Mechanics

Combat

There are no dice in combat. Before you confirm an attack you see both sides' remaining HP, and the number you see is the number you get — the preview is the real calculation. The preview also shows the owner of each side: the same team mark the figure carries on the board, plus a readable name (for example "Player 2"). Colour alone carries no information — the mark and the name say the same thing — so your archer and a rival's archer never blur into one row; the neutral side (bandits) shows a cross mark and its own name.

Reading the formula

Both sides scale with their remaining HP ratio: a unit at half health fights at half strength. That is what pulling a damaged unit back buys you.

The attacker's owner's dynasty bonus is added to its attack (Opportunist line); it does not apply against cities.

Six things multiply the defender's power:

• Terrain — Forest favours the defender; see Map and terrain.
• Foothill — a unit defending on a tile next to a Mountain tile defends 1.25 times as hard. The multiplier goes next to terrain: a forest at the foot of a mountain gets both.
• Type advantage — some units defend more strongly against a specific attacker; full table in the "Type triangle" section below.
• Fortification — a dug-in unit defends 1.5 times as hard (see below).
• Remaining HP ratio.
• Morale — a shaken unit fights at 0.75 times its power, a routed one at 0.5 times. This multiplier enters the attacker's power too; see Morale and rout.

They all enter the same product, so they stack: attacking a fortified Spearman in a forest with a Raider means eating three multipliers at once.

The attacker's side has a ground multiplier too: the shore. Attacking a unit on a tile next to a Water tile multiplies the attacker's power by 0.85 — a unit with its back to the water is hard to close in on. Foothill and shore both read the tile the defender stands on, not the direction the attack comes from; both can apply on the same tile. The selected tile's panel prints the foothill and shore multipliers right below the terrain, and the combat preview shows whichever applies as its own line. A neighbour under the fog does not count there: the panel only looks at neighbours you see or have seen, while the engine reads the real map.

The board marks them too, but only while one of your units is selected: of the tiles that unit can move to, attack or stands on, foothills get ∧ and shores get ≈. With no unit selected, or while looking at a rival unit, the board shows no ground marks. A rival city tile you can attack with no unit on it gets no mark either: the city itself is the defender there, and ground does not apply while a city defends itself. It does apply to a unit standing in a city — the tile of a unit that captured a city and stayed on it is marked, and so is a fallen city's tile you would capture by entering. The legend spells out both marks and their multipliers.

Terrain, foothill and shore only apply to a unit defender; none of them applies when attacking a city (see "Attacking a city" below).

The type triangle

The table is built around the defender's identity: each row says which attacker that unit defends more strongly against. The multiplier is one-directional — the edge does not run in reverse, so "A beats B" means "B defends more strongly against A", not "A is stronger against B".

• Spearman defends more strongly against Raider and Sipahi.
• Raider and Janissary defend more strongly against Archer.
• Sipahi defends more strongly against Archer, Pioneer and Siege.
• Siege and Artillery stand outside the triangle: neither defends an edge nor is exposed to one. Their job is already to break cities, not units (see "Attacking a city" below).
• Forlorn Hope also stands outside the triangle.

Fortifying

You can fortify a unit: the button in the context panel spends its remaining movement and its action for the turn, and in exchange the unit digs in.

A dug-in unit:

• Defends 1.5 times as hard — the multiplier goes alongside the terrain and type multipliers, not instead of them.
• Heals 2× as fast inside its own territory: 4 HP instead of 2 (see The turn cycle).

Fortification persists across turns; the start of a turn does not clear it. Only two things break it:

• Moving — leaving the position drops the fortification.
• Attacking — an attacking unit counts as having left its position, so the defense bonus is gone next turn.

A defender that is attacked and survives keeps its fortification: it held the ground, so it keeps the position.

Fortification is not a hidden variable: the board and the context panel both say "Fortified", and the combat preview shows the multiplier as its own line — for enemy units too.

Rules

• Most units attack from an adjacent tile; Archer and Artillery strike from range (see "Ranged attack" below).
• Attacking ends the turn. Move-then-attack is allowed, attack-then-move is not.
• If the defender dies, the attacker advances into the tile — except Siege and Artillery, which stay put; killing with a ranged strike also advances no one, because the attacker was never adjacent to the target to begin with.
• A side under truce cannot be attacked and its cities cannot be entered; that pair cannot fight until the truce expires (Diplomacy and truces). Zones of control are unaffected, though — a truced unit still stops you.
• Counter damage only applies if the defender survives. In an adjacent attack a defending unit always strikes back in full and a city never does. A ranged attack turns this around: a city strikes back, and a unit does so only if it can reach the attacker with its own range (see "Ranged attack" below).
• A routed unit cannot attack; the engine rejects the command and shows the reason (Morale and rout).

Ranged attack

Archer (range 2) and Artillery (range 2) can also strike a non-adjacent target. Every other unit's range is 1 — it only strikes an adjacent tile.

A command that fails either of two conditions is rejected by the engine:

• The target must be within range. If the distance exceeds the unit's range, the command is rejected with the reason menzilDisi.
• The target must be visible. An adjacent target is always visible; to strike a target further away, that tile's fog state must be "visible" (Fog of war). If it is not, the command is rejected with the reason hedefBos — you cannot strike a tile in the fog "blind".

A ranged attack is not free of counter damage. A target struck from range strikes back in these cases:

• A unit strikes back in full if the attacker is within its own range and it can fight right now. A unit that fights adjacent (range 1) cannot reach a distant Archer and does not strike back; an Archer does strike back at another Archer that hit it from range. A routed unit and the Scout, which can never attack, do not strike back at range.
• A city strikes back at every ranged hit with a share of 0.5 of the counter damage — the archers on the walls answer a volley from afar, not a melee at the gate.

The counter damage itself uses the same formula as in an adjacent fight and is only multiplied by that share (see the formula box). The combat preview always prints the damage the attacker takes; when no counter comes it states why, and when a city strikes back with its share it shows the share, each on its own line.

The ranged attacker's real gain is still the choice: it decides whom to hit and from where, and it does not advance into a target it kills — it stays put. The trade-off is that it stays exposed once outside its range and now takes the answer of a ranged defender or a city that can reach it.

The selected unit's panel also shows range and shock: the range line appears only on a unit that can strike a non-adjacent target, the shock line only on a unit that carries shock (Morale and rout). The value the panel shows is the very value the engine reads for these rules.

Zone of control

Every tile adjacent to an enemy unit is that unit's zone of control. A unit that enters a zone of control ends its move on that tile: the remaining movement is spent and no further step is possible this turn.

That single sentence is the whole rule; the details follow from it:

• A zone of control does not close a tile. If the tile is empty you can enter it, you just stop there — which is why the range highlight keeps marking it.
• Leaving is free. A unit that starts inside a zone of control may keep walking; as long as its path stays outside, it spends its whole budget.
• Moving from one controlled tile to another is allowed but still stops you: if the new tile is controlled too, the move ends there.
• Only enemy units project a zone of control. Your own units do not, and neither do cities.
• A unit that cannot attack projects no zone of control. By unit type that is only the Scout: the engine rejects its attack command outright, so it projects no threat either and a rival walking past does not halt. The rule is one-directional — the Scout's own movement still halts normally inside enemy zones of control.
• A routed unit projects no zone of control either, and it does not count towards flanking. The rule is again one-directional: its own movement still halts inside rival zones of control (Morale and rout).
• A multi-step path may not pass through a controlled tile; such an order is rejected and the reason is shown.
• Stopping does not cost you your action: the unit can still attack an adjacent target from where it stopped. What ends is the movement, not the turn.

The consequence: a line finally holds. Slipping past a row of Spearman is no longer possible; the attacker has to stop in front of it. A zone of control is not a shield — whatever ends up adjacent to the tile it halts on can still be hit — but you decide where it halts, and you answer on the next turn.

Attacking a city

Against a city, a unit's attack is not used — its attack vs. city value is. The city's defense is base 3 plus building contributions plus its owner's dynasty contribution (Defensive line). A city does not strike back at an adjacent melee attack; it does strike back at a ranged attacker with a share of 0.5 of the counter damage (see "Ranged attack" above). Terrain, foothill, shore and type multipliers do not apply to cities; the one multiplier on the city side is revolt — a revolting city defends at ×0.5 (Victory conditions). The combat preview prints that multiplier as a line whenever it applies.

That is the whole difference: the Siege is weak against units, but its attack-vs-city value is 6 where the best of the others manages 2 — the Pioneer only 1, and the Scout cannot attack a city at all.

City tiles are closed — except to a conqueror

A city tile is filled by the structure itself. You cannot enter your own city's tile, and the tile of an enemy city with HP above zero is closed as well. The movement highlight never offers that tile; send the command anyway and the engine rejects it with Hex occupied. The one exception is conquest: the tile of an enemy city whose HP has dropped to zero opens, and the unit that enters takes the city and stays on that tile.

What that means in combat:

• When no unit stands on the city's tile, the target of an attack is the city's HP. The city does not strike back at an adjacent attack, and strikes back with its share at a ranged one.
• If a unit that conquered the city still stands on its tile, an attack on that tile hits the unit; the city's HP does not change. The unit is the defender: it defends with its own strength and the tile's ground modifier (terrain, foothill, shore), and city defense is not added to it.
• Killing that unit does not hand you the city: the city's HP was refreshed when it changed hands, so the tile is closed and the attacker cannot advance into it. To take the city you have to bring its HP to zero again.
• You cannot hold your own city "from the inside"; no unit can enter it. Defense happens on the adjacent tiles: a unit standing there physically blocks the attacker's path (Spearman).
• A city whose HP has dropped to zero can no longer be attacked; there is no target left. The tile opens instead, and a unit that enters it takes the city (Cities and population).
• Because attacking ends the turn, the unit that knocked the city's HP to zero cannot walk in on the same turn. Either another unit that still has its action takes the city, or you enter on the next turn.
• The unit that takes the city stays on that tile; once it leaves it cannot come back, because the city is now its own.

Fighting neutral bandits runs by the same rules: the same preview, the same terrain bonus, the same type triangle. There are two differences and both are on the bandit's side: a bandit never targets a city and never leaves the ring around its camp (Bandit camp). Killing a camp's last bandit removes the camp from the board.

A Neutral village is a city, and every city rule above applies to it: drive its HP to zero, walk in, and the village becomes your city. Nothing adds to its defense — no building, no dynasty — just the base defense and its remaining HP ratio. Nor can it be shielded: no truce can be signed with the neutral side, so a village is always a legal target.

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