Army and combat
You train troops in the barracks (infantry and settlers), the stable (cavalry) and the castle (settlers). You hire mercenaries in the tavern for gold — instantly, without training.
Training
- Each unit needs a certain level of barracks or stable and of the smithy — the requirements are in the table below. The archer, the crossbowman and elite cavalry also need research in the Palace.
- A higher barracks and stable level speeds up training (see Village buildings). In a garrison, training in the barracks and the stable takes half as long.
- An economic village and a trading post do not train troops.
Upkeep
Every unit eats food each hour. An army on the march keeps eating, and support standing in someone else's village is fed by the village that took it in. When a village runs out of food and its upkeep is higher than its production, units starve one after another — support first, then your own troops, always the most expensive unit. An important character can also starve.
Marches
- An army moves at the speed of its slowest unit. Speed is tiles per minute, and the route goes around obstacles — you cross a river only by a bridge.
- Attacks and conquests against other players cannot be sent during night protection (by default 2:00–6:00 Polish time) or during a truce announced in the world. Troops already on their way arrive as usual. You can attack bandits around the clock. The owner of an occupied village and their allies can liberate it also at night and during a truce.
- A player on vacation cannot be attacked or conquered and cannot be sent anything (see Settings).
- A protected village on a march route — by night protection, beginner protection, a truce or the player's vacation — lets the troops pass without a battle.
- A new player has beginner protection (by default 48 hours from founding a village in the world): nobody can attack or conquer them. The protection ends when they attack another player themselves — attacking bandits does not remove it.
- Support stays in the village you sent it to, defends it together with its troops and comes back when you withdraw it.
Battle
A battle goes in rounds until one side is wiped out or nobody dies any more. Each army has three lines:
- front — spearman, swordsman and mercenaries on foot,
- rear — archer and crossbowman,
- cavalry — light, heavy and elite cavalry and the cataphract.
In each round only part of a line fights — the rest waits and fills the losses in later rounds. How many units fight at once depends on the battle site (table below). Mercenaries fight next to the regular units of the same line in smaller numbers, and when a line's regular units die, they take their place.
- A front that breaks through the enemy front hits the exposed rear with double strength. Cavalry is strong against the rear, and the rear barely hurts cavalry.
- The advantage of numbers grows in steps: the bigger the strength advantage in a round, the heavier the weaker side's losses.
- In a fight with another player an army gets +15% strength for each line the opponent is missing — a full army pays off.
- The losses of each round vary randomly by at most 10% up or down. The battle report shows the fight round by round.
- An attack is strengthened by the smithy of the village the army sets out from, the alliance army bonus, the war artifact and important characters. A defence — by the same bonuses of the defending village plus the wall and a river next to the village.
Battle site
A different number of units of each line fights at once in a village and in the field, and the terrain adds or takes away some of their strength. A field can also be narrower or wider (by 10%) — it depends on the place on the map.
| Battle site | Front: fighting at once | Rear: fighting at once | Cavalry: fighting at once | Front: strength | Rear: strength | Cavalry: strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Village | 420 | 120 | 42 | +5% | +10% | −15% |
| Plains | 300 | 90 | 66 | 0% | 0% | +10% |
| Fertile | 300 | 99 | 60 | 0% | +5% | 0% |
| Forest | 300 | 81 | 48 | +10% | −5% | −10% |
| Rocky | 270 | 99 | 48 | +5% | +10% | −10% |
| Mountains | 240 | 99 | 42 | +10% | +15% | −15% |
| Bridge | 210 | 90 | 36 | +5% | +10% | −15% |
Loot
An attacker takes loot only after a win, when the defenders are wiped out. It takes as much as its surviving units can carry (carry in the table), at most everything the village has in storage — from each resource in proportion to the stock. The survivors march home with the loot. Whatever does not fit in the attacker's storage is lost.
Units
| Unit | Attack | Defence | Cost | Training | Speed (tiles / min) | Upkeep (food / h) | Carry | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spearman | 10 | 20 | iron 80, food 80 | 1 min 30 s | 4 | 1 | 30 | barracks 1 |
| Swordsman | 40 | 20 | iron 130, food 100 | 2 min 30 s | 3 | 1 | 50 | barracks 3, smithy 3 |
| Crossbowman | 50 | 15 | iron 150, food 120 | 3 min 40 s | 2 | 1 | 20 | barracks 5, smithy 5, research “Crossbows” |
| Archer | 15 | 50 | iron 130, food 120 | 3 min 40 s | 3 | 1 | 25 | barracks 5, smithy 5, research “Archery” |
| Light cavalry | 80 | 20 | iron 220, food 110 | 4 min | 8 | 2 | 80 | stable 1, smithy 5 |
| Heavy cavalry | 150 | 80 | iron 400, food 180 | 5 min 30 s | 6 | 2 | 100 | stable 10, smithy 10 |
| Elite cavalry | 230 | 190 | iron 650, food 300 | 6 min 40 s | 5 | 5 | 150 | stable 20, smithy 10, research “Elite cavalry” |
| Settler | 0 | 5 | iron 200, food 300 | 5 min | 1 | 1 | 0 | barracks 1, castle 1 |
| Adventurer | 25 | 5 | gold 40 | instant | 3 | 2 | 35 | tavern; limit per cycle 50 |
| Barbarian | 35 | 35 | gold 100 | instant | 5 | 2 | 40 | tavern; limit per cycle 50 |
| Scutati | 30 | 60 | gold 300 | instant | 4 | 2 | 25 | tavern; limit per cycle 50 |
| Cataphract | 150 | 210 | gold 1,050 | instant | 5 | 5 | 80 | tavern; limit per cycle 10 |
Base values for a normal-speed world (x1), without the town hall, artifact and research discounts. If anything differs, the game is right.