How to play Take Over the World

Take Over the World is a free multiplayer strategy game played on a map of the real Earth. Every town on the map is a real place with its real population, farmland and oil. You start as the leader of one town, grow it into a country, and try to take your state, your country and then the world, against everyone else playing at the same time. It runs in your browser on a computer: nothing to install, no email needed. Phones can watch the map.

1. Start with one town

Create a commander (pick a name and a colour) and keep the account key it shows you: it's how you sign in on another computer. Then search the map for any free town of up to 50,000 people and press Lead. It becomes your capital city. Its people pay taxes every hour, eat food, and are who you recruit soldiers from. You don't have to pick where you live: any town works, and small towns are quieter places to start.

2. Feed your people and build

People need food. Your country has one farm for all your land: open any of your towns, find Your farm, and pick how many square kilometres of farmland to work. Each km² makes food every hour, and the farm can grow up to all the real farmland in every town you hold. The same goes for steel: one steel mill for your whole country, covering as much of your land as you give it. Farmed and industrial land can't hold other buildings, so you choose between food, steel and room for an army.

Everything else stands on each town's base: barracks to train infantry, factories for tanks and artillery, airbases, ports, power plants, radar, anti-air, bunkers, depots, schools and hospitals. Bigger towns have more room. Buildings cost money and steel and take real time to build, and they keep working while you're away.

3. Keep people happy

Happiness decides whether your towns grow and whether people volunteer as soldiers. High taxes, hunger, unpaid wages and a long war make people unhappy, and unhappy people leave. Soldiers cost wages: keep them under about 30% of your taxes, or your people start to complain. Peace pays off: a few days without war raises everything your country makes.

4. Build an army and attack

Train infantry at a barracks and build vehicles at a factory. To attack, click a town next to yours, choose who to send, and see when they'll arrive before you press Send. Armies take real time to march, roads and rivers matter, and the weather slows them down. Battles take time too, and you can watch them on the map: the front line moves across the real town, troops shoot, guns fire shells, and the side that breaks loses. Win and the town is yours. Nobody sees your army coming until it's close, unless they have radar or observation posts.

You can also strike from afar: artillery, drones and missiles hit a town's buildings, troops or roads. Ruined buildings stop working until they're rebuilt. Schools and hospitals can't be targeted.

5. Take your state

Lead towns with at least a quarter of all a state's people, with no other player's towns left in it, and the whole state becomes yours: every town, with its people and taxes. A state you hold works as one town. Its towns join into one shape on the map, its troops are one state army kept in its capital, and all of its land and people count together. Attack any town of someone else's state and their whole state army defends it; beat it and the whole state changes hands. A state army can march on the next state in one go.

6. Nations, diplomacy and trade

Leaders can found or join a nation: members' towns count together toward taking states. Declare war, sign ceasefires and peace treaties, send envoys, and form blocs with other nations. Towns taken in a war are occupied until peace, and a peace treaty decides which ones are kept. The world market lets you buy and sell food, oil and steel, and you can trade directly with other leaders. Leaderboards rank everyone by population, land, economy and military strength.

7. Build with blocks and play in 3D

In a town you lead you can build freely with blocks in 3D: walls, floors, towers and cover from sandbags, wood or concrete, and everyone sees what you build within seconds. The 3D game puts you on the ground as your general to walk your bases and join battles live.

8. Share your war

Clip mode hides the menus and frames the map tall for TikTok and Reels. Record a battle or a missile strike, or replay your country's growth as a timelapse, and share the link to challenge your friends: can you take over the world?

Play fair

One commander per person, no bots, and be decent to real people. Read the rules and how we handle your data in the privacy policy. Ready? Open the map and pick your town.