Single Player is the offline mode: you versus the bots. It's the place to learn the
ropes, experiment with settings, and warm up — with no internet connection required.
- Practising against bots of any difficulty.
- Trying out wild rulesets (huge firestorm counts, portals, exotic card modes) that aren't
allowed in Ranked.
- Playing your own custom maps.
- You are Player 1 (always human). Players 2 through 8 are always bots.
- For each bot you set its name, color, and difficulty individually
(Neutral / Easy / Normal / Hard / Brutal) — and its personality: Random (the
default, rolled with the usual odds), any of the nine named personalities, or Dynamic.
This is the only place personalities are ever shown; online they stay secret. After the
match, the results screen reveals what each Dynamic bot rolled. See Bots.
- You get the fullest range of settings of any mode — including a higher firestorm cap
(up to 30) than online play.
- In King of the Hill you vote on the Hill
alongside the bots (Neutral bots abstain). You get 3 crowned candidates and
30 seconds to click one: the vote normally lasts a whole turn, and 30 seconds is what it
falls back to with no turn clock. Most votes wins; a tie is broken at random.
- Press Start Game ▶ and you're dropped straight into the match.
Single Player is not a throwaway mode:
- ✅ Gold — the reward economy runs in single player (see the
important note about match gold).
- ✅ Achievements — almost all of them can be earned here. The exceptions need other
humans or ranked/online play (e.g. Lone Wolf, Win Streak, Ranked Slump). See
Achievements.
- ✅ Stats — your games, wins, eliminations, etc. are tracked.
- ❌ No RP / no rank change. Single Player is unranked.
- ❌ No leaving penalty — it's offline, quit whenever you like.
In Single Player the turn timer is off for both you and the bots — take all the time you
want to plan. (Online modes always run the timer.)
The one exception is the King of the Hill vote at the start of a Hill match. Every mode
gives you a full turn's worth of time to vote; Single Player has no turn clock, so the vote
falls back to 30 seconds.
One fair-play safeguard reaches your single human seat:
siege detection. Play several full rounds without conquering
anything or making real attacks and you'll get the same warnings an online player would — and,
if it goes far enough, the same takeover, with your seat handed to a bot and the match playing
on without you.
The other two safeguards never fire here:
- Stall detection needs your turn clock to run out, and Single
Player has no turn clock.
- The idle "Still there?" takeover is online-only. It exists so other players aren't left
waiting, so nothing boots you for taking your time alone.
Either way there is no online penalty or ban attached. It's purely local.
See also: Match Settings · Bots · Map Editor