ΠΟΛΙΣ — Athens
Govern classical Athens across 272 unbroken years (594–322 BC). Steer family factions, the favour of the gods, and shifting alliances through 405 historical events — as the tide of history carries your city, inexorably, toward 322 BC.
Where to buy
Media
Details
About this game
Rule Athens for 272 years on the current of history — a city-state simulation from Solon to the death of Alexander.
ΠΟΛΙΣ is a single-city historical strategy game set in classical Athens. You take the city from Solon's reforms (594 BC) to the Lamian War and the end of the democracy (322 BC) — one complete, unbroken arc of 272 years.
This is not a sandbox. History has a current, and it runs toward 322 BC. Persia withdraws, Sparta endures, Macedon rises, Chaeronea falls in 338, the democracy ends in 322 — and no internal policy can wash those away. What you can change is everything in between: who holds power, which faction prevails, whether the gods favour you, how the empire's silver is spent. Even the great counterfactuals of history — making peace at Pylos, vetoing the Sicilian Expedition, holding the line at Aegospotami — are on the table, but only as steeply-priced gambles that converge back to 322 BC.
The event illustrations throughout are public-domain paintings on classical themes; the city itself is reconstructed in a clean 3D style.
Features
• Turn-based, one month at a time — plan freely while time stands still, then let the month run its course; every third month the Assembly sits and must pass one decree. No timers, no twitch.
• 272 years, one city — a complete historical arc with 405 researched events, from the archaic reforms to the Persian Wars, the age of Pericles, the Peloponnesian War, and the Macedonian dawn.
• Tension, not number-walls — balance the pull of aristocratic families, the favour of the Olympian gods, and the demands of the Delian and Second Athenian Leagues. Every gain is bound to a cost.
• Choices that echo forward — some decisions are open gambles with the odds shown before you commit; others plant a flag that returns as a fresh event seasons or years later.
• Statesmen with stories — appoint historical figures, weather their ambition and the envy of rivals, face ostracism and impeachment.
• 109 public-domain paintings on classical themes illustrate the events — drawn from museum collections in the public domain (not original artwork), each shown in a gilded frame and an in-engine sketch variant.
• Nine languages — English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian.
• 3D Athens — an archaeologically-minded reconstruction of the city: the Acropolis on its limestone crag, the Agora, the Long Walls to Piraeus, the rivers of the Attic plain.
• A shareable epitaph card seals each playthrough; emergent endings and meme achievements reward replaying the same arc a different way.
• For the hardcore: Ironman — achievements are earned only in Hard + Ironman: a single ever-overwritten save, no reloading, your choices final. Normal mode plays freely with full saves for everyone else.
