How to play Forgefront
The rules, with the real numbers. Everything here is read out of the game's own settings when this page is built, so it matches what you will see in a match.
Your first match
Click the map to push. The slider at the bottom left sets how much of your iron one click commits. Start by clicking the two forges nearest your core, then the nearest gold mine.
Buy the forge upgrade as soon as you can. It costs 50 gold and makes every forge you hold pay half as much again.
Keep your land in one piece. If a message says your supply line is cut, click the gap. You have 8 seconds.
Point at things. Hover over any cell to see what it costs to take and why. Point at the iron counter in the top bar for the sums behind your income.
The goal
Each side has a core. Break the enemy's and you win. A core has 150 points of strength, and iron pushed into it comes off one for one. Left alone for 3 seconds it starts mending, 3 points a second. If nobody's core has broken by 10:00, whoever holds more land wins.
Pushing
Click the map and a share of your iron goes to taking the cells of the frontier nearest that point. The slider sets the share. A push needs at least 5 iron, you can have 4 running at once, and you can recall them for whatever they have not spent.
The same click does two different jobs. Aim far away and you get a column heading there. Aim at your own land and the border nearest that point grows outward in a blob. Columns are fast and fragile. Blobs are slow and hard to cut.
What a cell costs
| Open plains | 1 iron |
|---|---|
| Open forest | 2 iron |
| Enemy land | 2 more, so 3 for plains |
| Home ground | Up to 5 more beside their core, fading to nothing 22 cells out |
| Core shield | 3 more within 3 cells of their core |
| A walled cell | 12 more |
| Cut-off land | Open-ground price, whoever owns it |
One more rule matters more than the table. Land that has just changed hands is shaky for 6 seconds, and its old owner can take it back at open-ground price. A raid that is answered straight away costs the raider far more than the defender.
Where iron comes from
| Your core's forge | 3 a second |
|---|---|
| Each iron forge you hold | 1.5 a second (6 on the map) |
| Forge II | All of the above times 1.5, for 50 gold |
| Forge III | Times 2.1 instead, for 120 gold more |
| Each cell of land | 0.012 a second, never multiplied |
So 500 cells of land pay 6 iron a second on their own, and a plains cell earns back the iron it cost in about 83 seconds. Land is the slow investment. Forges are the fast one.
Gold
Each of the 4 mines pays 0.5 gold a second to whoever holds it with supply.
| Forge II, then III | 50 and 120 gold |
|---|---|
| Emerald forge | 160 gold. No more iron, but your core makes an emerald every 20 seconds, vein or no vein |
| Watchtower | 25 gold. Sees 9 cells around itself |
| Levy | 20 gold for 50 iron |
A watchtower is more than eyes. Enemy land inside its sight loses its home-ground bonus, which makes a tower at the front the cheap way to start a siege. It also marks every enemy push aimed into its sight, with the iron behind it.
Emeralds
The 2 veins sleep until 4:00, then pay an emerald every 10 seconds each.
| Flare | 1 emerald. Lights up 9 cells around any point for 12 seconds, and scouts it the way a tower does |
|---|---|
| Breach | 2 emeralds. For 10 seconds their walls, core shield and home ground count for nothing |
| Surge | 2 emeralds for 120 iron, now |
Supply lines
A cell counts as yours only while a chain of your cells joins it to your core, edge to edge. Land that loses that chain pays nothing, defends at open-ground price, and goes neutral after 8 seconds. Forges, mines and veins on it stop producing the moment the chain breaks. Rejoin it in time and it all comes back.
Walls
A wall costs 6 iron and goes on one of your own cells. Drag to paint a line of them. They are for narrow places: a pass between two lakes, the neck of a road, the ring around your core.
Caches
The first cache is announced at 1:15, and another follows 35 to 55 seconds after each one is settled. A marker shows both sides where it will land and what is in it: 120 iron, 35 gold, 2 emeralds. It lands 18 seconds after the announcement, and one that lands after overcharge has begun is worth double. Hold the cell, joined to your core, at that moment and it is yours. If nobody does, it waits 25 seconds for the first side that can.
The clock
| 4:00 | The emerald veins wake. |
|---|---|
| 6:00 | Overcharge: every forge, mine and vein pays double. Land does not. |
| 8:00 | Sudden death: walls, core shields and home ground stop counting, retaking is no longer cheap, and cores stop mending. |
| 10:00 | Time. More land wins. |
Playing another person
Choose Play a person on the start screen. Create room gives you a four-letter code. A private room can only be joined by someone who types that code. A public room is also listed under Open rooms for anyone, and you can switch a room between the two while you wait. Quick match joins the oldest public room, or opens one.
The match starts three seconds after the second player sits down. The rules are the same, with two differences. There is no pausing: the pause button becomes Forfeit, and you press it twice to give the match up. And leaving, or losing your connection, forfeits. Afterwards both players can ask to play again, on a new map.
Each of you sees yourself in the bottom-left corner. The match runs on the server and each player is sent only what they can see, so the fog is the same for both.
Keys
| 1 2 3 4 | Commit a quarter, half, three quarters or all of your iron per click. The mouse wheel fine-tunes it. |
|---|---|
| W | Wall. Click or drag across your own land. |
| T | Watchtower. Click one of your cells. |
| F | Flare. Click anywhere on the map. |
| U L | Upgrade the forge. Trade gold for iron. |
| B S | Breach. Surge. |
| R | Recall your pushes and get the unspent iron back. |
| Q Esc | Back to pushing. A right-click does the same. |
| Space | Pause, against the computer. |
Five habits
Spend it. Iron in the bank takes nothing and defends nothing. The exception is the few seconds before a cache lands or an attack arrives.
Fatten your roads. A road one cell wide is cut by one cell. Click your own border beside it and let it swell.
Answer raids at once. For 6 seconds you get your land back at open-ground price. After that it costs you what it cost them.
Buy sight before a siege. A tower at the front takes home ground off every cell it can see. Near a core that is most of the price.
Count to 8:00. Everything that was holding the enemy's line stops holding it then. Have iron ready, and have your own core somewhere they cannot reach in one push.