Battle System
A battle begins when one of your stacks moves onto a tile held by an enemy. Every unit in the attacking stack fights every enemy unit on that tile, and units from all of the defender's stacks on the tile fight together. The whole fight is decided the moment the attack is made. The battle window then plays back what happened, and nothing during playback can change the result.
Formations
Each side lines up in three rows of up to three units: front, middle and back. Melee units fill the front row first. Ranged, siege and support units form up behind them. With more than three melee units the extras spill back into the middle and back rows, and a side with no melee units at all has to put its other units in front.
Rounds
A battle runs in rounds. Each round both sides act in four phases, the defender always striking first within a phase. Siege, then flanking, then ranged, then melee. Rounds repeat until one side has no unit left standing.
- Siege: siege units in the middle or back rows fire at a column. A random front-row enemy and the units directly behind it. See Siege Units.
- Flanking: units with the Flanking ability strike a random unit in the enemy's back row. See Battle Abilities.
- Ranged: ranged units in the middle or back rows shoot a random front-row enemy. See Ranged Units.
- Melee: every unit in the front row attacks a random front-row enemy with its melee attack. See Melee Units.
Damage
- Each attack rolls a whole number between the attacker's minimum and maximum for that kind of attack, melee
or ranged
. - The armor
of the unit being hit removes a share of the roll. Armor is capped at 75%, so no unit is ever immune, and the attacker's armor penetration is subtracted from it first. - The defensive bonus of the tile the battle is fought on (terrain, improvements, city defenses and fortification) works as extra armor for the defending side, on top of its own and with no cap. Every hit it takes is divided by (1 + 1.2 x bonus). The attacker's armor penetration shrinks the bonus it fights against by the same share. The attackers never get it. See Combat Bonuses.
- Damage = roll x (1 - armor after penetration), and a hit on the defenders is then divided by (1 + 1.2 x bonus x (1. Penetration)), rounded up. A melee or flanking hit always deals at least 1.
- A unit whose hitpoints reach zero is destroyed and the formation closes up around the gap.
Between battles
- Most units can start only one battle per turn. A unit's page shows its limit.
- A unit that stays put for a turn recovers 10% of its maximum hitpoints at the start of the next. 20% inside one of its own cities, 3% on land of a civ it is at war with. A unit that moved does not heal.
- If the attackers destroy every defender of a city, the city falls to them.
- Siege units with a Bombard order can wear down a city's defensive bonus before the assault. See City Defense and Sieges.