Manual

1. Installing and launching

Commanding the Century runs on Windows. No installer is needed: extract the game folder to a location of your choice and launch CommandingTheCentury.exe, or double-click start.bat. After the intro video (any key skips it) you arrive at the main menu.

• Graphics card: the game uses DirectX 12 / Vulkan and automatically falls back to OpenGL on older PCs. If you get a black screen or the game won't start, launch it with CommandingTheCentury.exe --rendering-driver opengl3.
• Firewall: the first time you host, Windows asks whether the game may use the network. Allow it for private networks.
• No account needed: the game requires no internet connection or login.

2. Main menu and lobby

Behind the main menu lies your nation's village in the golden hour. Here you set:

• Player name and colour: how others see you in the lobby and in the game.
• Country: the nation you play. All armies follow the same rules; only the Desert Front plays differently (see chapter 18).
• Language: Dutch or English.
• Graphics: Low, Medium or High (see chapter 22).

From the menu you can host a game, join a game on your network or via IP, or play against the computer. In the lobby everyone chooses a colour, team and country and sets themselves to Ready. The host chooses the game settings:

3. Objective of the game

You win by destroying all of your opponents' buildings and work crews. Players on the same team win together and share their vision. If you see no way back, you can surrender via the menu. Afterwards, the score screen shows how many units each player destroyed and lost and how many buildings were demolished.

4. The screen

• Top bar: your stocks of food, wood, gold, steel and oil, your population (current and maximum), the current age and the Menu button.
• Minimap (bottom left): a rotating diamond showing the whole battlefield. Buildings are shown in player colours, units as dots. The white frame is what your camera sees. Left-click moves the camera, right-click sends your selection there. Idle work crews flash yellow.
• Selection panel (bottom centre): name, health and details of what you have selected, such as the fuel and ammunition of aircraft, a drone's battery or a bunker's garrison.
• Command buttons (bottom right): building, training, research and orders. Hover over them for a card with costs, stats and what a unit is strong and weak against.
• Notifications: attacks, completed buildings, a new age, full warehouses. Press Space to jump to the latest event.

5. Camera and selection

The camera looks down on the battlefield at an angle, just like Age of Empires. Pan with WASD, the arrow keys, the screen edge or by dragging with the middle mouse button. Zoom with the mouse wheel. Rotate with Q and E and tilt with PgUp and PgDn (or Alt + drag). Home resets the camera.

Select with a left-click or drag a box. A double-click selects all units of the same type on screen, Shift adds to your selection and Tab cycles between the types in a mixed selection. Create control groups with Ctrl + 1-9. Press the number to select the group; press it twice to move the camera there.

The right mouse button does whatever suits the target: walk to a spot, attack an enemy, gather a resource, build or repair one of your own buildings, occupy a bunker or village house, or board a landing craft.

6. Resources and economy

Everything revolves around five resources. Your work crews gather them and bring them to the nearest storage building with space left.

Storage is real. The headquarters holds 1000 of each resource and a warehouse 800. Gold only fits in limited amounts: 300 in the headquarters and 150 in a warehouse. When your warehouses are full, you get a notification and need to build another. Building and training take their costs from the nearest warehouses, and your work crew collects the building materials there first. If a warehouse is lost, its contents are gone.

Roads (5 wood per tile) speed up everything that drives or walks on them: soldiers 30%, tracked vehicles 25%, wheeled vehicles and work crews 60%. Click and drag to lay a road. Roads cannot be shot to pieces.

Work crews improve with every age: horse and cart, then a Fendt tractor, then a tractor with an excavator, a Toyota Hilux and finally a DAF tipper truck with an Atlas excavator. With every age they work 20% faster. Never let them stand idle: press . to select the next idle crew.

7. Building

Select a work crew and press B (or click Build), then the building's letter. A transparent model shows where it will go; green means it fits. Left-click to place, right-click or Esc to cancel. Walls, trenches and roads are drawn as a line by clicking and dragging. You can also place on half tiles.

A building rises in six visible stages: a staked-out site, foundations, half-built walls with scaffolding, walls with the roof frame, a half-covered roof, and done. Put more crews on a site to build faster. Repair damaged buildings by right-clicking them with a work crew.

An overview of every building with its cost and function is on the Buildings page. The most important ones, in the order of a typical build-up: houses, a warehouse, a farm, barracks, a steelworks, a bank, an airfield and, from 1925, a factory and the Intelligence & development centre.

8. Population and training

Every unit takes up population slots: a soldier 1, a tank 2 to 4, a battleship 5 or 6. Houses provide 5 slots and the headquarters 10, up to a maximum of 200 (the Desert Front: 120). If you get the notification Build more houses!, you have hit your limit.

Select a building to train units. The buttons are laid out in a grid that matches your keyboard: the top row is Q W E R T, the middle row A S D F G and the bottom row Z X C V B. A building always shows the best model of each type that your age allows. Set a rally point with R or a right-click while the building is selected: new units then head there automatically.

• Headquarters: work crews, and advancing to the next age.
• Barracks: infantry, machine guns, anti-tank, snipers, medics, drone operators and, in 1914, also field guns, armoured cars, the Mark IV and the AA lorry.
• Factory (from 1925): tanks, motorcycles, armoured vehicles, artillery, anti-aircraft and rocket launchers.
• Airfield: fighters, bombers, helicopters and kamikaze drones.
• Harbour: the entire fleet, from fishing boat to aircraft carrier.

9. Ages

At the headquarters you advance to the next age. That costs resources and time:

After advancing, your existing units are refitted one by one to the newest model in their line, with a golden shimmer. Your buildings take on the architecture and equipment of the new era, buildings become 15% sturdier per age, and your country's name and flag may change. The Ages page shows which units each age adds.

10. Research

In the Intelligence & development centre (from 1925) you research upgrades in four branches: firepower, protection, strategy and economy. Every research topic has three levels, costs gold and gets stronger with each level. Examples: infantry +15% damage, vehicles take 12% less damage, everything reloads 8% faster, 6% more range, 1 tile more vision, or 12% faster gathering and 15% faster building. The radar station has a research topic of its own: the spy satellite. The full list is on Buildings.

11. Bank, stock exchange and war bonds

The bank is your gold vault (4000 gold) and a drop-off point for gold miners. Select the bank for:

• The stock exchange: buy or sell food, wood, steel and oil in lots of 100 for gold. All players share the same prices. Buying drives the price up, selling pushes it down, and afterwards it slowly drifts back. Selling earns 25% less than buying costs.
• War bonds: invest 100 + 100 × your age in gold. After 150 seconds you get 35% more back. You can hold three at a time. If the bank falls, they become worthless.

Watch out: whoever destroys a vault plunders half the gold. So protect your bank with anti-aircraft defences and troops.

12. Combat

Right-click an enemy to attack. Press A and click the ground to issue an attack-move: your units head there and attack anything they meet along the way. S stops, H holds position (no pursuit) and P patrols between two points.

Every weapon deals more or less damage against a type of target:

• Machine guns mow down infantry but do little against armour.
• Anti-tank (anti-tank rifle, bazooka, RPG, Javelin) cracks vehicles and buildings.
• Snipers fire from long range and are deadly to infantry, but fire slowly.
• Artillery and bombers level buildings and hit groups at once, but artillery cannot fire at close range.
• Fighters and anti-aircraft clear the skies.
• Tanks are strong all-rounders, but vulnerable to anti-tank weapons and attack helicopters.

Keep your soldiers alive with medics (heal nearby infantry) and a field hospital (heals all nearby units). Press R to make soldiers run: 40% faster, but 20% more damage taken. Press G to make them go prone: half damage, but crawling is slow. Soldiers who stand still and fire go prone automatically.

Buildings show visible damage: soot, fires and smoke increase, and at zero health they collapse. Neutral village buildings can be occupied with infantry (right-click) or demolished with an attack order.

13. Cover, trenches and bunkers

• Trenches (10 wood per section): click and drag to dig a line. Each section holds 3 soldiers, who take only 35% of direct damage. Tanks and other tracked vehicles can cross them; wheeled vehicles and work crews cannot.
• Bunkers: don't fire on their own. Right-click the bunker with soldiers to put up to 6 inside. They fire with 40% more range and are invulnerable until the bunker falls. Press U to bring them out.
• Anti-aircraft emplacement and coastal battery: need a crew of 3 soldiers. With half a crew they fire more slowly, with no crew not at all. The anti-aircraft emplacement grows with your age, from a 7.7 cm gun to a Patriot battery.
• Walls (12 wood per section) stop ground units.
• Village buildings: 4 to 8 soldiers, and the church sees furthest. If the building collapses, the garrison loses a quarter of its health.

14. Air force

You build aircraft at the airfield, which has room for 5 aircraft. Every aircraft has limited fuel and ammunition: a fighter flies for 80 seconds with 48 shots, a bomber for 100 seconds with 4 bombs, and every age adds a little more. Below 20% fuel or out of ammunition, an aircraft returns on its own. Press L to send it back to land yourself. Refuelling costs oil, rearming costs steel. An empty tank means half speed and half firepower.

Bombers are devastating against buildings but cannot hit anything in the air. Protect them with fighters. Helicopters (from 1960) are flying tank hunters. Kamikaze drones (from 2000) circle above the battlefield, attack vehicles and ships on their own and are expended in the attack.

15. Navy

Build a harbour on the coast (partly on the water). The harbour takes in fish and builds the fleet:

• Fishing boats: catch fish on fishing grounds and bring it to the harbour.
• Patrol boats: fast with long sight range, later with anti-ship missiles.
• Destroyers and frigates: escort the fleet and hunt submarines with sonar and depth charges.
• Battleships and cruisers: heavy guns or cruise missiles against ships and deep inland.
• Submarines: invisible until a destroyer or frigate detects them within 6 tiles. After firing a torpedo they are briefly visible.
• Aircraft carriers: floating airfields for 3 to 6 aircraft. They build their own fighters and helicopters.
• Landing craft: right-click the craft with land units to board, sail to the coast, and right-click the land (or press U) to unload.

A coastal battery on your own coast keeps enemy ships at bay.

16. Scouting, radar and drones

You only see enemy units within the sight range of your own units and buildings. Enemy buildings stay visible once you have spotted them. Fast scouts such as motorcycles, armoured cars and patrol boats see far.

• Radar station (from 1960): scans an area of 11 tiles. Green contacts show where something is and how big it is, but not what it is. After that the station has to recharge.
• Spy satellite (research at the radar station): reveals everything in an area of 7 tiles for 40 seconds.
• Drone operator (from 2000): launch the recon drone with F. While it flies, the operator kneels. The battery lasts 80 seconds and the link reaches 24 tiles. When the battery is almost flat, the drone returns on its own. Press L to recall it yourself.

17. Day and night

A full day lasts 50 minutes. After about 29 minutes the sun sets, followed by a quarter of an hour of true night. At night you only see unlit units at 55% of your normal sight range. Vehicles, aircraft and ships carry lights, and soldiers with torches are visible while they walk. Press N to switch off your selection's lights so you can approach unseen. Drones with thermal imaging and satellites will still see you.

18. The Desert Front

The Desert Front is a fictional fighting group with its own rules:

• Cheaper but weaker fighters, a population cap of 120 and camps that each provide 10 places (8 at most).
• The workshop is available from 1914 and builds technicals (pickups with machine guns), rocket trucks and home-made drones.
• Saboteurs and bomb makers bury charges (X) that explode under enemy ground units. Enemy infantry only spots them at close range.
• Rocket positions (4 at most) fire on their own at long range, but inaccurately.

19. Multiplayer

Play with 2 to 8 players over your local network. One player chooses Host game. The others see the game in the Games on your network list, or type the host's IP address into Connect via IP (the host can see their IP in the lobby). Everyone chooses a team: teammates share their vision and win together. Chat with Enter, in the lobby too. Only the host can pause.

The game uses UDP port 7777 for the game itself and 7778 to find games on the network. Allow these in your firewall if it doesn't work. You can also test two games on one PC: host in one window and connect in the other with 127.0.0.1.

20. AI opponents

Add AI players in the lobby and choose a difficulty, team, country and strategy for each. The computer plays by the same rules as you; only on Very hard does it gather 30% faster.

Strategies: Defender, Harasser, Attacker, Builder, Air force, Blitzkrieg, Admiral (only on maps with water) or random. On The battlefield you can read what each strategy does.

21. Saving and loading

Save a match via the menu (Esc or F10). The host stores the file; other players can request a save. When loading, players are matched back to their slot by name. Anyone who isn't there leaves their army standing idle.

22. Settings and performance

Choose the graphics quality in the main menu: Low, Medium or High. On High you get soft shadows, ambient occlusion, grass that moves in the wind, water refraction and more light sources, tracks and particles. At the start of every match the game measures how smoothly it runs and automatically steps down a level below 24 frames per second. Press F11 or Alt+Enter to switch between windowed and full screen.

23. All hotkeys

The full overview is on How to play. The most important ones at a glance:

A attack-move · S stop · H hold position · P patrol · R run or rally point · G go prone · N lights off · L land or recall drone · U disembark/unload · F launch drone · X plant bomb · B build menu · . idle crew · Space last event · Home reset camera · Delete destroy · Ctrl+1-9 control groups.

24. Troubleshooting

The game won't start or the screen stays black.

Launch the game with --rendering-driver opengl3 (see chapter 1) and update your graphics card driver.

I can't see my friend's game in the list.

Check that you are on the same network and that the firewall allows the game on private networks (UDP 7777 and 7778). Otherwise, use Connect via IP with the IP address the host sees in the lobby.

The game is stuttering.

Set the graphics to Medium or Low, or choose a smaller map. The game steps down by itself when it notices it is running too slowly.

My workers have stopped gathering.

Your warehouses are probably full. Build a new warehouse, or spend some resources. For iron ore: build a steelworks.

I can't train any more units.

You have reached your population limit. Build houses. The maximum is 200 (Desert Front 120).

My aircraft keep returning.

They are out of fuel or ammunition. Make sure you have oil and steel to refuel and rearm them, and free space at an airfield.

Something isn't working as it should.

Report it via the report form. Attach a screenshot, a saved game or the log file. That helps us most.