1-668 CE
The Goguryeoans were a warlike Korean people who built a powerful kingdom across Manchuria and the northern half of the Korean peninsula, holding their mountain fortresses against Chinese empires for seven centuries during the era of the Three Kingdoms.
Goguryeo was the northernmost and most militaristic of the three Korean kingdoms, occupying a territory that stretched from the mountains of central Manchuria south to the Han River basin. Founded, according to tradition, by Jumong in 37 BCE, the kingdom grew from a confederation of fortified mountain settlements into a major regional power that held its own against successive Chinese dynasties for the better part of seven centuries. Chinese, Japanese, Baekje, and Silla sources all agree on one point: Goguryeo was dangerous.
The kingdom existed in a permanent state of strategic tension, wedged between Chinese empires to the west and north, rival Korean kingdoms to the south, and steppe peoples along every open frontier. This position demanded constant military readiness and a diplomatic agility that became as characteristic of Goguryeo as its mountain fortresses.
Goguryeo's heartland was mountainous, cold, and forested. The Yalu River valley and the uplands of southern Manchuria provided the kingdom's core territory: steep valleys, fast rivers, and winters harsh enough to freeze the ground solid for months. Agriculture was possible in the valleys and on terraced hillsides, but the yields were modest compared to the rice paddies of the southern kingdoms. Millet, barley, and soybeans were the staple crops. Hunting remained important throughout the kingdom's history, and the forests supplied game, furs, and timber.
A farmer in a Goguryeo valley settlement lived in an ondol-heated house, the floor warmed by flues channeling smoke from the kitchen fire beneath the stone slabs. The ondol system, one of the earliest underfloor heating technologies, was a practical response to winters that could kill the unprepared. Villages were small, clustered near fortified hilltop refuges where the population could shelter during raids. A woman grinding millet on a stone quern in November, with snow already deep on the mountain passes above, worked in a landscape that rewarded endurance over abundance.
Goguryeo built mountain fortresses with a skill that made them nearly impregnable. Stone walls followed the contours of ridgelines and controlled the passes through which any invading army had to move. The Sui dynasty launched four massive invasions between 598 and 614, each involving hundreds of thousands of troops. All four failed, broken against Goguryeo's fortresses, guerrilla tactics, and the brutal logistics of campaigning in mountainous terrain with overstretched supply lines. The Sui dynasty itself collapsed partly under the fiscal strain of these failed campaigns.
The Tang dynasty eventually succeeded where the Sui had not, but only by allying with Silla, the southeastern Korean kingdom, and attacking Goguryeo from two directions simultaneously. The kingdom fell in 668 after a prolonged siege of Pyongyang. Even then, Goguryeo resistance continued for years in the form of guerrilla holdouts in the mountains. The kingdom's military reputation was earned through centuries of successfully fighting enemies that outnumbered it many times over.
Goguryeo tombs, particularly the painted tombs near the old capital of Ji'an and around Pyongyang, provide the best window into daily life. The murals show hunting scenes, feasting, wrestling matches, processions of officials, and celestial imagery. Men ride horses at full gallop, drawing bows at fleeing deer. Women in flowing robes attend banquets. The paintings radiate confidence and energy, the self-image of an aristocratic warrior society that valued martial skill, physical vigor, and display.
Buddhism arrived in Goguryeo in 372, the first of the three Korean kingdoms to receive it, and was adopted as a state religion alongside indigenous shamanistic practices. Confucian education shaped the administrative class. A Goguryeo aristocrat might study Chinese classics in the morning, pray at a Buddhist temple in the afternoon, and consult a shaman about a sick horse in the evening. The kingdom maintained a national academy for Confucian learning and sent students to study in China, absorbing Chinese administrative techniques while maintaining its own distinct identity.
Goguryeo's foreign relations were a constant exercise in triangulation. The kingdom fought Chinese dynasties, allied with steppe confederations against China, competed with Baekje and Silla for dominance of the Korean peninsula, and maintained contacts with Japan. Diplomacy was as important as warfare: a wrong alliance could bring enemies from multiple directions simultaneously, and Goguryeo's eventual fall came precisely from such an encirclement.
After the kingdom's destruction, many Goguryeo refugees fled north and helped establish Balhae, carrying Goguryeo's administrative traditions and military culture into a new state. The memory of Goguryeo remained powerful in Korean historical consciousness, a symbol of martial strength and northern territorial claims. The tomb murals, preserved under earth for over a millennium, still project the image the Goguryeoans chose for themselves: hunters, warriors, feasters, and diplomats, a people who built their kingdom on rock and defended it with a stubbornness that exhausted empires.
, you may spend 5 
or 1 experience cube for orthogonal movement by 1 cell on the technology grid
for each of your unused action cubes.
Transfer them onto your 
card
/ 
for each warehouse
that stores exactly 1 /
from deck I or II to your hand. Keep one and discard or give the other
to another player
In the game, the Goguryeoans are flexible technologists who turn unused resources into advantage. Action cubes left unspent earn coins and become experience, rewarding careful planning over frantic action. Warehouses storing exactly 1 item duplicate it, so use the market to set up single units of resources and products for multiplication. The starting ability to take 2 technology cards and give one away echoes the Three Kingdoms diplomacy of maneuvering between rival powers; use it politically, offering the card as a bargaining chip to negotiate alliances or favorable trades. Flexible movement on the technology grid through coins or experience cubes lets you research efficiently where others waste cubes on detours.
Experience cubes spent this way return to the general supply. They are not placed on the technology grid; they simply pay for the orthogonal movement.
Yes. You may use any combination of action cubes, experience cubes, and coins (5 coins per movement) to navigate the technology grid during a single research action.
During the achievement phase, each warehouse storing exactly 1 of its resource or product generates 1 additional unit of that same type. If you have exactly 1 stone and exactly 1 cloth, you gain 1 stone and 1 cloth, ending with 2 of each. Warehouses with 0 or 2+ items generate nothing.
Unused action cubes placed on your government card become experience cubes. You gain 6 coins per unused cube, and those cubes transform into experience for future use.