Horde

Every few nights the undead raccoons crawl out of the ruins, and each horde is bigger than the last. When the badtide comes, a super horde pours out all at once. Hold the walls until sunrise, then seal the ruins for good.

Play it with friends or alone: pick Horde on the New Game screens’ last page and start without waiting for anyone if you’re on your own.

Fight your rivals and the horde at the same time, or team up against it. Everyone owns their districts. After every horde you get goods, buildings and siege machines you can put to use right away. AI opponents can join as rivals, or you can face just the horde and seal every ruin to win.

With Shared colony on, everyone builds one colony together, with the same goods and science. Off (the default), each player starts their own.

The nights

The horde first comes out on the cycle set in First undead night, then every few nights (Nights per horde). The nights in between are quiet. At sunrise before a horde night you get a warning: “The ruins are stirring. The horde comes out tonight.”

Each horde is bigger than the last, and grows a little with every day of the cycle. Only the ruins nearest the District Centers wake up, a couple more every cycle.

The badtide. The first night of a badtide always brings a super horde, whatever the setting says: at least two and a half times a normal one, all out of a single ruin. The warning reads “The badtide stirs the ruins. A super horde rises tonight.” The sunrise after it pays double.

What they go for

They hunt beavers outside first, then the ground around buildings with beavers in them. A big enough crowd picks at a building and drives everyone inside out into the swarm. Nobody can go into a swarmed building.

Dams, levees and floodgates hold them back like walls: the horde piles up against them and spills over once the pile is higher. They’d rather walk around a cliff than climb it.

Bites

A beaver caught in the swarm gets bitten, and the more raccoons around it, the faster it goes down. Bites can also give it badwater sickness. A beaver inside a building is safe.

Pumpkins cure the sickness: two do it.

Dawn

Before sunrise they head back to the ruins and caves, and the ones that make it hide until the next horde night. The ones left out in the sun stop where they are and burn. Under rock they don’t burn.

By day they don’t bite or gnaw anything, and your troops can pick them off.

Fighting them

Select your troops and click a raccoon to send them at it. Siege stones and ballista bolts kill a good part of a crowd where they land, and resin puddles set them on fire.

The Flamethrower is made for them. It’s only in the toolbar in Horde games.

Rewards

After every horde night each player gets science and salvage, sent straight to their District Center. The longer since the last horde, and the more raccoons you killed, the more it brings, and later nights bring better salvage: weapons from night 3, gears from night 12, siege stones and bolts from night 16, metal from night 20.

Pick a reward. If you really fought the horde, you also pick one of three rewards, ready to use:

Pick later puts the choice away. The Rewards button shows a red mark while one is waiting.

Winning

Seal every ruin to win: “The last ruin is sealed. The nights are quiet again.” With rivals in the game, you also have to outlast them: a player who loses every beaver is out, and only allies win together.

• Underground ruins. Build a Mine in or on top of it.
• Ruin columns on the surface. Scavenge them away.

The tally

A row in the population panel counts the raccoons you cut down, the beavers you lost and the horde nights you survived.

Halloween

These come with Halloween, in every game mode.

Pumpkins

Farmhouses plant them in Horde games: 7 days to grow, 3 pumpkins each. Carved, they light up at night. Eaten raw, they cure the badwater sickness from a bite. Maps can have wild ones that never dry out.

Candy Buckets

Placed on a map. Demolish one for 250 science.

Will-o’-the-Wisps

Pale flames over the ruins at night, placed on a map. Building over one clears it.