Battle Mechanics

Accurate as of 24th Feb 2010.

Basics

Units are generally divided into two groups, summoned units (only obtained via summoning or the black market) or barracks units (available only by recruiting using the barracks). Other than rushing early on in the set, nobody uses barracks units (except in niche situations), as they are generally much weaker than summoned units, and do not function well on servers with oversummoning(due to how turns are played), in addition to requiring land usage devoted to them, and can have high upkeep.

Each unit, is called a "stack". For example 1,000 archers would be referred to as "a stack of archers". Stacks are ordered based on power, and whether they are melee, ranged or flying also affects their stacking order. Stacking order is extremely important, as it can easily decide battles based on how well your stacks are paired up against the enemy's.

Stacking

The maximum amount of stacks you can have in a battle is 10, if you have more than 10, the top 10 stacks based on power will participate. Let us say that the attacker (black) has 4 stacks of units, in the following order, Vampires, Wraith, Skeletons and Zombies. The defender (white) meanwhile has Archangels, Spirit Warriors, Unicorns, Angels, Astral Magicians and Soul Speakers. The top stacks will pair off with each other, and any excess stacks will attack the top stack. In the above example, Vampires will pair off with Archangels, Wraiths with Spirit Warriors, so on so forth, until Astral Magicians and Soul Speakers are paired with Vampires.

The unit with the highest initiative goes first, following stacking order as much as possible. Astral Magicians will go first, as they have initiative 4, followed by the Vampires with a init 3 attack attacking the Archangels, and then continuing down the line for all init 3 attacks, then moving on to init 2 attacks starting from the top again (Archangels will attack Vampires). In the event that two units that are paired together have the same initiative, which will go first is determined randomly. All units only attack once in most cases, for example vampires have a Primary and Secondary attack, each will be used only once on whoever the Vampires are paired with. The exception is the unit ability Additional Strike, which ONLY applies to the unit's primary attack. Any units with additional strike will attack twice.

In the event that a unit has both a Primary and Secondary attack of the same initiative, which attack is used first is determined randomly. E.G. Hydras may use their poison breath first, or their melee attack first. Counter attacks are weak and can only be used if attacked in melee, even if two ranged units are paired against each other. E.G. Archangels attack Vampires, which can then counter attack the Archangels, causing a limited amount of damage, however the Archangels cannot counterattack the Vampires when the Vampires use their ranged attack on the ArchAngels, even if the Archangelshad a ranged attack as well.

In the above example, as the white player has more stacks than the black, his Astral Magicians and Soul Speakers get "free shots" on the Vampires, while the Vampires may only attack the Arch Angels. This is an advantage due to fatigue, which will be explained in the next section.

Fatigue, Efficiency, Accuracy and Resists

By default, all units have 30% Accuracy and start at 100% Efficiency. Units with Marksmanship will have +10% accuracy, in most cases ending up with 40% accuracy, while units with Clumsiness have -10% accuracy. Efficiency determines how effective a unit's attacks, and ONLY their attacks are. Efficiency goes down as the battle progresses, due to attacking or being hit. Most units will take a -15% accuracy hit everytime they attack, counter attack, or are hit, while Secondary attacks do not trigger any efficiency loss(both for the attacker and the defender). Heroes are one of the few ways to increase a stack's efficiency.

A common tatic is to "deepstack" using "fatigue units" whom are there in small numbers purely to cause fatigue to the enemy's slower units. These are almost always initiative 3 ranged units, as they will not be counter attacked and their high initiative means they stand a good chance of attacking and reducing the enemy's efficiency before he can attack. In the above example, the Soul Speakers with initiative 3 will attack the Vampires, reducing their efficiency, but this will only apply to the Vampires when they make their init 2 attack, as they would have already attacked with their init 3 attack before the Soul Speakers had a chance. The Astral Magicians will be too slow, as their Secondary attack, although at init 4 (which will hit first before anyone else in the battle), does not cause fatigue.

Most units, especially "Complex" units that require a complex level spell to summon, have some resists, which help to reduce incoming damage. In the event that an attack has two or more attack types, an average of the unit's resists will be used. For example, let's say that a unit with a fire melee attack hits a unit with 25% fire and 50% melee resist, an average of 25% and 50% will be used to reduce the damage.

Attacking

The attacker will generally attack someone much lower than him with a high land:power ratio. 1 land = 1k power, and 1 Fort = 20k power. The rest of the power is largely made up of his army's power. So for example, someone with 2.5k land, 25 forts and 6 million power would have much less of his power in an army as compared to someone with the same land and fort count, but with more power.

The attacker has three choices, he can choose a regular attack, a seige, or a pillage. A regular attack is the most basic form of attack, everything uses the default settings, forts give their base bonus, and if the attacker is successful, up to 5% of the defender's land is destroyed, and up to 1/3rd of that is taken by the attacker. A seige is similar, except that any of the attacker's non-flying units, or any ranged units that are not targetting a defender's flying unit, will suffer a -10% accuracy penalty, and the defender's forts give double their normal hp bonus. However, if the attacker wins, up to 10% of the defender's land is destroyed, and up to 1/3rd of that land is taken by the attacker.

For example, let's say that the defender, with 2k land, fails to block a regular attack. Up to 100 acres will be destroyed, and the attacker can seize up to 1/3rd of that figure. In a regular attack, you need a minimum of 2.5 surviving troops (based on quantity, not power) after the battle, per acre to destroy/steal the maximum amount of land. For example, with 2k land, the attacker needs at least 5k surviving units to seize as much land as he can. For seiges, the number is doubled (5 troops per acre) In most cases, this is provided by "fodder", weak units that are very easy to obtain and keep in large numbers (e.g. Skeletons).

For the attacker to suceed at an attack, he has to kill at least 10% of the defender's army (in terms of power) while losing less than him (in terms of % lost). For example the attacker kills 200k power worth of the defender's unit, which is 10% or his army, but loses only 9% of his own army (which CAN be higher than 200k power, since it is % based).

Pillage however simply sends one stack to destroy a number of farms, towns, guilds and workshops, killing a portion of a target's population, kidnapping some of his population and stealing a portion fo his geld in the process. Chance of blocking it is based on ratio of troops to land(quantity), how much damage you do in a pillage is dependant on the NP of the stack you send.

Order of Battle

The battle(as seen in the battle report) is divided into two phases, the pre-battle phase and the actual battle.

Pre-Battle phase is where both sides use their spells and items, followed by heroes using their abilities(such as casting spells at the enemy). Casaulties in this phase do not take part in the actual battle.

Battle phase pairs off each side's units, dealing damage to each other, until everyone has used their attacks. Any troops which can resurrect(due to abilities, items or spells), do so and are not counted as having "died", which is why you may kill sufficient units in the battle phase, but the defender ends up blocking your attack because sufficient units resurrected so that the amount killed is less than 10% of his army.

At the end of the battle phase a mage with a very large attacking army compared to the defenders' army receives a battle bonus. This helps in determining if the attacker outdamages the defender (or vice versa). You can still lose more of your army than the defender and still win due this battle bonus. Similarly with a defensive advantage, it becomes easier to cause the attacker to fail, reducing the amount of damage required to outdamage them.

The effect comes into play when an army is at least double the size (NP of the army, not of the mage itself) of his/her opponent.

To clarify this ill give the rough numbers:

Defender 1M attacker 2.02M bonus 1% attacker bonus.

Defender 1M attacker 3M bonus 50% attacker bonus.

Defender 1M attacker 4M bonus 100% attacker bonus. (for example here, if the defender kills 500000 worth of troops of the attacker the attacker only needs to kill 250001 worth of troops to win the battle)

Defender 2.02M attacker 1M bonus 1% Defender bonus.

Defender 3M attacker 1M bonus 50% Defender bonus.

Defender 4M attacker 1M bonus 100% Defender bonus.