Empires // A Full Civilization System for Hytale

Claims mods give you land. Empires gives you a nation. Found an empire, tax your citizens, promote your officers, manage your map, and declare your wars, all from one hub. Built for servers where politics are supposed to matter.

Main command: /empire (aliases: /e, /emp, /settlement) Requires: Hytale server 0.7.3+ & Gilded Dreams (economy)

Live on our main server PyreTale alongside Gilded Dreams, the Armoury by LadyPaladra, and Hexcode - Magic by Design by Riprod. Join and see it running before you install it.

OVERVIEW

Empires is a civilization mod for Hytale servers. Not a claims plugin with extra steps, an actual political system. Players found settlements, recruit citizens into a nine-rank hierarchy, tax them weekly into a shared treasury, claim chunk-by-chunk territory rendered live on the world map, and manage diplomacy from formal alliances down to open war. Settlements grow through seven tiers, from Hamlet to Empire, and can swear other settlements in as vassals, building real feudal hierarchies with tribute flowing up the chain.

Designed from the ground up to pair with the Gilded Dreams economy mod: taxes are collected straight out of each citizen's gold bank, founding a town costs real gold, and the treasury your empire builds is the same currency players trade, shop, and fight over. Politics and economics run as one system instead of two plugins ignoring each other.

Everything is managed through button-driven menus: the Empire Hub, management panels, diplomacy pages, a letters inbox, and a full map hub. Nobody memorizes forty commands to run a kingdom, and citizens can see exactly where they stand.

KEY FEATURES

Founding & Governance

• Found a settlement for 1,000 gold with a unique name, then customize its identity: motto, banner, and chat tag
• Seven settlement tiers: Hamlet, Village, Town, City, Metropolis, Kingdom, Empire — each unlocking a bigger claim limit as your population grows
• Six government types: Feudal Monarchy, Imperial Bureaucracy, Merchant Republic, Theocracy, Tribal Confederation, Council Realm — each with its own economic modifiers
• Nine ranks: Leader, Co-Leader, Treasurer, Diplomat, Marshal, Steward, Officer, Citizen, Recruit — plus custom per-player titles
• Per-rank permissions (15 of them): building, interacting, claiming, inviting, kicking, promoting, treasury access, tax control, diplomacy, laws, announcements, waypoint teleports, and more — leaders decide exactly who can do what
• Settlement laws you toggle yourself: outsider build / interact / containers / item pickup, recruit restrictions, overlord rights, PvP inside your borders, open or closed borders
• Recruitment modes: open, invite-only, or closed — joining is a choice, not an accident
• Succession system: designate an heir, set an inactivity timeout in days, and leadership transfers automatically when a ruler goes dark
• Full dissolution cleans up claims and data when an empire falls

Taxes & Treasury

• Weekly tax collection (Sundays): each citizen pays a leader-set percentage rate (0–100%) straight from their Gilded Dreams gold bank into the settlement treasury
• Indebted citizens: can't afford your taxes? You're marked INDEBTED and building is disabled for you until the debt is reconciled from your bank (checked hourly). Overtax and you inherit a ghost town.
• Upkeep costs (server-configurable): settlements pay weekly maintenance per claimed chunk and per member — big empires cost real money to run
• Vassal tribute: a share of vassal income flows up to the overlord every week
• Treasury ledger: every tax, deposit, withdrawal, and upkeep payment is logged and viewable in-game
• Manual deposits and withdrawals for rank-authorized members

Territory & Map Management

• Chunk-based claims (32×32 blocks) — stand in a chunk, claim it, done
• Claim limits scale with tier: 16 chunks as a Hamlet up to 632 as a full Empire
• Live world-map overlay: your empire's color painted over its territory, with a clean settlement label (name, government, member count) on each contiguous claim area
• Clickable capital & home markers with "View Realm": inspect any empire straight from the map
• Fog of war (optional): the map reveals only what players have explored, with configurable radius
• Shared settlement waypoints (default 12 per settlement) plus optional personal waypoints, with a nearest-waypoint HUD bar
• Player radar, world border, marker & coordinate teleports: all server-configurable
• Per-player privacy toggles: hide other players, your death marker, or spawn markers on your own map
• Teleports with warmups: /empire spawn or capital to your capital (10-second stand-still warmup), /empire home, and waypoint teleports with a configurable warmup

Protections

• Territory protection inside your borders: block breaking, placing, damaging, interacting, container access, and item pickup are all gated
• Law- and rank-aware: what someone can touch depends on their rank, your laws, and your diplomatic relationship with them
• Diplomacy-aware access: allies and trade partners can be granted rights outsiders don't get; overlords can be granted rights in vassal land
• Admin safezones with buffer zones, marked on the map
• EmpireGuard: a separate staff-only region protection system — select two corners, create named regions, and flag PvP or interaction on/off per region, all from its own GUI hub

Diplomacy, Rivalry & War

• Seven formal relation states: Neutral, Alliance, Non-Aggression Pact, Trade Partner, Rivalry, War, Vassal
• Full offer / accept / deny flow — diplomacy is negotiated, not imposed
• War and rivalry are formal, public, hostile states that feed directly into the protection and access rules — your neighbors, and the whole server, can see exactly who stands where. The fighting itself is yours to do.
• Vassalize other settlements into a realm hierarchy: tribute flows upward, realm chat connects the chain, and the realm overview shows the whole tree
• In-game letters: write, send, and read mail between settlements — declare intentions on paper before you declare them in the field

Chat System

• Full multi-channel chat: Global, Settlement, Officer, Alliance, Kingdom, Empire, and Trade channels, plus ranged local Say / Whisper / Shout / Emote
• Settlement chat tags and titles shown in channels
• Leader announcements broadcast to every member
• Staff and Admin channels, plus staff moderation tools (mute/unmute/kick)

The Hubs

• Empire Hub (/empire hub): ranks, treasury, laws, diplomacy, letters, and management in one button-driven menu
• Map Hub (/empiremap): personal map settings, HUD toggles, marker privacy, and waypoints for every player
• Citizen view: rank, taxes, and empire status at a glance
• Admin hubs: a full admin panel, an admin map hub (live server config: fog of war, world border, teleport rules, map scales, exploration resets), and the EmpireGuard region hub
• Same UI language as the Gilded Dreams shop hub, so the whole package plays like one game, not a stack of plugins

Built as an Ecosystem

• Gilded Dreams: full gold economy, player shops, banking — strongly recommended; taxes, founding costs, and treasuries all run on it (Empires still loads without it)
• The Armoury by LadyPaladra and Hex Magics by Riprod run alongside Empires on PyreTale
• SQLite storage, single jar, battle-tested live on a real server — not just in a dev world

 COMMAND REFERENCES

Although Empires has an advanced command system, our goal was/ is to build a mod that is accessible through the various /hub commands. Drop down menus, buttons, communications and more! Empires aspires to move away from chat commands, leaving them as an option for players, rather than a need.

CITIZENSHIP & GOVERNANCE

ECONOMY

TERRITORY, MAP, AND TRAVEL

DIPLOMACY, WARS, & REALMS

ADMIN & STAFF

Permission Nodes (For Server Admins)

Grant regular players empire.use only. Grant staff the empireguard.* and empireadmin.* trees. Do not give players a broad empire.* wildcard.

GETTING STARTED

1. Install Empires (and Gilded Dreams for the full economic loop)
2. Earn 1,000 gold coins through mob farming or trading with wandering traders and type /empire create <name>
3. /empire hub — invite citizens, set your ranks, laws, and tax rate
4. /empire claim your borders, /empire setcapital, and open the world map to watch your color spread
5. Start making history

SUPPORT & COMMUNITY

Bug reports, feature requests, and the fastest answers: https://discord.gg/PTbXg4WWUF

Want to see Empires at full scale? It runs live on PyreTale, our dark medieval Hytale server, set in the world of the upcoming novel Pyre. IP and details in the Discord.