Isle & Empire
Conquer the world, one roll at a time.
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What is Isle & Empire?
Isle & Empire is a turn-based conquest game for 2 to 6 players. The world is split into territories grouped into continents, and the goal is simple: take every territory on the map. Each turn you reinforce, attack and fortify, and dice decide every battle.
The default map is a hand-drawn world with fjords, island chains, mountains, deserts, forests, rivers and glaciers forming natural borders. You can also generate a fresh map in several styles: Continents, Pangaea, Fractal, Archipelago, Small Continents, Inland Sea, Lakes and Shuffle, in Small (24 territories), Standard (42) or Large (60) sizes. Every map has a seed, so you can share a link to replay the same one.
How to play
Reinforce: at the start of your turn you get new armies. Tap your own territories to place them. Holding an entire continent adds that continent's bonus.
Attack: tap one of your glowing territories, then a neighboring enemy territory. Roll once, or Blitz to keep rolling until the fight ends. The attacker rolls up to 3 dice and the defender up to 2. The highest dice are compared in pairs, and ties go to the defender. When you win a territory, a slider lets you choose how many armies move in.
Fortify: once per turn, move armies between two of your territories that are connected through your own land. Dashed lines on the map are sea lanes, which connect territories across water.
Cards: conquer at least one territory in a turn to earn a card. Sets of 3 trade in for extra armies, either escalating (4, 6, 8 and up) or as fixed sets, depending on your setup.
Players and options
Fill up to six seats with any mix of you, other people on the same device (pass-and-play, with a 'look away' screen between turns), online players who join with a room code, and computer opponents. Empty online seats become bots. Options include card rules, dice-rolled or fixed continent bonuses, AI speed, an optional turn timer, ambient sea life and ships, sound effects, music (off by default) and random events such as earthquakes, with low, normal or high frequency.
Controls
Desktop: click territories and buttons. Use the + and − buttons or the mouse wheel to zoom, and drag to pan.
Touch: tap territories. Pinch to zoom and drag to pan, which helps a lot on small phone screens. While reinforcing, double-tapping your own territory places 2 armies at once. The game works in portrait or landscape without full screen.
Strategy tips
- Take a small continent early. A continent you can hold with only one or two border territories pays its bonus every turn and is easy to defend.
- Attack with a big advantage. Three attacking dice against one or two defending dice wins most exchanges, while attacking with only one or two armies loses more often than it wins.
- Always earn your card. Even when you're on the defensive, taking one weak territory each turn keeps cards coming, and sets grow in value.
- Fortify your borders, not your interior. Armies sitting in territories surrounded by your own land do nothing.
- Watch the sea lanes. A dashed line can expose a continent you thought was safe.
The genre it's inspired by
World-conquest board games go back to a 1957 French board game in which players conquered the world with dice and armies across a map of territories. Computer versions arrived in the 1980s, and in the DOS shareware era small studios made their own island-conquest variations with cards, random disasters and computer opponents. Isle & Empire is our original game in that tradition, with our own maps, art and rules options. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by the makers of any board game.
Developer's notes
This game started life as Tide Claim, inspired by a DOS-era island war game one of us grew up with. A full overhaul brought the realistic world map, the random map generator, animated dice with odds shown before you roll, vintage-style card art and online play. Our aim was for the map to read clearly at a glance even on a phone.
Recent changes
- October 2026: Relaunched as Isle & Empire with a realistic world map, animated dice and vintage card art.
- Added a random map generator with styles, sizes and shareable seeds.
- Added multiplayer for 2 to 6 seats with any mix of humans, online players and bots.
- Added zoom and pan, and removed the 'turn your phone sideways' prompt.
- Fixed play-time tracking so the game counts toward the arcade's most-played order.
If you like this, try these free classics
These link to our Free Classics page, where each game points to its official free source.