Armies
Armies
Units are grouped into armies, which are what moves and fights on the map. An army has a type, a stance, a status and, optionally, cargo.
Army types
- Land
- Support
- Air
- Naval
- Amphibious
A unit can only be assigned to an army of a compatible type. Naval units can only be assigned to a fleet on a water node adjacent to the naval base that trained them.
Creating armies
- Trained units auto-deploy, to the rally point if one is set (Set rally point on the district; Send all idle to rally moves idle armies there).
- From the troops window, create an army, name it, assign or unassign units, and save an army as a template to recreate it later.
- An army with units cannot be deleted: unassign them first.
Stances
- Attack: engages any hostile army in range or on its node.
- Defensive: never starts a fight, only fires back when attacked.
- Passive: never fights, not even in retaliation (it can still take losses).
Statuses
- Idle, Moving, Attacking, Defensive, In garrison.
- An army carried aboard a transport cannot be ordered on its own.
Movement
- Routes follow the node graph. Land armies use land nodes, fleets use water nodes, air armies fly over both within their air range.
- A route is shortened at the last valid node when it would cross impassable terrain, hostile territory or exceed air range.
- A move is blocked when the destination is incompatible terrain, hostile territory, beyond air range, or occupied by a foreign army, and refused when no route exists.
- Terrain changes the cost of each edge (see Terrain); the research focus March Speed speeds armies up.
- To cross water with land units, load them aboard a Naval Cargo or Plane Cargo; ghost infantry can also ride a Griffon or a Stealth Helicopter.
Garrisons and attacks
- Armies on a district can garrison it as defenders, or attack it; the attack panel shows total attackers and defenders with their attack and defense.
- Attacks can be scheduled with a delay in minutes so several armies strike together.
- A battle ends with the district captured or held. The battle report lists surviving and destroyed units on each side, hard-countered units (which took extra losses and could not retaliate), and the spoils of war: resources and cargo looted, captured or destroyed, including ammunition.
- Garrisoned districts also keep unrest down.