Warfare

Each army is made up of a commander and warriors. Only lords can be commanders. The higher the commander's Command skill, the lower the chances of warriors fleeing when taking damage.

Armies can be selected either by selective their commander or their banner on the map. They can be ordered to move or attack manually with the right mouse button.

Warriors

In the Army menu you can recruit warriors. The menu will display the Combat skill underneath each character. There are four ways of recruiting warriors:

From peasants, which requires a Training Field.
From slaves, which will give them freedom.
From mercenaries, which will cost Gold and need one to two days to arrive.
Lords can always be added as warriors.

Warriors are more effective if they have weapons, armor and shields. If they have any in the inventory they will use them, otherwise you can give them equipment.

Combat mechanics

Each character has a pain threshold, which is 50, or 100 if the army's commander has the "Defender of the city" personality trait active. Units hit during combat will accumulate injuries, which cause pain. Injuries are displayed in the States list when a character is selected. Alternatively the Thoughts list will display a "Pain from injury" thought that shows the total pain. If pain becomes greater than the pain threshold the character will fall unconscious. If pain becomes double the pain threshold the character will die. There are various types of injuries, each with its own pain and time it takes to go away.

Each character has a Courage value that is equal to half of its Mood, or equal to its Mood if the army's commander has the "Defender of the city" personality trait active. If the value of the "Pain from injury" and "Pain from sickness" thought exceed the Courage value the warrior will flee. Mood is also increased by enemies being killed, unconscious or running away, especially the commander, and decreased by the same happening to allies.

Once an army begin fighting it cannot be given new orders until is victorious or defeated. After a battle the victorious army will take the enemy survivors as prisoners and peasants will later bring them to the settlement.

Battle calculation

In battle, characters take turns attacking each other. Depending on the attacker's weapon and the defender's armor, different-sized packets of "tickets" are thrown into a figurative "bag" and one ticket is drawn from this bag with each attack - this is the result of the attack.

For example, a dagger adds 10 "cut" tickets into the bag, while light armor adds 10 "blocked by armor" tickets. Thus, there will be a 50% (10:10) chance that the attack will hit the target and the defender will receive a "cut". Heavy armor adds a packet of 30 "blocked by armor" tickets, so the chance of a cut in this case will be 25% (10:30).

The bag will also have a number of "dodged attack" tickets for the character with higher Combat skill, equal to the difference in skill between the opponents.

Tickets can include not only wounds or parrying attacks but also weapon damage, armor damage and stun.