Victory conditions

This page explains how a skirmish or multiplayer match is won, lost or drawn. Story missions have their own objectives and are not covered here.

Winning

A match ends when only one side is left standing. A side is a player together with their allies.

In a free-for-all, the last player standing wins.
In a team game, the match ends as soon as every player still in it is on the same team. That whole team wins, including any teammate who was knocked out earlier.
While players from two or more sides are still in the match, it goes on.

Losing

There are three ways to be knocked out of a match.

Elimination

You are eliminated when you have no living units and no standing buildings left.
Every unit and building counts: a single villager, ship, house or piece of wall keeps you in the match.
Bodies and the rubble of destroyed buildings do not count.
Every player sees "(name) has been eliminated." in the chat's System tab.

Resigning

You can resign from the in-game menu (opened with Escape, see Controls).
When you resign, all your units and buildings are destroyed at once, and every player sees "(name) has resigned." in the System tab.
In a team game, your teammates fight on. If they go on to win, you are on the winning side too.

Disconnecting (multiplayer)

If a player's connection drops, the game holds their seat for 2 minutes. Their units and buildings stay in the match, and so do their resources.
The match does not stop while the seat is held: there is no pause in Dawn of Embers.
If the player reconnects with the same account within the 2 minutes, they take back their seat, units, buildings and resources.
If they do not, they forfeit: every player sees "(name) did not return and has forfeited.", their units and buildings are destroyed, and the match carries on as if they had resigned.

Draws

If a match is decided with nobody left standing, it is a draw.

A match is decided the moment one side is left, so in a normal match the last two sides cannot both drop out: when one goes, the other wins.
A match with no opponents at all never ends on its own. If its player resigns, it ends as a draw.

Computer opponents

Computer opponents can be eliminated like anyone else, and they can also resign. A computer opponent gives up when its position has been hopeless for about 30 seconds without a break. Hopeless means all of these at once:

it has no building that can train units,
it has no soldiers left (villagers do not count),
it cannot rebuild: it has no villager left, or cannot afford any building it would build,
and an enemy army is still on the map.

A computer opponent that is badly beaten but whose enemies have no army left does not resign. See AI difficulty.

The end of the match

When the match is decided, every player sees a Victory, Defeat or Draw banner, with a line saying why: the enemy was eliminated, resigned or disconnected (or, for the losers, that they were). In a team win, a teammate's line may simply say that your team is victorious.
The end screen shows a table of every player's match statistics, your own row highlighted.
Knocked-out players stay on the scoreboard, greyed out.
A victory or defeat sound plays.

Ranked matches

Leaving a ranked match that is still going counts as resigning: the game resigns for you before you leave.
A ranked match that is still undecided after 6 hours ends with no result.
Ranked and online play are not part of the demo.

Not in the game

These victory types are not in the game today:

Conquest by destroying specific buildings only (for example, the town centre). Today you must destroy everything.
Wonder, relic or score victories.
A time limit in ordinary matches.