Does it cost money to play?

In the genre: Free to start; most revenue comes from speed-ups and packs. In Iron Realms: Free, and during pre-alpha no payment is accepted at all — there is no store to spend in.

Do I need to install anything?

In the genre: Usually a mobile app, sometimes with an emulator for desktop. In Iron Realms: Runs in a browser on any device, and installs as a mobile app if you want it to.

Can I be attacked while offline?

In the genre: Yes. Shields are the standard defence. In Iron Realms: Yes — this is a war game. 8 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days shields, plus an automatic 4 hours after a wall break.

Is there a new-player grace period?

In the genre: Typically a few days of forced peace. In Iron Realms: A 14-day founding boost worth up to +50% production, decaying to zero.

Is the world full when I join?

In the genre: Often the hardest problem in the genre — a young shard can be empty for weeks. In Iron Realms: The realm is populated by Residents: persistent AI lords who hold real keeps, march, ally, and talk. They are not scenery, and they will raid you.

Can I catch up if I start late?

In the genre: Rarely, without spending. In Iron Realms: Partly. The founding boost and underdog bonuses close some of it; a six-month head start on research is still a six-month head start.

Does spending buy power?

In the genre: Usually yes, at the top end. In Iron Realms: No — the Fair Play Ledger commits to speed and cosmetics only, and lists every purchasable effect so the claim is checkable.

Is my progress permanent?

In the genre: Yes, until a server merge. In Iron Realms: Not yet. This is a pre-alpha and progress may be reset while the realm is being built. That is the honest answer and it is the reason nothing is for sale.

What is a strategy MMO?

Q: What is a strategy MMO?

A strategy MMO is a persistent online world where thousands of players each hold and grow a base, and where the map, the economy and the wars keep running while a player is logged out. It combines 4X strategy — explore, expand, exploit, exterminate — with the alliance politics of an MMO.

The genre in plain words — and then, for every part of it, the actual number one game uses. Every figure on this page is read out of Iron Realms' own code when the page is built, so none of them can drift.

A strategy MMO is a persistent online world where thousands of players each hold and grow a base, and where the map, the economy and the wars keep running while you are logged out. It borrows the shape of 4X strategy — explore, expand, exploit, exterminate — and wraps it in the social machinery of an MMO, so the decisions that matter most are usually about people. Who you ally with will change your game more than which building you raise next.

The genre is also unusually opaque from the outside. It has its own vocabulary, most of it undefined anywhere a new player will look, and the games themselves rarely explain the parts that decide whether you enjoy them: whether you can be attacked asleep, whether money buys power, whether a shard that is six months old still has room. This page defines the words and answers those questions.

The vocabulary

Strategy MMO

A persistent online world where thousands of players each hold and grow a base, and where the map, the economy and the wars keep running while you are logged out. The genre sits between 4X strategy (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) and the social machinery of an MMO: the interesting decisions are as much about who you ally with as about what you build.

Here: Iron Realms runs one shared continent per shard, with a keep for every lord and a day that ticks every 20 minutes of real time.

Base building

The core loop: structures that produce resources, resources that buy upgrades, upgrades that unlock structures. Almost every building has a real-time timer, so the genre is played in short visits rather than long sessions.

Here: A keep here gates everything else — no building may exceed the keep's own level — which is what turns a scattered build into an order of operations.

Troop triangle

The rock-paper-scissors that stops one unit type dominating: each type takes extra damage from one other type and deals extra to a third. It is what makes scouting worth the energy, because the counter you bring matters more than the army you own.

Here: Infantry beats cavalry beats ranged beats infantry, at +25% when you counter and -25% when you are countered. Siege sits outside the triangle: -25% against troops, and it is what breaks walls.

Rally

A timed group attack. One player opens it, allies march their troops into it, and the combined army leaves at a set time. Rallies are the genre's answer to a target no single player can take, and the reason alliances have voice chat.

Here: Rallies here also work defensively — you can reinforce a keep under threat, and the defender's report shows who came.

Shield / protection

A consumable that makes your base unattackable for a fixed span. Shields are what make the genre survivable across time zones: they are how you sleep during a war.

Here: Shields run 8 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days. Breaking a wall grants the defender an automatic 4 hours so a losing player is not farmed while offline.

Migration & shards

A shard (or kingdom, or state) is one instance of the world with its own map and population. Migration is moving your base to another one — usually to join friends, sometimes to escape a shard a single alliance has already won.

Here: Kingdom-versus-Kingdom events pit whole shards against each other rather than individual alliances.

Power / might

The single number that sums everything you own — buildings, research, troops, gear. It is how the genre sorts leaderboards, and it is also the genre's most misleading statistic, because troops count toward it and troops can die in an afternoon.

Here: Worth knowing before you scout: a lord whose power is mostly troops is a very different target from one whose power is mostly buildings.

Pay-to-win, and pay-for-speed

The genre's live argument. Money in these games buys time — instant builds, extra resources, faster research. Where it also buys effects a free player cannot reach, the game is pay-to-win; where it only compresses a schedule, it is pay-for-speed.

Here: Iron Realms publishes a Fair Play Ledger listing every purchasable effect, and takes no payment at all during pre-alpha.

Seasons & live world events

Scheduled changes to the whole map — a season that alters production, a two-week conquest event, a world boss. They exist to give a persistent game a rhythm, so that a returning player finds a different world rather than the same one.

Here: Seasons turn every 7 real days and are driven partly by real-world weather; the conquest season runs 14 days.

Alliance

The guild. Alliances pool resources, help each other's build timers, hold territory, and declare war. In practice the alliance is the unit of play in this genre — a solo player in a strategy MMO is a resource node with extra steps.

Here: Alliances here scale by tier, topping out at 156 members, with forts, garrisons, roads and a shared bounty board.

Is this genre for you?

The middle column is what is typical across the genre. The right column is Iron Realms specifically. Rows tinted warm are the ones where the honest answer is not a selling point — they are here because a comparison that wins every row is not a comparison.

Question	Typically, in the genre	In Iron Realms
Does it cost money to play?	Free to start; most revenue comes from speed-ups and packs.	Free, and during pre-alpha no payment is accepted at all — there is no store to spend in.
Do I need to install anything?	Usually a mobile app, sometimes with an emulator for desktop.	Runs in a browser on any device, and installs as a mobile app if you want it to.
Can I be attacked while offline?	Yes. Shields are the standard defence.	Yes — this is a war game. 8 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days shields, plus an automatic 4 hours after a wall break.
Is there a new-player grace period?	Typically a few days of forced peace.	A 14-day founding boost worth up to +50% production, decaying to zero.
Is the world full when I join?	Often the hardest problem in the genre — a young shard can be empty for weeks.	The realm is populated by Residents: persistent AI lords who hold real keeps, march, ally, and talk. They are not scenery, and they will raid you.
Can I catch up if I start late?	Rarely, without spending.	Partly. The founding boost and underdog bonuses close some of it; a six-month head start on research is still a six-month head start.
Does spending buy power?	Usually yes, at the top end.	No — the Fair Play Ledger commits to speed and cosmetics only, and lists every purchasable effect so the claim is checkable.
Is my progress permanent?	Yes, until a server merge.	Not yet. This is a pre-alpha and progress may be reset while the realm is being built. That is the honest answer and it is the reason nothing is for sale.

How the genre's parts work here

Each of these is a guide to the same mechanic described above, written against what the game actually does rather than what the genre usually does.

A short history, for context

The shape of this genre was set by browser games in the early 2000s — persistent maps, build timers, and alliances formed on forums — and then rebuilt for phones in the 2010s, where the timers got shorter, the packs got bigger, and the genre acquired its reputation for spending. What has not changed in twenty years is the core: a base that grows while you are away, neighbours who can take it, and a group chat where the actual game is played.

What is changing now is who else is on the map. A shard's worst hour has always been its first, when the world is empty and the wars have not started. Iron Realms answers that with Residents — persistent AI lords who hold real keeps on the same map, raise them on the same curves, join alliances, march, remember what you did to them, and argue about it on the forum. A new realm is not quiet.

New to the genre entirely? Start with the new player tutorial, which assumes nothing, or read the first-hour guide and play along at playironrealms.com. It is free and there is nothing to install.