Play War Diary Online

War Diary is a classic real-time strategy game that throws you into a 12-stage campaign full of base-building, resource juggling, and tactical battles. Your goal? Build up your forces, manage your economy, and outsmart the enemy across increasingly tough scenarios.

1. Building Your Base

Outside of Stage 11 (where things work differently), building a strong base is the key to survival. You’ll need to construct and manage a range of military buildings, including:

• Barracks – Trains your Peasants and Fighters, and lets you equip units with weapons you’ve produced.
• Arms Works – Your main weapons factory. Here you can create up to six different weapon types like swords, arrows, cannons, and ballistae.
• Shipyard – Build Transport Rafts and Battleships for naval missions.
• Temple – Creates Priests with handy magical abilities (healing, buffs, etc.).
• Blacksmith – Produces iron, which you’ll need for weapons, buildings, and more.
• Guard Tower – Automatically attacks nearby enemies with arrows or other projectiles.
• Later stages introduce extra structures like the Tool Works, Heavy Arms Works, and Stables for more powerful gear and advanced units.

2. Gathering Resources

Running your base means keeping your resource flow steady. You’ll need:

• Iron – Refined at the Blacksmith.
• Wood – Chopped down by Peasants from nearby forests.
• Money – Earned by trading or selling extra materials.
• Food – Gathered from farms or through trade. Keeps your troops fed and working.

3. Managing Workers and Troops

You’ll spend a good chunk of time creating and managing two key types of units:

• Peasants – Your labor force. They gather wood, farm, mine iron, and do the dirty work behind your war machine.
• Troops – Your combat units. Train them, arm them, and send them into battle. You can also upgrade them with items like shields, daggers, healing ginseng, or boots that make them move faster.

4. Stage-Based Campaign

The campaign is broken into 12 stages, each with its own goals, challenges, and unlockable units or tech. Before each mission, you’ll get a rundown of what’s new — and if you want the nitty-gritty details, the game manual has everything.

5. Environmental Strategy

War Diary isn’t just about troops and buildings — the environment plays a role too:

• A weather vane tells you wind direction, and weather effects like rain and storms can impact unit performance.
• A built-in clock lets you plan around day and night cycles — sometimes it’s smarter to launch a raid under the cover of darkness.

To win, you’ll need to balance resources, build the right units, adapt to weather and time, and always stay a few steps ahead of the enemy. War Diary might look old-school, but underneath its retro graphics is a deep and rewarding strategy game that’s worth revisiting — or discovering for the first time.