Terrain

Water

Water is impassable. There are no naval units in v1, so water is painted only as small pools seeded from the edge of the board — every body of water touches an edge. Some maps hold no water at all: the lower bound of the water band is zero.

Its role on the map is the same as Mountain: shaping the map, creating corridors and borders. It does not block vision.

Impassable as it is, water still falls inside a city's region and works in the economy: every water tile in the region enlarges the Market's location share — a coastal city is a trading city. Water tiles cannot be bought; only the water inside the city's own ring counts.

Water also affects the tiles beside it: a unit on a tile next to water stands on the shore, and the power of whoever attacks it is multiplied by 0.85 — a unit with its back to the water is hard to close in on. It does not apply when attacking a city (Combat).

A water tile holds nothing either: resource nodes, Ruins, Bandit camp and Neutral village are only ever placed on passable tiles.

How much water there is is subject to fairness rules: the tile count has to stay inside a band, starts are always chosen on the main landmass, and most passable tiles have to belong to that single landmass. If the main landmass falls below that share, the map is rejected and the seed retried; small disconnected pockets within the share get no resource nodes, ruins, camps or villages (Map and terrain).

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.