Pax Autocratica is a colony simulation and first-person roguelite built around one connected loop: you found a state and put its citizens to work, then leave the base to fight beside your soldiers, collect temporary Core upgrades, capture enemies, and return with resources that pay for the next stage of growth. The game has been in Steam Early Access since August 10, 2026, is developed and published by Multiverse, and is single-player only for now; co-op is planned but not dated.
The short answer: secure food and workers first, give every expedition a specific objective, and treat each soldier you deploy as a worker taken off a colony job.
Colony-to-combat loop
Two halves feed each other.
The colony half is management. You assign citizens to mining, gathering, hauling, research and manufacturing, and their work produces the weapons, armor, food and supplies the state consumes. Policies let you govern through propaganda, surveillance, punishment and fear, or through better living conditions and prosperity.
The expedition half is first-person combat. Battles can include infantry, tanks, mechs, elite units and Sector Overlords using bullets, lasers, missiles, drones and artillery. You never fight alone: deployed soldiers contribute damage, healing, shields, area control and frontline pressure, and they can die or become injured, so squad composition and orders matter.
The colony produces the soldiers, equipment and supplies an expedition consumes; the expedition returns extracted resources and captured enemies the colony puts to work. Core Fragments collected mid-run belong to that run only; the colony keeps what you extract.
This is repeated practical decision-making, not long mathematical planning. The colony side is more approachable than RimWorld or Dwarf Fortress, while combat execution and run-to-run risk supply the pressure. The full gameplay guide expands the loop, policies and everything confirmed in Early Access.
Colony management
Your first hour
The safest opening sequence:
- Secure food and rest first. Establish food production or reliable food access, sleeping space, basic raw materials, and a workable path between jobs, storage and rest. Hunger that runs unchecked undermines everything else you build.
- Do not pull every citizen into construction. The colony still needs food and resources while the project is underway.
- Assign workers by bottleneck. Identify what is stopping progress, find the job that produces or moves that resource, and assign the best available worker. More buildings do not solve a workforce shortage.
- Add medical and prisoner capacity. Basic medical recovery next, plus prison space if you intend to capture enemies.
- Manufacture for the objective, not for its own sake. Dense infantry raises the value of area damage; vehicles and armored targets raise the value of anti-armor options; long expeditions raise the value of healing and survivability.
- Pick a policy direction and stay consistent. Compassionate rule and rule by fear are both supported. Change one major pressure at a time: when several shift at once, it becomes difficult to tell what caused a decline.
- Prepare the expedition last. Choose weapons, soldiers and supplies for the next objective rather than filling every slot, and ask which deployed soldier would hurt most to lose.
Early priorities: the four citizen values
Citizens carry four values, all visible pressures you manage continuously:
| Value | What it governs | | --- | --- | | Hunger | The most immediate operational problem; unfed workers cannot maintain production. | | Happiness | Day-to-day stability, shaped by living conditions, events, pay and social interactions. | | Fear | Can enforce obedience and support authoritarian policies, but cannot replace food, medicine or production. | | Loyalty | Support for the regime; low loyalty plus bad conditions raises the risk of dissent. |
Three habits carry the early game. Check food supply before expanding population, assigning more people to military duty, or adopting harsher rationing. Watch the values after every major policy change rather than assuming effects: citizens may respond with dissent or rebellion. And read traits before trusting a citizen in a key job: they affect work, consumption, social conflict, morale and loyalty, and exact modifiers are not published as numbers; the in-game tooltip is the source of truth.
The Colony Management Guide carries the full production phases, worker assignment, trait categories and prisoner handling.
Common colony mistakes
- Building faster than the population can staff. The colony looks advanced but produces very little.
- Treating fear as a universal solution. It cannot replace food, rest, medicine or a functional production chain.
- Sending every strong citizen into combat. The expedition succeeds and the colony stalls.
- Capturing more prisoners than the base can hold. Capture becomes a burden instead of growth.
Combat and expeditions
Your first expedition
The most important expedition skill is not aim. It is knowing how much risk the current run can still support.
Define the trip before choosing soldiers: gather a specific resource, capture a particular soldier class, prepare for a Decisive Battle, replace losses, or reach a trader. A clear objective prevents bringing an expensive squad to a low-value task, and continuing a dangerous run because "enough" was never defined. Do not depart if removing the squad will stop food, hauling, research or essential manufacturing.
The structure on the ground is push-your-luck: player reports and press observations describe enemy strength increasing as an expedition continues. Staying out earns more encounters, resources, prisoners and Core Fragments; returning banks the extracted value, but community-observed interface warnings state that returning also resets expedition progress and the Core Fragments collected during that run.
There is no officially documented optimal return timing. Read the signals you can see: the objective is complete; key support soldiers are dead, injured or repeatedly separated; the squad can no longer control ordinary encounters cleanly; one more loss would cost more than the likely reward.
The Expedition Strategy Guide expands objectives, escalation and the return decision.
Soldiers and squads
Soldiers are not interchangeable bodies. Class affects range, weapon behavior, survivability and squad support, and a soldier deployed on an expedition is not available for normal colony work.
Community reports describe quality tiers that unlock additional abilities as a soldier improves, such as a Strike Force grenade at green quality and a projectile-blocking wall at blue. That is community-observed: official material does not provide a complete skill tree for every class, so check the in-game skill panel before treating any skill as confirmed.
Compare soldiers past the class name: quality and unlocked abilities, combat traits, health and current injuries, colony work skills, negative social or loyalty traits, and how hard the soldier would be to replace. Community reports also describe mechanical soldiers as strong workers in production, mining, lumber and carrying, valuable even off the squad. A practical split is three groups: core workforce, expedition squad, and a reserve of replacements and flexible workers.
Capture bridges the two halves. Weakened enemies can be captured instead of killed and returned to the colony, where the prison system can convert them into citizens or soldiers, use them as a warning, or consume them through harsher state systems. Capture only what the colony can process: prison space, processing time and battlefield control must be in place first. Directive AG-14, shipped August 15, 2026, added three advanced Capture Rounds with improved chances against Elites and Bosses, plus brief kill protection after a failed attempt, except against the Leader's melee attacks.
The Soldier Classes and Skills Guide carries the full roster with evidence labels, quality progression and squad templates.
Common expedition mistakes
- Departing without an objective. With no yardstick, you overdeploy the squad for trivial gains and overstay when nothing tells you to leave.
- Chasing a capture during an unstable fight. Control the battlefield first; a captured elite is not worth losing the expedition.
- Treating every encounter as an aim test. Position, weak points, squad commands and target priority can matter more than raw accuracy.
Cores and builds
Core Fragments are the temporary upgrades that shape a single expedition. Pick them with the same discipline as the squad: choose Fragments that work with the weapon already in your hands, because a moderate upgrade that works now beats an inactive theoretical combo. Public build discussion puts the limit at ten Cores per run; treat the in-game interface as the source of truth.
The Core Fragments and Builds Guide covers named Cores, build archetypes and what resets on return.
Common Core mistakes
- Taking a weapon Core for a weapon you are not using, or starting too many Core families at once. Build around what you own.
- Keeping a good Core build for too long. Temporary power can hide permanent squad losses.
Updates and troubleshooting
The game updates frequently in Early Access, as numbered Directives: AG-12 and AG-14 (the latter on August 15, 2026) landed within days of the August 10 launch, adjusting soldier management, capture and Core balance. The patch notes guide carries the dated changelog, and a build that behaves differently overnight is often a patch, not a fault in your setup.
If the game will not start or runs poorly, the crash fix guide collects troubleshooting steps and the official support paths; the developers' support page and Discord are the fastest official routes. For launch-wide status (Early Access plan, price, multiplayer, languages, requirements), the release-date status page is the hub.
Where to go next
- Gameplay: the full colony-to-combat loop, policy directions, Early Access content and who the game fits.
- Colony Management: production phases, worker assignment, traits, prisoners and colony mistakes.
- Expedition Strategy: objectives, pre-departure checklists, squad commands, escalation and return timing.
- Soldier Classes and Skills: the class roster with evidence labels, quality tiers and squad templates.
- Core Fragments and Builds: named Cores, what resets on return, and build archetypes.
- Release Date and Steam Status: the Early Access plan, price policy, multiplayer status, languages, system requirements and the latest patch.
Sources and verification
- Primary source: the official Steam store page: genre, citizen systems, Core families, capture and the Early Access answers.
- The official Steam News feed and Directive AG-14: Capture Rounds, failed-capture protection and Core balance changes.
- Developer launch AMA: colony, combat and prisoner systems.
- The official subreddit and Steam discussions: community-observed details, labeled as such above.
Verified Aug 26, 2026.