit, hold, ransom, release (a kind tale) or execute (a cruel one).

With two or more players, a hand-over screen comes before each player's turn, and before any question put to a player who is not at the keyboard (an attack on their band, their prisoners, an offer from another band). Bands meeting at a place can offer each other pacts and gifts.

Arrows move, Enter chooses, Esc goes back or opens the menu, number keys pick menu entries. On the main screen: C people, B bands, O officials, T tales, L the month's ledger, R the record of the campaign, V map view, H help. Alt+Enter switches full screen.