Combat and marches
An army never teleports and combat is deterministic — the same input always gives the same result. So you can work a battle out in advance.
At a glance
- Travel time depends on the distance and the slowest unit.
- Attack power against defense power. Defense counts in terrain, the wall, the hero and stationed reinforcements.
- Every unit defends differently against infantry and against cavalry.
- The more crushing the advantage, the smaller the winner's losses.
Kinds of march
You send units at a foreign village; the survivors come back with loot (up to their carrying capacity).
The units stay yours, defend the target village, and can be pulled back.
Scouts (Pathfinders, Trackers, Falconers) ride as fast as their race's cavalry and the Stables quicken them too. They do not fight the garrison — only the defender's scouts stop them (including those in reinforcements), strengthened by the wall.
Against an announced attack you can plan a dodge: the garrison rides out 1 min before impact and returns 1 min after it, taking along whatever finishes training meanwhile. It protects the army only — resources and buildings still take the hit.
Within 3 min of setting out a march can be recalled; the way back takes as long as it has already been riding. From the second an attack lands, nothing leaves the attacked village until the battle has been resolved.
Server-run camps for you to plunder. They build and multiply like players — whatever you raze, they have to pay for and build again. They defend as Aumenians, their defensive boost included.
What scouts see
- Without Espionage — the buildings.
- Espionage 1 — the resources too.
- Espionage 2 — the garrison, upgrades, hero and reinforcements too.
- They never see gold.
Enemy troops leaving your village after a battle show up in the movements, along with what they are carrying away. How many soldiers are leaving stays hidden.
Defense and the make-up of the attack
Every unit has two defense figures — against infantry and against cavalry. Which one counts depends on what is coming at you:
- A purely foot attack (infantry, ranged, siege units — Rams, Gatebreakers, Bison, Trebuchets, Fire Throwers, Mammoths — and envoys — Prelates, Priests, Druids) meets the full anti-infantry defense.
- A purely mounted attack (cavalry, scouts — Pathfinders, Trackers, Falconers — and the racial elite — Sentinels, Rangers, Guardians) meets the full anti-cavalry defense.
- A mixed attack meets a weighted average of the two — by the share of power carried by mounted units.
Stops infantry, falls apart under cavalry.
Stops cavalry, weak against infantry.
Losses
The winner loses less the more crushing their advantage. A narrow win costs nearly the whole army.
| Winner's advantage | Winner's losses |
|---|---|
| by half | 54 % |
| twofold | 35 % |
| tenfold | 3 % |
- The loser of a full attack loses everything.
- In a raid the loser keeps more the harder they fought — 50 % at even strength, but only 5 % against a tenfold stronger defense.
- Siege engines stand at the back and take only 50 % of the proportional losses.
Catapults
- They only pull buildings down in a full assault. The wall is the rams' job (Rams, Gatebreakers, Bison).
- Even a lost assault levels something: the engines that fought count, the more the closer the defeat (half of them from 80 % of the defense's strength). A crushing defeat — the defense at least 3× stronger — levels nothing.
- Every 20 surviving catapults (Trebuchets, Fire Throwers, Mammoths) take one level off a target.
- You can aim at up to 4 buildings — the catapults split between them evenly (any leftover goes to the targets listed first).
Protection of the weaker
When the defender has less than 30 % of the attacker's population (population = sum of building levels across all villages), two brakes apply. The smaller the target, the harder:
- Morale weakens the attack, down to 60 % of its strength.
- Loot shrinks, down to 10 % of the usual.
Both curves are smooth, with no step to game by growing one building level. The report shows the morale and the loot left, and the simulator works out morale once you enter both players' populations.