War

Raising a company at the drill yard

• A Drill Yard raises 20 legionaries for 40 wood, 20 metal and 30 food, or 20 hoplites for 40 wood, 12 metal and 30 food, and an Archery Yard raises 16 archers for 50 wood, 16 metal and 25 food. Build the yard within reach of a stocked storehouse, because the wood and metal leave your stores and the food leaves your larder the moment you give the order.
• Training is part of the price: legionaries drill 150 simulated seconds, hoplites 120 and archers 170, and the company refuses movement orders and formation changes until the clock runs out. Drill also banks experience at half a point a second, so order the company well before you need it and let it finish at the pells.
• Recruits are your own villagers: men from 16 to 55, taken from nearest the yard first, while women are counted in the manpower panel and never called up. Check the eligible count before you plan a campaign, because a village with most of its men already working fields a much smaller army than its population suggests.
• A soldier is a villager taken out of the workforce: enlisting releases their bed, their place in a work crew and their trade, and if they die the town has lost a person rather than a counter. Discharge or disband gives the trade back, so rotate companies home instead of filling the graveyard with your farmers.
• Keeping a company costs 0.30 metal and 0.10 planks a man a day from the settlement that raised it, plus double rations from the larder. Fall behind and nothing happens for one day, supply is gone by the third day, and then one man a day walks home, so keep metal and planks in store or the company dissolves without a battle.

Formations and frontage

• You have five shapes to choose from, Line, Shield Wall, Block, Column and Loose, and the choice stands until you change it. Set the shape before the company moves, because changing it mid-battle costs the men a re-form while the enemy keeps coming.
• Line stands four ranks deep and up to 64 files wide by default, and only the front rank can reach an enemy with a sword. Order width rather than depth unless you are plugging a gap, because every man behind the first rank is mostly a spectator.
• The army panel offers three frontages: a narrow 6 m, the shape’s own default, and a wide 24 m. Widen the line when you mean to wrap an enemy flank, and narrow it to fit a street, a gate or the foot of a wall.
• Shield Wall closes the men to 48 cm apart, locks their facing to the standard and turns at 25 degrees a second at a little over half speed. It is for holding ground you do not intend to give up, never for a march or a chase.
• A marching company folds itself into Column to pass through an open gate or postern and re-forms your ordered shape on the far side. Give a column a clear run through a doorway and dress the line again beyond it rather than fighting the shape inside the gap.

The standard is the order

• Lifting and planting the standard is the entire order system: open ground means march and hold, an enemy’s ranks mean attack, and your own wall means garrison. With no fresh order a company stands exactly where it is, so the plant is the only thing that moves it.
• A plant is refused over water, over ground nobody can walk to, behind a shut gate and inside a sealed pocket, and a refusal leaves the flag in your hand and writes nothing. Read the prompt under the banner before you let go and pick ground the men can actually stand on.
• Releasing the standard beside a hostile building orders a siege on that building, or a capture if it is a town centre or a Fanum. Plant on the building you mean to pull down rather than somewhere near the town, because the order names one building.
• Any plant beyond 600 m becomes a map march, and the men leave the field while a token travels for them. Use it for real distances only and keep shorter moves on the field, because stowed men cannot fight.
• You can lift and plant standards while the game is paused, since the clock stops the marching and the fighting but not your hand. Pause, look at the ground and the enemy’s facing, then plant, because a deliberate order beats a quick one.

Fatigue and nerve

• Fatigue drains fastest in the melee, about three minutes of steady fighting to the wall, and at the double, about seven minutes of running. Pull a tired company out and let it stand, because standing recovers it in about two and a half minutes.
• Tired men slow to 75 percent speed at worst, their archers draw at up to one and a half times the normal interval, and their nerve begins to drag once they pass the Tired band. Keep one company fresh in reserve instead of feeding the fight one company at a time.
• A company that is 70 percent dressed, with no enemy near and clear ground, breaks into double time on its own at 1.6 times speed. Let it run on the long approach and hold the fresh companies back for the moment of contact.
• Nerve is folded from food, rest, health, recent losses, the fight in front of the men, enemies on the flank or rear, fatigue, charge shock and a living captain, and it falls through Shaken at 0.62, Wavering at 0.42 and Broken at 0.22. A fed, rested, well-led company holds, so the settlement’s condition is the army’s real morale.
• Your own companies never break: player nerve stops at Wavering, while an enemy company that breaks runs and is cut down for double damage. Chase a broken enemy off the field rather than letting it rally, and trust your own men to hold where they stand.

Archers and volleys

• An archer company carries a quiver of 30 arrows a man, loosed as one volley every 10 seconds for 30 damage an arrow between 15 m and 180 m. Watch the quiver, because a dry archer company is unarmoured men with knives.
• Hold Fire is a per-company toggle in the army panel. Save the arrows for a target worth them and switch it off when the enemy walks into the sweet spot.
• Arrows are stopped by formation and facing: a dressed company facing the volley within 60 degrees takes a quarter less, a shield wall half, and archers never. Turn your line into the shooting and put the shield wall where the volleys land.
• Archery needs line of sight over the ground, a target inside a 35 degree cone and 55 percent of the company dressed. Move the company onto a crest or into a clear lane instead of ordering more volleys from behind a hill.
• Archers will not charge: ordered against a target beyond bow range they walk themselves into range and stop, and your archers never retire on their own. Pull them back by the standard before the enemy’s swords reach them.

The charge and the melee

• A charge is one event at the moment of contact, worth about eight seconds of shock rather than extra damage, and it only builds while the company has been closing for a couple of seconds. Start the run-up early, because a hesitant approach is just two lines meeting.
• The charge has three readings: a weak one stalls on the shields, an even one is a collision, and only a strong one breaks the defender. Charge a thin or moving line, and expect a settled, deep or shield-walled front to stop you.
• A charge that arrives from more than 120 degrees off the defender’s facing breaks the defender outright, whatever the numbers. Wheel a company onto an enemy’s rear before you commit it, and watch your own rear for the same reason.
• Melee is a steady rate of three damage a second a man at a 35 percent hit chance at a 150 cm fighting gap with 200 cm reach, and armour stops only the ordinary part of a blow, so spears and arrows pierce what swords cannot. Keep the ranks dressed, because a dressed company hits 35 percent harder, and use a wider line when you want to curl round the enemy’s edge.
• Blows landed earn 3 experience, blows survived 2 and arrows loosed 1, and levels take attack from 0.85 to 1.4 times damage and damage taken down to 0.65, saved on the man even through a discharge. Fight the battles you can win and rebuild old companies, because levels are the cheapest strength you will ever buy.

Sieges

• Planting beside a hostile building sets the company to work on it, and a full ring brings a building down in 45 to 360 seconds depending on its size, its condition and the hands on it. Bring more men than the bare minimum, because the work scales with the hands actually on station.
• The ring has to form before any work starts: 60 percent of the company on station for two passes, and 30 seconds of standing short of that lets the men who are there begin. A company that stands 60 seconds with nobody working gives the order up, and fewer than 8 soldiers cannot work at all.
• Taking a town means holding its centre or Fanum for 90 seconds with no defending company within 100 m, and a contest runs the clock back twice as fast. Beat or pin the defenders first, then hold, because one enemy company near the centre undoes the whole clock.
• A captured town disbands the companies raised there and changes hands, but your soldiers will not sack or take an Independent hamlet. Choose a target that actually fights you and leave the neutral hamlets to influence and regard. (In testing.)
• Walls, gates and a completed Fanum cannot be pulled down, and a wall also hides whatever stands behind it from the ring. There are no siege engines, so a closed wall is a wall: fight for a gate, a gap in the run or the buildings outside it.

Marches and raids

• A plant beyond 600 m hands the company to the map: the men leave the field, a token travels at 27 m a second and 1.5 times that on roads, and the march costs 0.07 fatigue a kilometre, halved on roads. March on roads when you can and leave with legs to spare, because the company arrives tired.
• A march into hostile land stops at the border, and the assault from there is an ordinary ground order. Use the map march to arrive at the edge of an enemy’s land, then bring the company back onto the field and plant on the ground you mean to take.
• A hostile company within 250 m halts the march and both sides are set down on the field to fight, while an enemy march seen within 1,000 m raises an urgent alert. Never treat a march as a safe move, because the fight starts wherever the two tokens meet.
• On the campaign map, shift-click selects several companies and they march as a group, each keeping its place and all of them moving at the pace of the most tired company. Sort the group before you set off, or one exhausted company will hold the whole force to a crawl.
• The rival god warns you about 90 game seconds before its raiders march, and they come 16 to 80 strong, a quarter of its fit men, to pull down 2 to 4 of your buildings or take a town. Use the warning to recall a company and garrison the approach, because the raiders go home once they have lost a third of their men.