War inside and out

Combat Tactics

There are four lines and five formations you can use.

Lines

• Front(first line)
• Middle (second line)
• Back (third line)
• Rearguard (fourth line)

Formations

• Line (all your men in a line)
• Box (all your men in multiple lines forming a rectangle/square box like formation)
• Wedge (wedge-shaped formation, with few at the front and many at the back)
• Skirmish (spread out)

The Line formation you will see most, often used with infantry and archers. It spreads all your men out in a line formation (which you don't see in the representation of the battle you are given, but effects how the unit acts).Since your men are spread out in a line, they can meet enemy forces on a broad front and are spread out so that archers are only average in effectiveness. It is used when you want a general defense or assault where you want to keep melee competence while reducing the effect of archers .

Box shapes your men into multiple lines, one after the other. This packs your men in closer together. While this reduces the size of the front the unit can assume assaulting the enemy, it increases the effectiveness of the unit in close combat (since they are organised in lines, much as whole armies are arranged in lines, if the first 'line' of the unit dies there are the men standing behind them which can move and take their places). It is also most likely the best defense against cavalry (since cavalry can break through single lines and flank you (go around the side and back and surround you/cut you off) as if they were on line, but as box they will hit a wall of massed men and have to fight their way through). However, since your men are so much closer together, it will be easier for enemy archers to hit them, so it's not the best to do if your enemy as a lot of archers.

Wedge arranges your men so that they are shaped like a wedge, with a small massed point at the front which expands the further back you go. This is a formation designed for offence, since this formation is designed so that the 'point' of the wedge can break through and create a gap for the broader group of men behind them to exploit, allowing them to break through your lines. Since cavalry are largely offensive-orientated, you will most commonly see cavalry set to wedge. Wedge excels at offensive close combat. However, the wedge formation tends to also leave your men more open to attack since it is designed for offence, your men are going to be in more of an offensive move and might not take as much care when defending themselves as another formation, which means that in some situations having a wedge formation may well be equivalent to a suicide attack to take out as many as you can in a blaze of glory. Added on to this reduced defensive close combat ability, they also have a slightly increased risk of archers (since they are packed together almost as much as box formation).

Skirmish spreads your men out to occupy as much space as possible, as far away from each other as possible. Since the enemy archers now have to effectively fire at individuals rather than fire into a mass of bodies (as they do with various degrees of effectiveness with the other formations), the effectiveness of enemy archers is sharply reduced. However, since your men are so far spread out, if they get attacked it is hard for them to support each other, and they will be isolated and eliminated in close combat. You will rarely see skirmish settings used for a battle, and if you do it is most likely against an extremely archer-heavy force, where avoiding enemy archers is key and the reduced ability in close combat is slightly reduced by the low melee strength of the archer.

Designations

You have the following designations for your unit:

• Regular Army
• Vanguard
• Mercenary
• Sentry
• Police Force

Regular Army is just that. Your standard conscript or soldier.

Vanguard is the forward part of an army. When set to this, your men will seek out equivalent equipment which is lighter and easier to wear. They will drop any useless items that they would otherwise need, and carry only the essentials. Vanguard costs more than regular army in weekly pay, but allows you to move faster. I'm not sure, but I also think the effectiveness in battle of units set to vanguard is slightly reduced (I haven't seen enough battles with many units set to vanguard to make a qualified guess).

Mercenary allows you to fight far away from the borders of your realm for longer periods of time. For this, you must pay them 50% more than regular army. A good chunk of gold goes miles in improving morale.

Sentry is a very defensive role. Your men look at the land, learn features of the terrain that can be used to their advantage or could be used to their disadvantage, devise ways of making makeshift armour and weapons if needed, etc. Their CS and effectiveness defensively will increase. However, you have to pay more than regular army, and they move slower than regular army as well. On top of that, you lose more morale than normal the further you get from your realm. Only should use this if you are defending one of your realm's or a ally's region(s).

Police force allows you to perform police actions in the region you are in (patrol the streets, make raids, arrest suspicious locals, etc). However, they lose some CS and lose a lot of morale if you force them into a combat situation. When you are a Bureaucrat your unit is automatically set to Police force.

Reaction Settings

• Murderous
• Aggressive
• Neutral
• Defensive
• Evasive

Aggressive you will advance on the enemy one line at a time (so if you are set on middle, next turn of the battle you'll be on front), with the exception of cavalry which jump two lines at a time. You will engage any enemy unit you come across (I am not sure if you will attack neutral realms set to aggressive... I'm pretty sure you will, but if you really want to attack a neutral realm just declare war on him ten minutes before your attack). You will be attacking hard.

Murderous is the same as aggressive, except your men will attack and mercilessly slaughter any unit not of your realm, enemy or ally. This is what you do if you want to attack an ally, although the diplomatic fallout from that would lead to war pretty soon anyway.

Normal means your men advance at a reasonable pace, engaging enemy units.

Defensive, your men will not budge from their positions unless they must move closer in order to engage the enemy, OR they have to move to support an allied unit (this is one of the reasons why we urge people to CHECK SETTINGS AND CHECK OFTEN. If we have to fight defensively, but someone leaves their unit on aggressive, all the defensively set units will move to support that aggressively set unit and the whole plan gets shot to pieces). Use this when on the defensive, and always use this when behind fortifications, where you get the bonus from hiding behind them.

Evasive your men run away from any unit they see, so fast you don't have a chance to see whether they are friend or foe. You will take a morale hit if you use this setting too long, and the effectiveness is random but is more likely to succeed if you have a small unit. When set to evasive, if there is a battle, you can successfully evade and avoid being in that battle. If you are caught and dragged into the battle, your men will not fight as well as normal. Also, it is harder to avoid being dragged into battles with larger units .

Combat Strength(CS)

Combat Strength, or CS, is a numerical representation of the strength of your unit. The five direct factors that effect it are:

• Training % (how experienced your men are)
• Weapons/Armour % (how high quality your weapons and armour are.)
• Equipment damage
• Morale (how happy your men are)
• Cohesion (how well your men know each other).

Training is good, clearly, so you want that to be as high as possible. It will increase with training and battle.

Weapons/Armour quality depends on what your men were when you recruited. You can't increase or decrease this unless you add better/worse men (adding better men increasing, and worse men decreasing).

Equipment damage comes with anything except when you are in a city. Travel, training, battle, even sitting dug in a region can cause equipment damage. You want this as low as possible, clearly. If your damage gets too high it can start injuring or even killing your men as they use badly damaged equipment or fight each other for the best equipment. You can repair equipment in most cities and some towns land regions.

Morale varies on the unit. Typically, entertainment will have it rise, as will normal turn change. Being far from your realm will see it fall, and training will see it fall. Battle can either see it rise or fall, depending on what your unit is like. From there, it depends on the unit. Paying your men will only ever have it rise (if there is any effect at all). Clearly, more content men fight better than annoyed men, so keep it high.

Cohesion is increased with training, battle and sometimes entertainment (if you find what kind of entertainment your men really like, but you can only use entertainment when morale is less than 100%). It is decreased by adding new men, since these new men won't know the men in your unit very well. Cohesion is good, so try and have it high.

If you have high weapons/armour values, high training, high morale, high cohesion and low damage, your unit is at optimum fighting strength. However, you will rarely use such a unit in battle, for your men will be picky. All of these values together put together your 'Combat Strength'. I don't know how it's actually calculated, and I doubt anyone does except the developers.

Some standard and good CS/man values are as follows: Infantry/Archers/MI: Average/standard: 10, Good: 20 Cavalry/SF: Average/standard: 15-20, Good: 20-25

Now, having a huge CS does not mean you have won the battle. You can have a unit of 1000 CS Infantry, but that infantry might be 200 men, with 20% cohesion. They are very weak individually and the unit will break and flee the battlefield very easily. Compare a unit of 50 men with 95% cohesion, these men trust each other more and will fight better alongside men they know and have trained with, so will fight better and be much harder to make flee from the battlefield. Not only that, they are individually a match for at least 4 men from the other unit.

Just use some common sense. If your enemy have units that reach 60 men or more but only have a CS of 500, they aren't that good or have some serious issues (morale low, high equipment damage, just crappy men, etc). If your enemy have 40-man units that are 800 CS, you better watch out, those are some very well prepared and coherent forces that will be hard to break. Those judgements have to be made yourself.

Other pages

Unit Settings is a page with some/alot of the information on this page on it.As when I made this page I wasn't aware the page was there.