Creating your army

It's a fundamental part of any game involving war that you will (or at least should) have an army. Your army is designed by you; you choose it's training, you choose it's weaponry, it's armour and mounts. When you send your men to war you also say how they fight the war.

How to create a unit

There are two ways to create a unit, the easy way is to go to the unit builder, pick the items you want and then you have your unit. The much longer route is to go to the equipment page and use the costs from there to work out what you want. Each item has two costs; the normal cost and the without iron cost. You pay the latter cost when you have no supply of iron, in many cases a supply of Iron will make the troops cost less. Costs are affected by training and that will be covered later.

When you have your unit, simply post it into your team information topic or in some way ensure that I add it to Rob the Database and you are set. It is now a part of your national military and you can recruit units of that type. The cost is how many materials it will cost to recruit 1000 of them, you don't need to recruit 1000 at a time, you can recruit any from 1 and up. Just remember that they come out of your civilian population and will not produce food or materials yet will consume both.

Military summary

It is as the name suggests a summary of your military (shock horror!) which you use to tell me what makes up your army. It is separated into blocks, each block is a type of unit, below are a few examples from the Aggregate forces.

The numbers in brackets are the calculated costs of the various units, the first number is the normal cost while the second is the cost when you do not have a supply of iron. The second brackets hold the upkeep cost of the unit, with and without iron.

Training

Training simply refers to how well the unit is trained before being allowed to leave the training grounds, the higher trained it is the better it will fight but the more expensive it will cost. The first cost is how much it multiplies the cost of the items, the second is how much is adds on as a constant after the items and then finally we will come to the upkeep.

• Untrained: 50% of the cost, no constant cost
• Low standard: 75% of the cost, no constant cost
• Normal standard: 100% of the cost and 1 extra material
• High standard: 150% of the cost and 3 extra materials
• Exceptional standard: 200% of the cost and 5 extra materials
• Elite standard: 500% of the cost and 10 extra materials

When you make your army you need to decide how well trained it will be, highly trained troops may be great for a siege or an area where only a few can fight at once, they are not however so capable on wide open plains where numbers count for more.

Upkeep

Keeping an army can be expensive. Each turn your men will require materials to keep them able and ready. Their upkeep cost is dependent on firstly their original cost and also their training. An unwashed rabble of peasants requires no upkeep while your elite guard cost a lot to keep in peak performance.

• Untrained: No upkeep
• Low standard: 25% of original cost
• Normal standard: 25% of original cost
• High standard: 33% of original cost (sometimes this number will be a little off due to rounding errors)
• Exceptional standard: 33% of original cost
• Elite standard: 50% of original cost

Recruitment

It takes 6 months to train any troops, untrained troops however take only a week to equip. Troops are at all times located somewhere, this is listed in your "TI" topic (Team information) by you. If they are not listed in there then they are assumed to be spread evenly among your cities.

Conquest

When you successfully take an enemy city, you may do one of four things.

• 10% of the surviving enemy population can be converted and become your population (though are more likely to riot for the next few turns)
• 50% of the surviving enemy population can be made slaves
• Materials equal to twice the population count rounded to the lowest thousand can be taken
• An equal compromise of slaves and materials may be taken

Obviously, killing everybody there means that you can't take them as slaves or conquested population. Assuming you loot then burn you can still get materials from it.

Engines of War

To ensure that everybody is on the same page in terms of what a war engine is, here are some simple descriptions of the different engines.

• Catapult: It throws a rock about about 0.25m in radius.
• Onager: It throws a rock about about 0.5m in radius.
• Mangonel: It throws a rock about about 1m in radius.
• Scorpion: Shoots javelins a long way.
• Ballista: Shoots very large javelins a long way.
• Trebuchet: HUGE and complicated mechanism that can throw rocks about 2m in radius. Trebuchets take several days to setup or dismantle.