Seven Gates of Ur

Seven lugals rule the seven cities of the underworld. Most of them were never human: a lion-headed wind demon, the Bull of Heaven, the lord of fire, Ereshkigal herself. You found an eighth city under a god of your choosing, and set out to take theirs.

Rule a dynasty. Make your own lugal: name, face, virtues, flaw, skills and personality. Your lugal grows old, marries, has children and dies. Heirs inherit by the law you set. Ensis govern your cities and may turn on you; your council collects taxes, watches the court and forges claims. Choose a way of rule: your own, the temple's, the assembly of elders', the great houses' or a god-king's. Lose your line and the campaign is over.

Run the land. Your people work the fields, date groves, fisheries, brickworks and quarries. Pay them wages, school your scribes, set the laws of slavery. Every city has a market whose prices move with what is wanted and what there is, and a life for each kind of people that decides whether they grow or turn against you. Run trade routes to Dilmun and Elam, set your borders, and found colonies in the lands beyond the map.

Build an army from your land. Levies come from your cities' people, and your people eat grain. Recruit men-at-arms as your innovations allow: spearmen, archers, heavy chariots, onager riders, siege engineers, your god's own warriors. Hire lua for a term. Your gurush ride with the royal army.

Make war. Every war needs a cause and is fought for a city. Armies walk the roads month by month, starve when their land can't feed them, and slow in marsh and hills. Besiege a city until it falls, or storm it. Occupy what you can, then make peace by the war score. The lugals play by the same rules: they keep treasuries, raise armies, build, go to war with each other, and come for you.

Fight on the board, or don't. When armies meet, let the generals fight it out, or play the battle yourself on a board of Ur squares: draw up your regiments, throw the bones for orders, and break the enemy's nerve before they break yours.

Every campaign is different. The land between the rivers is drawn anew each time, with its own rivers, farmland, marsh, desert and hills, and the gatekeepers are dealt from a court of fourteen. A house that survives carries its legacies into the next campaign.

Make it yours. Mods can change the text, the numbers of the rules, the lugals, the events, the art and the models. Subscribe on the Steam Workshop, or make your own and put it there from the game.

Features

• Grand strategy in the Sumerian underworld: a dynasty, a court, ensis, factions, schemes, gods and innovations

• An economy of work, wages, markets, trade routes and colonies, and five ways of rule

• Armies raised from your cities' people, men-at-arms, hired lua, gurush, supply and attrition

• Sieges, occupation, war score and peace, against lugals who follow your rules

• Battles you can fight on a board grown out of the Royal Game of Ur

• A new land each campaign, in 3D pixel art, or flat on a clay tablet

• Steam achievements, Steam Cloud saves, and mods on the Steam Workshop

• Interface in eleven languages

• Hard: built to be lost, and played again