In this ancient Chinese war city-builder, retainers inspired by the Hundred Schools of Thought can shape farming, production, governance, military preparation, and diplomacy.
PC strategy games remain a stable but highly competitive market.
Players interested in strategy, simulation, and city-building are not short on new games. What is harder to find is a game that can quickly explain what kind of different strategic problem it offers inside a crowded field of familiar tags. Internal PC strategy research also points to a more crowded Steam environment, where Strategy and Simulation tags can still show stronger long-tail potential, but only when a game offers meaningful system depth rather than relying only on theme or packaging.
Historical strategy games face this problem even more directly.
A new time period, an unfamiliar civilization, or a striking architectural style can attract players at first glance. But that usually only completes the first step: getting someone to open the store page, look at screenshots, or read the description. What decides whether players keep watching is whether that historical setting actually enters the gameplay.
In other words, the question is not:
Does this game look like ancient China?
The question is:
Does this ancient Chinese setting change how I build, assign people, govern, and prepare for war?
That is one of the biggest risks for historical strategy games. The setting may feel new, while the actual decisions remain familiar. Buildings receive a different visual style, characters wear period clothing, system names use historical terms, but the player may still be making the same choices they would make in another city-builder or strategy game.
Strategy players can usually recognize that kind of “reskin” quickly.
They are not interested only in cultural terms. They are interested in whether those terms create new decision pressure:
Can a character change the order in which a city develops?
Can a school of thought affect agriculture, military planning, diplomacy, or production?
Can a historical institution change how players think about expansion, governance, and war?Mandate Order tries to answer that question through its retainer system.
Developed by Digital Sky, Mandate Order is an ancient Chinese war city-builder set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era. The game is planned for a Q3 2026 launch window on Steam. In its Q&A, the team makes a clear point: Chinese culture should not be reduced to visual packaging. Mechanics and gameplay must work first, and culture should then explain why those mechanics make sense. The retainer system represents that idea: players are not simply following a fixed optimal building order, but adjusting their city-building strategy based on the retainers they recruit.
In gameplay terms, retainers in Mandate Order are not just historical figures placed in a collection screen. Players can recruit retainers through the retainer panel or central command tent, then assign them to buildings or armies to provide effects to those targets. Retainers are associated with schools such as Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, Military Strategy, Agriculturalism, Jiran, and Yin-Yang, with those schools connected to morale, nature, management efficiency, production efficiency, military ability, agricultural output, economy and trade, and special effects.
That means Mandate Order does not begin by telling players that the Hundred Schools of Thought are important. Instead, it puts players into more practical management questions:
If food pressure is rising, should an Agriculturalist retainer be prioritized?
If workshops and military equipment are falling behind, is a Mohist or production-focused retainer more valuable?
If enemy pressure is building, should a Military Strategy retainer be assigned to an army or war preparation system first?
If morale is unstable and population growth slows, is a governance-focused retainer more urgent than further expansion?When these choices enter city planning, resource movement, conscription preparation, and the rhythm of war, the Hundred Schools of Thought are no longer only historical background. They begin to act as a strategic language that can shape a playthrough.
Retainers Are Not Collection Characters. They Are People You Assign
Retainers in Mandate Order are not only characters stored in a roster.
According to the current system description, players can recruit retainers through the retainer panel or central command tent. After recruiting one, the player can choose a target building or army and assign the retainer there, allowing that retainer to provide effects to the chosen target.
That step matters.
It turns the Hundred Schools of Thought from background text into a system players actively operate.
After recruiting a retainer, the player is not only looking at portrait art or flavor text. They need to decide:
Which building should this retainer be assigned to?
Is this retainer better for farming, production, governance, or the army?
What does the city lack right now: food, order, workshop efficiency, or combat strength?
Would assigning this retainer to an army be more valuable than assigning them to a production building?This means that when a retainer enters the city, the player’s next development decision may change.
If food is tight, the player may assign a relevant retainer to support agriculture.
If equipment production is falling behind, production efficiency may become more important.
If enemy pressure is high, a military retainer becomes more valuable.
If the city reaches the mid-to-late game, economic, trade, or governance retainers may reshape resource flow.A retainer is not an isolated bonus button. It is a reason to redirect the city’s priorities.
Different Schools Create Different Development Tendencies
Mandate Order’s retainers come from different schools, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, Military Strategy, Agriculturalism, Jiran, and Yin-Yang. The play manual also connects these schools to different gameplay directions: Confucianism to morale, Daoism to nature, Legalism to management efficiency, Mohism to production efficiency, Military Strategy to combat ability, Agriculturalism to crop output, Jiran to economy and trade, and Yin-Yang to special effects.
This makes schools more than names. They have clear strategic roles.
If the player recruits an Agriculturalist retainer, the immediate question may be food.
Can the farms stabilize?
Can the city support population growth?
Should agriculture be reinforced before the next harvest?If the player recruits a Mohist retainer, the question may shift toward engineering and production.
Can workshop efficiency, construction, or defensive preparation be accelerated?
Can the armory and defensive equipment receive better support?If the player recruits a Military Strategy retainer, the player may begin thinking earlier about conscription, army composition, and city defense.
Should the city prepare for war earlier?
Should troop structure be adjusted?
Should the armory begin stockpiling equipment sooner?If the player recruits Legalist, Confucian, or Jiran-related retainers, governance, morale, efficiency, and resource exchange may become more important.
This allows each playthrough to avoid following the same fixed build order.
The same starting city may develop differently depending on which retainers appear. One player may stabilize food first. Another may reinforce production. Another may prepare for war earlier. Another may use economy and trade as the breakthrough point.
The point of retainers is not to tell players which school is strongest. It is to place different paths in front of them.
That is more flexible than simply giving players a fixed technology tree.
.jpg?w=600&mode=max&otf=y&quality=90&format=jpg&bgcolor=white&sky=f1cddc955117e4f1ef45d209ac29d9fe9e0d356108a0c130ee2ca31047cd03a0)
Retainers Change How Buildings and Armies Are Used
The real value of the retainer system is not the number of characters it offers. It is whether those characters can change how players use buildings and armies.
Mandate Order’s city is built from homes, wells, fields, warehouses, workshops, barracks, armories, walls, and defensive structures. Pitch materials also describe retainers as characters who can be placed into key positions such as city governance, military command, diplomacy, and policy development, rather than being simple static bonuses.
That connects retainers to other systems.
If a retainer affects agriculture, players reassess field numbers, granary reserves, and population growth.
If a retainer affects production, workshops, warehouses, and logistics become more important.
If a retainer affects military strength, players think about troop types, conscription, armories, and wall defense.
If a retainer affects diplomacy or economy, players may adjust trade, resource exchange, and external relations.In other words, retainers are not character cards sitting outside the systems.
They enter specific nodes in the city.
An agricultural retainer may make population expansion feel safer.
A production retainer may help players push weapons and defensive equipment earlier.
A military retainer may push players toward earlier defense or expeditions.
An economic retainer may help relieve resource shortages through trade.This turns “who did I recruit?” into “where does this city go next?”
Retainers Have Costs, So More Is Not Always Better
If retainers were free permanent bonuses, they would quickly become another equipment slot.
Mandate Order does not currently treat them that way.
The play manual states that retainers need their own housing and require monthly salary payments, including currency and goods. If their salary is not paid, retainer satisfaction decreases. If satisfaction drops too low, they may leave.
This rule matters.
It means retainers are not simply “the more, the better.” They are people the player has to support and manage.
Recruiting a retainer means the city must provide housing.
Keeping a retainer means paying monthly salary.
If the city economy is unstable, satisfaction may drop.
If a retainer leaves, the building, army, or development route that depended on them may be affected.This adds another layer of judgment to recruitment:
Can the city afford this retainer right now?
Is this ability worth the current investment?
Does the city lack farming, production, military strength, or governance?
Will spending currency and goods here slow other development?Retainers are therefore not only abilities to acquire. They are development routes with upkeep costs.
Because they have costs, they feel more like people living inside the city, rather than permanent buffs in a menu.
When Culture Enters Gameplay, an Unfamiliar Setting Becomes Easier to Understand
For players outside China, the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era and the Hundred Schools of Thought may be unfamiliar concepts.
But unfamiliarity does not have to be a barrier. What matters is how the game explains it.
If the game only presents the Hundred Schools of Thought through text, players may feel the history but not necessarily understand why it matters to them. If different schools directly connect to agriculture, production, morale, military preparation, economy, and special effects, players can understand those differences through play even without knowing the full historical background.
Players do not need to understand Mohism in detail to know that a Mohist retainer is useful for production and engineering.
They do not need to study Agriculturalism to understand that an Agriculturalist retainer supports food and farming.
They do not need to read military philosophy to understand that a Military Strategy retainer changes army and war preparation.That is the value of turning culture into systems.
It does not flatten culture. It turns culture into choices players can make, feel, and evaluate.
When a food crisis makes a player value Agriculturalist retainers;
when a failed defense makes them seek Military Strategy or Mohist support;
when morale drops and they look for governance help;
when resource pressure pushes them toward economy and trade;culture stops being only a background term.
It becomes the language players use to understand the system.
Mandate Order’s Setting Matters Only If It Changes Player Choices
Mandate Order’s most recognizable label may be “an ancient Chinese war city-builder set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era.”
That label is distinctive, but it is still only the entry point.
What determines whether players keep paying attention is whether the setting changes their choices.
The retainer system offers one answer. The Hundred Schools of Thought are not an encyclopedia, a skin, or just character collection. They can become part of the city’s development route.
Recruiting different retainers can redirect city priorities.
Assigning them to different buildings can change production or governance rhythm.
Assigning them to armies can affect military preparation.
Maintaining them creates housing, salary, and satisfaction management.This moves culture into the core of strategy games: choice, trade-off, and readable consequences.
In a strategy game, culture is most valuable not when players simply see it.
It is most valuable when it makes players change how they play.
If Mandate Order can make different retainers, schools, and situations produce different cities and different war outcomes, then the Hundred Schools of Thought will not only be a distinctive historical setting.
It will become the strategic language of the fortress city itself.
About Mandate Order
Mandate Order is an ancient Chinese war city-builder developed by Digital Sky, an independent studio based in Chengdu, China. Set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, the game starts players with a small frontier settlement and asks them to develop it into a functioning military stronghold. Players build homes, wells, fields, warehouses, workshops, barracks, armories, walls, and defensive structures while managing resources, population needs, logistics, retainers, diplomacy, and battlefield tactics. The game is currently listed on Steam, supports 12 languages, and is planned for a Q3 2026 launch window.
Steam
Official X
Official website
PC strategy games remain a stable but highly competitive market.
Players interested in strategy, simulation, and city-building are not short on new games. What is harder to find is a game that can quickly explain what kind of different strategic problem it offers inside a crowded field of familiar tags. Internal PC strategy research also points to a more crowded Steam environment, where Strategy and Simulation tags can still show stronger long-tail potential, but only when a game offers meaningful system depth rather than relying only on theme or packaging.
Historical strategy games face this problem even more directly.
A new time period, an unfamiliar civilization, or a striking architectural style can attract players at first glance. But that usually only completes the first step: getting someone to open the store page, look at screenshots, or read the description. What decides whether players keep watching is whether that historical setting actually enters the gameplay.
In other words, the question is not:
Does this game look like ancient China?
The question is:
Does this ancient Chinese setting change how I build, assign people, govern, and prepare for war?
That is one of the biggest risks for historical strategy games. The setting may feel new, while the actual decisions remain familiar. Buildings receive a different visual style, characters wear period clothing, system names use historical terms, but the player may still be making the same choices they would make in another city-builder or strategy game.
Strategy players can usually recognize that kind of “reskin” quickly.
They are not interested only in cultural terms. They are interested in whether those terms create new decision pressure:
Can a character change the order in which a city develops?
Can a school of thought affect agriculture, military planning, diplomacy, or production?
Can a historical institution change how players think about expansion, governance, and war?Mandate Order tries to answer that question through its retainer system.
Developed by Digital Sky, Mandate Order is an ancient Chinese war city-builder set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era. The game is planned for a Q3 2026 launch window on Steam. In its Q&A, the team makes a clear point: Chinese culture should not be reduced to visual packaging. Mechanics and gameplay must work first, and culture should then explain why those mechanics make sense. The retainer system represents that idea: players are not simply following a fixed optimal building order, but adjusting their city-building strategy based on the retainers they recruit.
In gameplay terms, retainers in Mandate Order are not just historical figures placed in a collection screen. Players can recruit retainers through the retainer panel or central command tent, then assign them to buildings or armies to provide effects to those targets. Retainers are associated with schools such as Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, Military Strategy, Agriculturalism, Jiran, and Yin-Yang, with those schools connected to morale, nature, management efficiency, production efficiency, military ability, agricultural output, economy and trade, and special effects.
That means Mandate Order does not begin by telling players that the Hundred Schools of Thought are important. Instead, it puts players into more practical management questions:
If food pressure is rising, should an Agriculturalist retainer be prioritized?
If workshops and military equipment are falling behind, is a Mohist or production-focused retainer more valuable?
If enemy pressure is building, should a Military Strategy retainer be assigned to an army or war preparation system first?
If morale is unstable and population growth slows, is a governance-focused retainer more urgent than further expansion?When these choices enter city planning, resource movement, conscription preparation, and the rhythm of war, the Hundred Schools of Thought are no longer only historical background. They begin to act as a strategic language that can shape a playthrough.
Retainers Are Not Collection Characters. They Are People You Assign
Retainers in Mandate Order are not only characters stored in a roster.
According to the current system description, players can recruit retainers through the retainer panel or central command tent. After recruiting one, the player can choose a target building or army and assign the retainer there, allowing that retainer to provide effects to the chosen target.
That step matters.
It turns the Hundred Schools of Thought from background text into a system players actively operate.
After recruiting a retainer, the player is not only looking at portrait art or flavor text. They need to decide:
Which building should this retainer be assigned to?
Is this retainer better for farming, production, governance, or the army?
What does the city lack right now: food, order, workshop efficiency, or combat strength?
Would assigning this retainer to an army be more valuable than assigning them to a production building?This means that when a retainer enters the city, the player’s next development decision may change.
If food is tight, the player may assign a relevant retainer to support agriculture.
If equipment production is falling behind, production efficiency may become more important.
If enemy pressure is high, a military retainer becomes more valuable.
If the city reaches the mid-to-late game, economic, trade, or governance retainers may reshape resource flow.A retainer is not an isolated bonus button. It is a reason to redirect the city’s priorities.
Different Schools Create Different Development Tendencies
Mandate Order’s retainers come from different schools, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, Military Strategy, Agriculturalism, Jiran, and Yin-Yang. The play manual also connects these schools to different gameplay directions: Confucianism to morale, Daoism to nature, Legalism to management efficiency, Mohism to production efficiency, Military Strategy to combat ability, Agriculturalism to crop output, Jiran to economy and trade, and Yin-Yang to special effects.
This makes schools more than names. They have clear strategic roles.
If the player recruits an Agriculturalist retainer, the immediate question may be food.
Can the farms stabilize?
Can the city support population growth?
Should agriculture be reinforced before the next harvest?If the player recruits a Mohist retainer, the question may shift toward engineering and production.
Can workshop efficiency, construction, or defensive preparation be accelerated?
Can the armory and defensive equipment receive better support?If the player recruits a Military Strategy retainer, the player may begin thinking earlier about conscription, army composition, and city defense.
Should the city prepare for war earlier?
Should troop structure be adjusted?
Should the armory begin stockpiling equipment sooner?If the player recruits Legalist, Confucian, or Jiran-related retainers, governance, morale, efficiency, and resource exchange may become more important.
This allows each playthrough to avoid following the same fixed build order.
The same starting city may develop differently depending on which retainers appear. One player may stabilize food first. Another may reinforce production. Another may prepare for war earlier. Another may use economy and trade as the breakthrough point.
The point of retainers is not to tell players which school is strongest. It is to place different paths in front of them.
That is more flexible than simply giving players a fixed technology tree.
Retainers Change How Buildings and Armies Are Used
The real value of the retainer system is not the number of characters it offers. It is whether those characters can change how players use buildings and armies.
Mandate Order’s city is built from homes, wells, fields, warehouses, workshops, barracks, armories, walls, and defensive structures. Pitch materials also describe retainers as characters who can be placed into key positions such as city governance, military command, diplomacy, and policy development, rather than being simple static bonuses.
That connects retainers to other systems.
If a retainer affects agriculture, players reassess field numbers, granary reserves, and population growth.
If a retainer affects production, workshops, warehouses, and logistics become more important.
If a retainer affects military strength, players think about troop types, conscription, armories, and wall defense.
If a retainer affects diplomacy or economy, players may adjust trade, resource exchange, and external relations.In other words, retainers are not character cards sitting outside the systems.
They enter specific nodes in the city.
An agricultural retainer may make population expansion feel safer.
A production retainer may help players push weapons and defensive equipment earlier.
A military retainer may push players toward earlier defense or expeditions.
An economic retainer may help relieve resource shortages through trade.This turns “who did I recruit?” into “where does this city go next?”
Retainers Have Costs, So More Is Not Always Better
If retainers were free permanent bonuses, they would quickly become another equipment slot.
Mandate Order does not currently treat them that way.
The play manual states that retainers need their own housing and require monthly salary payments, including currency and goods. If their salary is not paid, retainer satisfaction decreases. If satisfaction drops too low, they may leave.
This rule matters.
It means retainers are not simply “the more, the better.” They are people the player has to support and manage.
Recruiting a retainer means the city must provide housing.
Keeping a retainer means paying monthly salary.
If the city economy is unstable, satisfaction may drop.
If a retainer leaves, the building, army, or development route that depended on them may be affected.This adds another layer of judgment to recruitment:
Can the city afford this retainer right now?
Is this ability worth the current investment?
Does the city lack farming, production, military strength, or governance?
Will spending currency and goods here slow other development?Retainers are therefore not only abilities to acquire. They are development routes with upkeep costs.
Because they have costs, they feel more like people living inside the city, rather than permanent buffs in a menu.
When Culture Enters Gameplay, an Unfamiliar Setting Becomes Easier to Understand
For players outside China, the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era and the Hundred Schools of Thought may be unfamiliar concepts.
But unfamiliarity does not have to be a barrier. What matters is how the game explains it.
If the game only presents the Hundred Schools of Thought through text, players may feel the history but not necessarily understand why it matters to them. If different schools directly connect to agriculture, production, morale, military preparation, economy, and special effects, players can understand those differences through play even without knowing the full historical background.
Players do not need to understand Mohism in detail to know that a Mohist retainer is useful for production and engineering.
They do not need to study Agriculturalism to understand that an Agriculturalist retainer supports food and farming.
They do not need to read military philosophy to understand that a Military Strategy retainer changes army and war preparation.That is the value of turning culture into systems.
It does not flatten culture. It turns culture into choices players can make, feel, and evaluate.
When a food crisis makes a player value Agriculturalist retainers;
when a failed defense makes them seek Military Strategy or Mohist support;
when morale drops and they look for governance help;
when resource pressure pushes them toward economy and trade;culture stops being only a background term.
It becomes the language players use to understand the system.
Mandate Order’s Setting Matters Only If It Changes Player Choices
Mandate Order’s most recognizable label may be “an ancient Chinese war city-builder set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era.”
That label is distinctive, but it is still only the entry point.
What determines whether players keep paying attention is whether the setting changes their choices.
The retainer system offers one answer. The Hundred Schools of Thought are not an encyclopedia, a skin, or just character collection. They can become part of the city’s development route.
Recruiting different retainers can redirect city priorities.
Assigning them to different buildings can change production or governance rhythm.
Assigning them to armies can affect military preparation.
Maintaining them creates housing, salary, and satisfaction management.This moves culture into the core of strategy games: choice, trade-off, and readable consequences.
In a strategy game, culture is most valuable not when players simply see it.
It is most valuable when it makes players change how they play.
If Mandate Order can make different retainers, schools, and situations produce different cities and different war outcomes, then the Hundred Schools of Thought will not only be a distinctive historical setting.
It will become the strategic language of the fortress city itself.
About Mandate Order
Mandate Order is an ancient Chinese war city-builder developed by Digital Sky, an independent studio based in Chengdu, China. Set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, the game starts players with a small frontier settlement and asks them to develop it into a functioning military stronghold. Players build homes, wells, fields, warehouses, workshops, barracks, armories, walls, and defensive structures while managing resources, population needs, logistics, retainers, diplomacy, and battlefield tactics. The game is currently listed on Steam, supports 12 languages, and is planned for a Q3 2026 launch window.
Steam
Official X
Official website