A few turns into my campaign leading the Roman Empire, I take a leaf out of Nero's playbook and burn my granary. Not the actual storehouse that's keeping Rome's citizens fed, but the playing card that would allow me to build another. Right now, I'm less interested in stockpiling food than I am in cycling through my deck for a few extra legionaries to fend off the French riflemen parked outside my gates. Forget tallying up turn counters, in Hexarchy, empires live and die by counting cards.
Each turn of this historical 4X strategy game starts with a draw, giving you a hand of eight cards that are used to construct buildings, recruit units, and enact special abilities. Things start out at a familiar pace, as you dispatch scouts to uncover the fog of a procedurally generated hex-grid map, use settlers to found new cities, and construct various buildings to reap the resources from the tiles within your territory. Mines need to be built to increase your production rates, vineyards laid to keep your food stocks high, and monuments erected to make your population happy.
