Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War

Gladius Beginner Guide — First City, Resources and Early Expansion

Gladius is a turn-based 4X on the Warhammer 40,000 world of Gladius Prime, and it removes what most 4X players lean on: there is no diplomacy. You cannot trade, ally or buy time. That rewrites the early game. This guide covers what decides your first thirty turns — the six resources and which ones your faction actually runs on, why loyalty makes wide expansion expensive, and what a deficit really does to your economy.

Gladius Combat Guide — Armour, Cover, Levels and Morale

Gladius combat looks like a simple attack-move game and is not. Armour scales into very large damage reductions, terrain gives flat percentage cover, surviving units become permanently stronger, and morale can end a fight the damage numbers said you were winning. This guide covers the four things that decide engagements — armour, cover, unit level and morale — with the numbers, so you can tell a fight worth taking from one that only looks even.

Gladius Economy Guide — Loyalty, Influence and Why Wide Fails

Gladius has no diplomacy, so your economy has exactly one job: pay for enough army to hold what you took. The trouble is that the two systems which limit growth — loyalty and influence — both get worse as you succeed, and the penalty for overreaching is a slow production decay rather than a loud failure. This guide is about the mid-game: what expansion actually costs, how to read a deficit correctly, and how to decide between another city and another army.

Gladius Factions Guide — How the Four Base Armies Actually Differ

In most 4X games the factions share one economy and differ in bonuses. Gladius does not work that way. Where you are allowed to put cities, and which resource keeps your population alive, changes per faction — and those two rules reshape the whole opening far more than any unit roster does. This guide covers the four base factions on those terms, then the DLC armies in the order they were added, so you can tell which ones are a new coat of paint and which ones are a genuinely different game.