Army and Units

The army is the most expensive investment in the game. Units cost resources to recruit and population to keep. Building the right mix always beats mass-producing the wrong one.

Unit classes

• Infantry and Heavy Infantry: cheap, tough, slow. The backbone of defence.
• Cavalry and Heavy Cavalry: fast and hard-hitting. Ideal for raids.
• Ranged: deals damage at distance and is strong on defence.
• Siege: breaks walls. Slow and expensive; needs an escort.
• Spy: does not fight, brings back information.
• Conquest: the special unit needed to take a city.
• Support: an auxiliary class that sustains the army.

Every civilisation has its own unit set. A Hun horseman and a Roman legionary do not play the same role; the in-game Codex lists your civilisation's units with their exact values.

Where they are recruited

Infantry comes from the Barracks, cavalry from the Stable and siege engines from the Workshop. The building level sets recruitment speed. Ships are built in the Shipyard and use a separate queue.

March speed follows the slowest unit

An army moves at the speed of its slowest member. Adding a single siege engine to fast cavalry drops the whole expedition to siege speed. Keep your raiding army and your siege army apart.

Carrying capacity

Every unit has a carrying capacity. Returning from a raid you bring back as much as the army can carry; the rest stays behind. Size the raid to the loot: going with ten units to a hoard worth a hundred is as wasteful as the opposite.

Logistics research raises march speed and carrying capacity together, making it the most profitable branch for a raid-focused player.

Army tools

The army screen has three helpers.

• Combat simulator: estimates losses before an attack. You can factor in the night bonus and the morale percentage.
• Arrival planner: works out departure times so several armies land on the same minute. It decides clan attacks.
• Templates and target lists: save the army composition and targets you use often. A template only fills the form; it never sends an order by itself.

You can keep up to thirty army templates and twenty target lists per world.

Sending support

You can send troops to an ally's city as support. They join that city's defence, stay under your control and can be recalled at any time. The defending player may also send them home.