Rules - Seattle Goose Conquest

Goal & Quick Start

Capture every playable Seattle zone. You begin with one random non-Water zone, 100 geese, and 60 breadfluence.

At Dawn, collect bread and receive five new geese, plus any policy modifiers.
At Noon, select reachable human zones and queue operations.
In the Afternoon, those operations strike defenses and cause goose casualties.
After you hold five zones, use Early Morning Parliament sessions to shape the campaign.

You win when every playable zone is Goose-held. You lose if a General Strike reduces the army to zero while bread is also zero.

The Five-Phase Day

A turn is a full day split into five phases. The phase icon in the HUD shows where you are, and the Advance Phase button appears when the game is waiting on you.

Auto-advance phases: Dawn and Midnight always move forward on their own. Afternoon skips forward if there were no battles to report.
Player-driven phases: Early Morning, Noon, and an Afternoon with battle reports require your input or a manual advance.

Dawn: Bread income, recruitment, and combat-state timers.

Early Morning: Regular Parliament session (if High Command is active).

Noon: Queue operations with fixed goose costs.

Afternoon: Operation queue resolves and reports are shown.

Midnight: Story events.

Dawn - Supply & Start of Turn

Dawn handles the bookkeeping for a new day. It runs automatically and pushes you into Early Morning when it finishes.

Your army receives five new geese before policy modifiers are applied.
Breadfluence income, per-zone income, and policy recruitment apply.
Combat-state durations count down.
If negative income leaves bread at zero, a General Strike begins and removes half of the current army each Dawn until the budget recovers.

Dawn runs automatically. Soldier recruitment purchases refresh when the new turn begins.

Early Morning - Parliament Session

Early Morning is reserved for the Goose High Command. If the Parliament is active, a regular session begins and waits for your votes.

Regular sessions present one proposal per two hemicycle rows, with a minimum of one and a maximum of three. Unavailable proposals and already-owned one-time unlocks are filtered out.
Each faction has a fixed, pregenerated vote and explanation for every policy. Sealed ballots load immediately when proposals appear and are revealed only after you cast. No network connection or live AI service is used.
Choose For or Against on every proposal, then cast votes to resolve them simultaneously. Faction votes, reasoning, and the final tally are revealed afterward.
Your choice commits all player-controlled seats. Faction delegations commit their own seats; a proposal passes only when Yes has more seats than No, so ties fail.
If the High Command has not formed yet, Early Morning auto-advances without a session.

The High Command activates after you control five zones and the midnight democracy story fires. Each pair of hemicycle rows adds another proposal (up to three), so a growing parliament makes Early Morning meetings larger.

Policy Effects

Every proposal card shows its effect rows before you vote. If the bill passes, those rows apply immediately unless the row says it changes Dawn income, Dawn recruitment, or a timed plan.

Effect row	What it does
Seats	Adjusts locked Parliament seats immediately. Faction seat gains and losses also change that faction's relationship.
Income / Zone Income	Changes breadfluence at Dawn. Income is a flat daily change; zone income pays once per matching Goose-held zone each Dawn.
Instant / Instant Troops	Adds or removes breadfluence or geese as soon as the policy passes.
Recruitment	Changes the number of new geese arriving every Dawn.
Global Strike / Strike Bonus / Strike Flat	Changes operation strike strength. Global applies everywhere; zone bonuses apply only to listed zone types; flat bonuses add raw strike points.
Defense Intel	Upgrades operation planning from defense bands to exact zone defenses at Tier 1. Once you have a tier, policies that unlock that same tier stop appearing.
Battle Forecasts	Upgrades combat forecasts from rough odds to exact odds, strike ranges, and casualty ranges at Tier 1. Already-owned forecast tiers are filtered out of future agendas.
Operations	Unlocks new operation-planner options. Proposals that unlock an operation you already have are removed from the agenda pool.
Operation Buffs	Permanently adjusts strike or exposure for selected operations or faction operations.
Park / Residential Capture	Pays the listed breadfluence when you capture a matching zone.
Timed Income / Troops / Cost / Duration	Applies the listed temporary income, troop delivery, or bread cost at Dawn for the shown number of turns.

Regular sessions only offer eligible policies. A single session will not offer two proposals for the same intel tier or operation.

Noon - Operation Planning

Noon is the only phase where you can queue operations. Select a human-owned, playable zone that can be reached by an unlocked operation to open the operation prep modal.

Probe, Assault, and Overrun are available at the start; policies unlock faction operations and the Grand Operation.
Each operation has a fixed commitment, strike range, exposure range, and special effect.
Committed geese are reserved for that operation, but only exposure casualties are permanently removed. Total commitments cannot exceed your army.
Only one operation can be queued against a zone each turn. Grand Operation must be the entire queue.
Queued operations execute in the Afternoon in the order they were planned.
Defense bands, rough odds, zone demographics, and active combat states are baseline information.
Defense Intel Tier 1 shows exact defenses. Battle Forecasts Tier 1 shows exact odds, strike ranges, and casualty ranges.

Planning happens only here. If you try to plan outside Noon, the button disables and the modal will refuse to queue the operation.

Afternoon - Resolve Battles

Afternoon resolves the entire operation queue. Operations execute, casualties apply, and results show on the map.

Defenders are the zone's defense rating — there is no human army pool.
Strike reduces the zone's defense; exposure causes goose casualties. Victory happens when defense hits 0.
Each additional Goose-held neighbor beyond the first adds +1 flanking strike.
Captured zones become Goose-held.
Failed operations can still apply combat states such as Scouted, Exposed, Softened, Rattled, Flooded Approach, or Surge Momentum.
If no operations were queued, Afternoon auto-advances without a report.

Battle reports show casualties and strike, plus any modifiers or combat states that affected the result.

Reinforcements & Bread

Use Recruit Soldiers from the command sidebar during any phase to spend bread on immediate military recovery.

Once per turn, recruit between 1 and 20 soldiers.
Each soldier costs 2 bread and joins the army immediately.
The purchase refreshes when the turn number advances after Midnight.

Midnight - Story

Midnight handles story beats and resets the political calendar for the next day.

News ticker announcements continue while the game moves on; they do not delay the next phase.
Parliament is the exception: queued news finishes before the Parliament handoff opens and waits for you.
Dawn still begins under a running ticker, so its income payout animation is not delayed.
Special stories trigger whenever the hemicycle reaches four rows and again at six rows.

Midnight auto-advances into the next Dawn while ordinary news continues. Expanding the hemicycle to four or six rows unlocks exclusive parliament tales during Midnight.

The Human Resistance

Humans are not a diplomacy faction like Crows, Ducks, or Pigeons. They are the default owners of Seattle's neighborhoods, and their only mechanical role is territorial defense.

Zone ownership: Every playable zone starts under human control except your opening Goose foothold. Capturing human zones is how you expand and win.
Defense, not armies: Human-held zones have a defense rating (10–29 at game start, hard cap 200). There is no separate human troop pool — defense is the only human-side stat in combat.
Combat in the Afternoon: Your operation rolls strike and exposure. Strike lowers the zone's defense; exposure determines casualties. When defense reaches 0, the zone becomes Goose-held and its defense resets to 0.
Story pressure: Human resistance appears in chapter milestones, the Bruce Harrell emergency broadcast, and the victory and defeat endings. These are narrative beats, not another resource or faction.

Goose-held zones never track defense. Human zone defenses do not regenerate overnight — only combat reduces them.

Faction Relationships

Crows, Ducks, and Pigeons each track a relationship score with the Goose High Command. Scores start at 0, clamp between -50 and +50, and drive combat bonuses and intel quality.

What high and low favor do

Crows (≥ +30 / ≤ -30): Unlock Crow Expose and improve intel and Crow-operation exposure at high favor; low favor penalizes both. Baseline defense bands, rough odds, and combat states remain visible.

Ducks (≥ +30 / ≤ -30): Unlock Duck Waterline Raid and improve Water and water-adjacent operations at high favor; low favor penalizes those strikes.

Pigeons (≥ +30 / ≤ -30): Unlock Pigeon Surge and improve Pigeon operations at high favor; low favor penalizes them.

Ways to gain favor

Parliament votes (Early Morning): After casting votes, each faction adjusts based on whether you voted For or Against in line with their pregenerated stance on each proposal. Alignment changes that relationship by +1 or -1 per policy. Whether a bill passes does not matter.
Faction seat gains: When Crows, Ducks, or Pigeons gain hemicycle seats (demographics from captured zones or locked seats from policies), that faction gains relationship equal to min(seats gained × 2, 5).

Ways to lose favor

Parliament votes: Voting against a faction's preferred policy (or for one they oppose) applies the same alignment penalty in reverse.
Faction seat losses: Losing seats works like gains in reverse — up to -5 when a faction's delegation shrinks.

Relationship values, zone demographics, and Parliament relationship deltas are visible without buying separate advisor tiers.

All-Day Systems

These systems apply across every phase, regardless of the clock.

Zones & adjacency: You start in a random playable non-Water zone with 100 geese and 60 breadfluence. Most operations target human-owned, playable zones adjacent to Goose territory; specialized Duck operations can have water-based reach.

Zone defenses: Human zones roll 10-29 base defense and cap at 200. Goose-held zones do not track defense.

Breadfluence: Once per turn, spend 2 bread per soldier for up to 20 soldiers. Policies can add Dawn income, recruitment, or explicit capture bonuses.

Diplomacy: Faction relationships start at 0 and clamp between -50 and 50. See Faction Relationships above for every gain and loss source.

Saves: Create as many saved games as you like. Campaign progress and queued regular operations are saved.

Main Menu

Play opens your saved games; choose one to continue or start a new campaign.
Tutorial starts the guided short scenario.
Rules opens this page.

Tutorial Mode

Tutorial starts from the normal opening position: one random non-Water Goose zone, 100 geese, and 60 breadfluence. It uses the same controls and phase rules as Play mode, with scripted outcomes so the walkthrough is repeatable.

The tutorial covers the full five-phase loop, Dawn income and recruitment, fixed operation commitments, exposure casualties, Midnight stories, and ordinary Parliament voting.
It selects an adjacent human target and explains each required action before you need it.
Parliament unlocks after two Goose zones in tutorial only, so politics can be taught without a full campaign.
Play mode keeps the standard five-zone Parliament unlock and has no tutorial prompts.

Controls

Mouse: Click zones to select them, click empty map space to clear the selection, click and drag to pan, use the wheel to zoom, and double-click the map to reset zoom.
Arrow keys: Navigate map zones until the command sidebar has focus; keyboard-selected targets are kept in view.
Shift + Arrow keys: Move the map frame instead of changing the selected zone.
Shift + Left + Right, then Up / Down: Zoom the map in or out around the current center.
Tab: Focuses the last selected command sidebar control, or the first available control if none was selected yet.
Sidebar arrows: Move between available sidebar controls while focus is inside the sidebar.
Operation prep: Tab between available operations, then press Space to queue the focused operation.
Enter / Space: Use the focused sidebar control, continue story prompts, advance available phases, or confirm modal choices.
Esc: Closes the top modal or goes back from this rules page.
? opens the keyboard help overlay.