If no alliance has won by month 8 (on a 9-month world), end times begin. The world starts dying. Climate weaponizes, monsters emerge, resources thin, and only the most stable empires survive long enough to win — or to die well.
Weather stops being neutral and becomes adversarial:
- Storms double in frequency and damage.
- Heat waves become global; deserts expand.
- Black weather events appear:
- Ash falls — destroy faith, kill crops.
- Blood rain — spreads plague.
- Magnetic storms — disable navigation; armies get lost.
- Sun eclipse — kills divine overrides; gods withdraw their gifts temporarily.
End-times weather is partially manipulable by gods — your priests can petition for relief, but cost-prohibitively in this phase.
NPC monster factions emerge (from npc-fraction.md):
| Monster |
Emerge from |
Threat |
| Plague Wraith |
Disease-ridden cities |
Drains city stockpile, spreads plague. |
| Storm Maelstrom |
Ocean during storms |
Destroys fleets. |
| Volcanic Drake |
Volcanic mountains |
High-altitude city threat. |
| Fanatic Horde |
Extreme religious polarization |
Mass uprising; can topple cities. |
| Shade-Mound |
Sacred sites desecrated |
Faith-tier collapse aura. |
| Frost-Wight |
Arctic regions in deep winter |
Cold-area attrition. |
Monsters do not negotiate. They are the world ending in unit form. Their unit stats are typically Avatar-tier (ie, comparable to a high-Belief god's Avatar form).
Resources thin out:
- Tier 1 raw (food, timber, stone, ore) — depletion rate doubles.
- Tier 2 refined — needs more raw input per unit produced.
- Tier 5 luxury — becomes nearly impossible to produce; trade dependence skyrockets.
Empires that didn't stockpile in mid-game suffer. Empires that did become economic targets.
¶ End-times divine domains
Some gods get end-times domains — extra powers unlocked only in this phase:
- Hroth Stormfather (Fjordborn) — End-Times Storm Mastery — fleets gain additional storm bonus while regular fleets are crushed.
- Asha Sun-Queen (Sun Dune) — Solar Burn — heat-extend attacks become continent-scale.
- Heket Floodmother (River Crown) — Final Flood — single massive flood event resets the map's wetlands.
- Manaw Mist-Father (Cairnveil) — Veil of Ending — global fog cover obscures all movement.
- Kondo Iron-Drummer (Red Earth) — Drum of the Last Day — empire-wide muster bonus, but consumes the host city.
These are powerful but temporary — they cost the worshipping culture deeply.
Peace becomes the most stable winning condition:
- Aggressive paths (Military, Religious-via-conquest) are disrupted by weather and monsters.
- Wonder Victory is at risk because wonders are vulnerable.
- Peace / Concordance is the only path that benefits from chaos — alliances pile in for stability.
This is by design — end-times is meant to push the world toward Peace if no other path has crystallized.
- Stockpile in autumn of mid-game. End-times resource depletion punishes profligate empires.
- Build climate infrastructure. Cisterns, windbreaks, heat shelters are not flavor — they save you.
- Sign Concordance Charters early. Once the timer starts, peace ratchets up faster.
- Don't pick fights. Monsters take the cost-side of every conflict.
- Save your divine overrides. End-times faith costs are doubled, but the impact is amplified — use sparingly but decisively.
End times ends one of three ways:
- Victory fires — the most resilient alliance achieves a path despite collapse.
- Peace Concordance closes — the most common end-times outcome.
- Total collapse — no one wins; the world is declared dead. Players retire characters; world retires.
A "dead world" still scores — the player who survived longest with most cities standing wins by attrition.
Sources: world_lifecycle.md (late phase), rts_world_collapse_end_times_design_table.xlsx, climate.md (end-times), npc-fraction.md (monster spawn).