Combat

A flying boulder does not read peace treaties.

TL;DR: Battles unfold in five phases -- calculated entirely on the server.

- Naval battle, harbor defense, land combat, siege, looting

- Losses are permanent -- destroyed units and ships are gone

- Cargo an attack fleet carries shares the fate of the ships and troops that carry it

- Combat reports show the exact course of each phase

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How Combat Works #

When your fleet reaches an enemy island, combat is automatically resolved in five consecutive phases:

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Naval Battle -> Harbor -> Land Combat -> Siege -> Looting

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Each phase must be won by the attacker to advance to the next. The defender can halt the attack at any phase.

The Five Phases #

Phase 1 -- Naval Battle #

Long before the coast comes into view, the warships of both sides clash on the open water. It is a duel of firepower at sea. Whoever loses here sees their invasion end before it even began. Trade ships do not participate in naval combat -- they wait behind the front line.

If the defender loses the naval battle, the beaten fleet no longer goes down in full: roughly a quarter of every ship type breaks away and makes it back into the home harbor -- where only a handful of ships of one kind sailed, though, no one gets through. That does not hold for a losing attacker: his warships stay at sea.

Phase 2 -- Harbor Defense #

The surviving attacker ships must pass the enemy's shipping lane. The defender's harbor hurls fire pots at the invaders. The higher the harbor level, the fiercer the resistance. Even without a fleet, a defender has a chance here.

Phase 3 -- Land Combat #

In the wet sand of the coast, war turns archaic. Attacking troops leap from their boats into the surf while defenders hold behind their walls. The stone wall provides a substantial defensive bonus. Research (Spear, Shield, Bow) heavily influences the combat strength of both sides.

Phase 4 -- Siege #

If the attacker wins the land battle and brought catapults, these can damage chosen defensive structures and reduce their levels.

Siege Reform: catapults are pure siege weapons. They shatter walls, harbors and the town hall — workshops, warehouses and economy buildings remain untouched. A siege battery must be larger the higher the defense level: the next level demands at least as many catapults as it already counts.

Phase 5 -- Looting and Colonization #

The victorious troops storm the storerooms. They take what they can carry -- the cargo is split evenly between Gold, Stone and Wood. Whatever the warehouse protects remains untouched.

From v0.35 a winning attacker can additionally plunder knowledge plans from the defender's island. The size of the cut depends on the strength ratio — a clear victory yields more than a narrow one. See the chapter "Knowledge Plans" for details.

Whoever plunders the same island more than once within a day carries off less with every visit — no one is left completely empty-handed, though, and after a pause the loot recovers. Only the first strike in that span yields knowledge plans; every further raid brings supplies alone.

If the attacker brought a colony ship and the town hall has been reduced to a low enough level, the island can be colonized -- it changes ownership.

Reading Combat Reports #

After every battle, both attacker and defender receive a detailed report showing the course of all phases: which ships sank, which troops fell, and what was looted.

The reports now explain the outcome more clearly: they make it plainer why a phase went the way it did — whether a decision was close, whether position and fortification tipped it, or whether a repeated raid brought back less. So you can read at a glance what a battle hinged on.

Fairer Losses in Land Combat #

How many troops a land battle costs now depends more on how close the outcome really was. A razor-thin victory takes its toll, while overwhelming force stays gentle — so losses mirror the course of the fight instead of following a rigid pattern.

Added to this is a small measure of bounded uncertainty: wind and fortune get a word in on every land battle, so no outcome is fully plannable on paper anymore. Their influence stays tightly bounded — it shifts the losses on both sides a little, but never decides who wins. This applies to land combat alone.

Defenders Have the Edge #

Defending your island now draws a more noticeable benefit from position and fortification. Wall, harbor and town hall work together more strongly, so a well-built island is harder to crack than before.

Fortification only unfolds its full effect together with a garrison, though: walls alone, with no troops behind them, protect only up to a point. Whoever truly wants to stand firm keeps stones and spears together.

Repeated Raids Bring Less #

If the same attacker hits the same island again and again in quick succession, the loot shrinks with every strike. A neighbor can no longer be emptied out on an endless drumbeat — even after several raids, the island always keeps a remainder.

For everyone who has fallen behind in the field, that is a breather: whoever is no longer plundered around the clock catches up faster. The first raid brings full loot — only the repeat is dampened.

The Combat Calculator #

Before you send a fleet, you can run the attack through the Combat Calculator. You reach it via the navigation ("Calculator").

You load your own fleet with a single click — from a saved template or from the current fleet of one of your islands. You enter the target by hand or import it from one of your spy reports; only your own reports can be imported.

As a result, the calculator gives a tendency — "Likely victory", "Close call", or "Likely defeat" — along with a rough loss tier for each side: none, light, moderate, heavy, or near-total. If you like, sharpen the estimate in the advanced mode with research, stationed garrisons, harbor, and catapult target.

It is an estimate, not a guarantee: the calculator never gives exact numbers. Unknown bonuses and the target's research do not enter into it, freshly arrived reinforcements may not be combat-ready yet, and the older your spy report is, the fuzzier the picture becomes. Battle luck stays part of the sea — only the fight gives the final certainty.

Clearer Attack Alerts #

So that a swarm of small attacks does not flood you with messages, the game now groups routine combat alerts per island and time window — one collected notice instead of ten separate ones.

Important warnings are untouched by this: a looming colonization or conquest, and heavy hits on your town hall, always arrive at once and on their own. Such alerts are never bundled — what matters reaches you without a detour.

The Fog of War #

A sail on the horizon does not announce its purpose. When a hostile force closes in on an inhabited island, your fleet list carries it at first as nothing more than "Battle group (type unknown)": where it comes from and whom it belongs to you see as always — whether it means to plunder or to take the island stays in the fog.

As it draws nearer, that fog lifts. From then on the kind of mission stands in the list, and beside it a rough magnitude of the force — a sighting never names exact ship numbers; what lookouts report from afar remains an estimate. When the mask falls is decided by the watchtower of the threatened island: the higher it is built, the sooner it becomes clear what is rolling in, and even an island without a watchtower learns the kind of force in good time before the impact. A neighbor who merely watches the movement at the edge of his own field of view never learns more than the threatened captain himself — both see clearly in the same instant.

Only solitary attacks and colonization fleets against inhabited player islands are veiled. Trade, spying and reinforcements sail openly, and so do moves against uninhabited shores and Corsair Fortresses. The uncertainty is deliberate: you decide before you know what is coming — keep the fleet in harbor and leave loot lying, or set out and leave the island bare. Whoever wants to know sooner builds the watchtower higher; there is no other way to buy time from the fog.

One thing the fog is not, though: perfect camouflage. Anyone who wants to pass an attack off as a leisurely colonization fleet has to sail genuinely slowly — and even then the clock gives him away over short distances, because a force that stands off the coast after only a brief crossing cannot have dragged a colonization ship along. The disguise only holds over long stretches, and it costs real travel time.

Arrival Within a Time Window #

While a hostile force is still far out, the fleet list does not name an arrival to the second but a time window: the span within which it will stand off your coast. The true moment always lies inside it, though never neatly in its middle — and the window is fixed once, when the force sets sail, and does not wander afterwards. Looking again and again does not narrow it.

The higher your watchtower, the sooner the window becomes an exact time. And shortly before the impact it always does, even without a watchtower: this last certainty is guaranteed to every island, so that a span always remains in which you know the exact hour for your evasive move. The exact time never appears before the kind of force does, though — first the fog lifts, then the clock sharpens.

Over very short routes the window looks wide, sometimes wider than the voyage itself lasts. That is intended, and it is the price of the mask: over a short distance a narrow window would betray the kind of force, because attack and colonization fleet could then be told apart by travel time alone. So it spans the whole stretch of time in which either could arrive.

None of this changes the reliable baseline warning: you are still warned in good time, the window concerns only the precision of the hour. More on that in the chapter "Fleets & Travel".

Tips for Attackers #

• Overwhelming force pays off -- the stronger your attack compared to the defense, the fewer troops you lose
• Send scouts ahead to learn about the target's defenses -- avoid nasty surprises
• Always bring more warships than the defender appears to have
• Catapults are expensive, but without them you cannot damage buildings
• Weakly defended islands are profitable to raid when you attack with enough troops

Tips for Defenders #

• Walls are your best friend -- they cost little and deliver much
• Always keep some troops on the island, even if you expect no attacks
• A high watchtower warns you early
• Never store important resources above your warehouse's loot protection

Capitulation #

Sometimes the only honourable answer to an overwhelming force is to lower the sword. When a defender faces vastly superior power, the crew yields quickly rather than dying for nothing. The plunder proceeds as usual -- but troop and ship losses on both sides are significantly reduced. Hulls stay whole, crews live on.

Important: capitulation applies only to inhabited player islands whose crew can choose between death and surrender. Uninhabited shores and Old Empire ruins make no such choice -- their fanatics fight to the last, no matter how overwhelming your force.

And a third exception belongs to conquest itself: when a colonization fleet approaches, no one ever capitulates. Where it is not plunder that looms but the end of home -- flag, name, and freedom -- no crew lowers its sword. The defenders fight with full force to the last man, however overwhelming the odds.

Floatsam #

When ships go down in a battle, part of their timber drifts on the water -- the floatsam. The victorious player salvages it in addition to the regular plunder. Both phases in which ships can be lost (naval battle and harbor defense) produce floatsam. Like regular plunder, it is subject to the victor's warehouse capacity -- anything that cannot be stored is lost.

Wild Shores and Ancient Ruins #

Uninhabited islands are rarely masterless. Natives, wild clans, or the remnants of old admiralties defend the land with their own means. An attacker who thinks easy prey awaits will run into real resistance. The longer an Old Empire ruin has been abandoned, the more resolute its defense becomes -- the fanatics of fresh ruins are nothing compared to the veterans of decades-old sites.

What an attacker carries away from an Old Empire ruin follows a single rule: every ruin holds a salvage stock that slowly regrows — older ruins are richer. A victor salvages as much as the stock holds and his cargo holds can carry; a freshly emptied ruin yields nothing until its stock has regrown. A spy report reveals how full it is. The warehouse goods a spy report lists beside it still belong to the ruin itself -- they only change hands on a takeover. Whoever raids the same ruin several times in one day salvages less with every pass — the same rule as everywhere at sea. See the chapter "Old Seas & Corsair Fortresses" for more.

Allied Reinforcements #

Allied reinforcements can help defend an island. Each ready garrison fights with its own sender's research, and losses are distributed proportionally across all parties. If a foreign garrison still carries the note that it is forming up, it takes no part in that battle: it does not strengthen the defence, appears in no loss calculation, and cannot be hit itself. Details: chapter "Fleet Dispatch".

Retribution #

Whoever is plundered carries an open score -- and the sea does not forget. For a limited time, the victim holds a retribution claim against the attacker: if the counterstrike against one of the raider's islands succeeds, the fleet may carry home more loot than its holds would normally allow -- up to what was taken. Nothing new is created; only what was lost is reclaimed. The claim is single-use: once spent, the score is settled -- no matter how much the counterstrike actually brought back. There is no retribution within an alliance.