How to Play
What is Primal Protocol
Primal Protocol is an auto-battler / base-builder. Two cities — North (blue) and South (red) — face each other across a three-lane map (west / centre / east) and fight until one City Core is destroyed. Waves of units spawn automatically every 12 seconds and march down the lanes on their own; you shape the war through economy, construction and research rather than direct unit control.
Modes
▶ Watch — AI vs AI
Both sides are fully AI-driven, and a cinematic camera director follows the action for you — orbiting battles, pushing in on skirmishes, cutting to wide establishing shots. Great for just watching a match unfold, checking balance, or seeing strategies play out. Launch it from Home → WATCH — AI vs AI.
Tip: add ?seed=N to the URL to reproduce a match exactly.
⚒ Play — command the North
Player mode puts North's construction and research decisions in your hands, while combat stays automatic. South is played by the AI.
Objective
Destroy the enemy City Core (4000 hp) — or outlast the enemy: a side whose economy collapses starves its army and loses the long war. The Struggle Engine keeps matches tense: a side falling behind receives a desperation harvest bonus of up to +60% (shown as ⚖ +N% in the top bar), and a side in deep trouble may receive emergency reinforcements, a meteor shower on the leader's army, or — in the primeval era — a wild raptor stampede.
The Economy
Three resources, all streamed in per second:
- ⛏ Ore — pays for units and buildings. Core baseline: 4.5/s.
- ◆ Crystal — pays for research. Core baseline: 0.4/s.
- 🌾 Food — feeds your army (upkeep scales with army size; at zero food the army starves). Core baseline: 1.2/s.
Your core provides the baseline income; build Resource Hubs next to map nodes (ore rocks, crystal shards, berry bushes) to harvest 3.2/s more from each. Stockpiles cap at 600.
Buildings
| Building | What it does | Ore | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⚔ | Barracks | Recruits the units for each wave — more barracks, bigger waves. | 150 |
| 🏠 | Housing | Raises the population cap by 8 (base 12, up to 5 housings). | 60 |
| ⛏ | Resource Hub | Harvests +3.2/s from an adjacent resource node. | 80 |
| 🗼 | Defence Tower | Zaps nearby enemies (13 damage, 8.5 range). | 110 |
| ⚗ | Research Lab | Unlocks Military / Economy / Era research. | 130 |
| 🧱 | Wall | Cheap, chunky, buys time. | 25 |
The City Core defends itself at close range (20 damage zaps out to range 9).
Units & the Counter-Triangle
Every unit belongs to a class, and classes counter in a circle — a counter hits for double damage, a countered unit hits for half:
⚔ Swarm beats Siege 🐏 · 🛡 Tank beats Swarm ⚔ · 🐏 Siege beats Tank 🛡
Siege units also deal triple damage to structures. Eras unlock better rosters: primitive (Spearman / Shield-bearer / Ram) → industrial (Rifleman / Armored Car / Cannon) → primeval (Raptor / Ankylosaurus / Triceratops), culminating in the 🦖 T-Rex hero — 900 hp, one per side, and the camera loves it.
Research
With an operational Research Lab, spend crystal on:
- Military tiers (45 ◆, up to 3) — +8% damage each.
- Economy tiers (45 ◆, up to 3) — +15% harvest each.
- Era advances — era N costs 140×N ◆ and requires Military and Economy tiers of at least N first (so industrial needs 1/1, primeval needs 2/2).
Controls
| Left-drag | Pan the camera |
| Right-drag | Orbit (rotate / tilt) |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom |
| ESC | Pause menu (cancels build placement first, if active) |
| F3 | Performance HUD |
Grabbing the camera pauses the cinematic director; leave it alone for ~12 seconds and the director takes over again.
Player mode: click a building in the bottom build bar, move the ghost over your own half of the map, and left-click to place. Placement validates cost, territory and spacing. The top bar has 1× / 2× / 4× speed controls and a 📈 stats dashboard toggle.