
Skilled spies of enemy races are essential to a well-conducted espionage program, and players can bolster their forces by grabbing a skilled fighter or give one's own factories, mines, and towers of science a boost by hiring a highly skilled professional. Inns built within the game allow players to hire mercenaries of various occupations, skill levels, and races. The player is responsible for catching potential spies in their own kingdom. The game features an espionage system that allows players to train and control spies individually, who each have a spying skill that increases over time. The economic model bears more resemblance to a turn-based strategy game than to the traditional "build-workers, and harvest-resources" system in games such as Command & Conquer, StarCraft, and Age of Empires.

Seven Kingdoms made departures from the traditional real-time strategy model of "gather resources, build a base and army, and attack" set by other RTS games.
