Tideholm — How to play
You rule an island on a wide ocean. Grow its economy, raise an army, and expand — by settling empty islands or taking inhabited ones. Everything runs in real time: buildings, training, and fleets keep moving while you're away.
Resources
Three resources accumulate continuously: wood 🪵, stone 🪨 and gold 🪙, produced by the Lumberyard, Quarry and Gold Mine. Your Storehouse caps how much you can hold — a full store wastes production, so keep it ahead of your income. The Island Hall speeds up construction.
Buildings
| Building | Does |
|---|---|
| Lumberyard / Quarry / Gold Mine | Produce resources; higher levels produce more |
| Storehouse | Raises storage capacity (×1.5 per level) |
| Island Hall | Each level speeds up all construction |
| Barracks | Unlocks troops; higher levels train faster |
| Harbor | Unlocks ships: Colony Ships and Flagships |
| Wall | Strengthens all defenders; takes damage when the island is sacked |
| Farm | Population cap — every unit needs people; bigger armies need bigger farms |
Upgrades queue up to 3 deep and cost ~1.55× more per level.
Units
| Unit | Role |
|---|---|
| Spearman | Cheap all-rounder |
| Raider | Strong attack, carries the most loot, weak at home |
| Sentinel | Defensive backbone; never leaves on raids |
| Scout | Spies out enemy islands; counter-scouts at home; can't fight |
| Colony Ship | Settles an uncharted (gray) island; consumed on landing |
| Flagship | Joins attacks; each victory it survives breaks the island's loyalty |
Combat
Click any island on the map to attack. Travel time depends on distance and your slowest unit. On arrival, your total attack power faces the garrison's defense power. The stronger side wins; ties go to the defender. The winner's losses scale with how close the fight was — crush a small garrison and you lose almost nothing; scrape by and you lose most of your army.
Winners plunder as much as their surviving units can carry, drawn proportionally from the defender's stores, and march home with it.
Colonization & conquest
Gray islands are uncharted. Send a Colony Ship to claim one as a fresh colony — first ship to land wins. Taking an inhabited island is a campaign: every island has loyalty (0–100). Each winning attack that includes a surviving Flagship lowers it by 25–40; when loyalty reaches 0, the island — buildings, stores and all — becomes yours and your surviving army garrisons it. Loyalty regenerates over time, so strike in waves. A fresh conquest starts restive at 25. Lose your last island and your people flee to a fresh one; you're never out of the game.
Support & espionage
Click any inhabited island and choose Send support to station your troops there as defenders — this is how alliances actually hold ground. Stationed troops fight (and die) in the island's defense; recall them anytime from your island view. Clicking one of your own islands lets you transfer troops between them the same way.
Scouts reveal a target's garrison, stores, loyalty and buildings — but the defender's own scouts fight back: send more scouts than they keep at home, or none of yours return and they'll know you tried.
Alliances & mail
Found an alliance or accept an invitation in the Alliance tab. Allies can't attack each other, and your tag shows on the map and rankings. Use Mail to write to any player.
Beginner protection
Players under 40 points cannot be attacked — by anyone — until they attack a human player themselves. Build in peace, but pick your first fight carefully.
The bots
The island folk are not decorative. They build, train, raid for loot, expand — and they remember who attacked them.