In this section...
Army attributesLeader attributesWhen combat occursRetreatsRoutsBerserkSiegeVictory and lossIn this section... |
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Army attributesLeader attributesWhen combat occursRetreatsRoutsBerserkSiegeVictory and loss |
Armies and leaders have a number of attributes to illustrate their abilities.
Melee: a unit's offensive capability in melee (i.e. hand to hand) combat. Attack can be increased by the presence of a leader.
Missile: a unit's ability to attack from a distance. Some units use spears, some use arrows, some use slings, most have no missile ability at all. There is one exchange of missile fire before melee combat begins.
Defence: the ability of an army to defend itself in combat. Defence applies to both missile and melee combat.
Defence modifers: these are given by terrain. Some units defend especially well in certain types of terrain.
Health: the total amount of damage an army can take before it is destroyed. As health goes down, attack and morale suffers -- especially morale. Armies have a 50% chance of healing one point of damage per turn.
Morale: the willingness of an army to fight. Morale is extremely important, as even the toughest unit will flee the battlefield if morale fails. Morale is strongly affected by health. It can also be bolstered by a leader.
Discipline: the degree to which an army can be controlled. Discipline is important in many situations. When an army retreats it may be routed if discipline is low. If an army routs another army it must check discipline or go berserk, pursuing the routed army mercilessly as the attacking troops' eyes glaze over with avarice and bloodlust. In either case you lose control of the army for one turn. Discipline also applies when capturing cities. An army with low discipline will do more than its fair share of looting and killing, which results in less gold and fewer productive new citizens for you. Finally, armies with low discipline tend to be the first to desert and turn bandit when they don't receive their pay.
Movement Costs: These are given as percentages and are applied to each hex of terrain the army crosses. For example, if a unit's movement cost for grass is 33 and its cost for forests is 50, in one turn it may move three grass hexes, two forest hexes, or one grass and one forest. In the final case, the extra 17% of its move is lost.
Spotting: the number of surrounding hexes a unit may see. "Seen" hexes are bright and unseen hexes are shaded. If a hex is unseen it may have anything hiding in it. You won't know until you move closer.
Experience: As units gain experience, their morale and their ability to attack increases. Armies gain one experience per turn, three for losing a battle, and five for winning one.
Cost: the initial purchase price of a unit.
Upkeep: the cost paid each turn to maintain a unit. Eventually you'll reach a point where you can no longer afford to increase your armies. This is dangerous, because if you suddenly lose income for any reason, your unpaid armies may rebel.
The primary leadership attributes are expressed as adjectives rather than numbers. This is done to make clear the fact that leaders exist on a separate plane of the game than armies. If we gave a leader and an army an attack value of 5, people might get the impression that they could be measured against each other, that they might actually face each other in combat. This is absurd. No matter how tough an individual may be, he should always be relatively helpless in the face of an army, even an army of starving peasants. This isn't one of those games where you power up your leader and march him around killing everything in sight. A leader wins wars with intelligence and charisma, not muscles.
Nevertheless, leaders' attributes do have numerical values which will interest you if you're keen enough to delve into the algorithms. Here are their equivalents:
Poor 1 Average 2 Good 3 Exceptional 4 Brilliant 5 Astounding 6 Legendary 7 Superhuman 8 Godlike 9
And here are the leader attributes:
Leadership: This is a leader's most important attribute. This is the reason you put up with them. Leadership increases the attack and morale of every unit within a leader's sphere of influcence, as given by the following table:
| Bonus | Range | |
| Poor | ||
| Average | ||
| Good | ||
| Exceptional | ||
| Brilliant | ||
| Astounding | ||
| Legendary | ||
| Superhuman | ||
| Godlike |
A leader's sphere of influence is limited according to whether they're at land or at sea. In each case, the leader may also inflence hexes on the coast line. This means that a leader on land may only influence the land hexes within his leadership radius, except for one hex of sea along the coast. Leaders at sea may only influence sea hexes, except for land hexes along a coast. A leader's area of influence is shown on the main map by diagonal purple lines.
Loyalty: A captain's loyalty is never questioned. They are happy to serve and grateful for their position. But heroes and legends are cut from different stock. They have the utmost prowess on the battlefield, but after a time they tend to get their own ideas of how to improve the quality of life in your empire. Their theories usually start with placing themselves on the throne. Since no man ever fully understands the depths of another's ambition, loyalty ratings are hidden from you. You may gauge a man's loyalty by setting an agent upon him, but beware the consequences if your ruse is discovered. The best way to keep a hero or legend happy is to keep his pockets full. Be aware that a hero or legend's sense of self-worth increases as he gains experience, and reward him accordingly. Or pick a "special mission" for him deep in hostile territory if he gets to be too big a pain in the ass.
Melee: Melee is a leader's ability to defend himself in hand to hand combat against another hero. In very rare situations a leader can also cause minimal damage to an army itself while evading capture. These situations are discussed in full in the appendix.
Health: As with armies, health is the amount of damage a hero can take in combat. Health doesn't affect leadership, but it does affect melee ability and dramatically increases a hero's chance of being captured by an enemy army.
Stealth: Stealth is a leader's ability to avoid detection. It is applied both in leader vs. leader combat and leader vs. army combat. A high stealth value contributes greatly to a leader's longevity.
Movement, spotting, experience, cost, upkeep: These attributes are given numerically and are handled like an legion's stats of the same name, with a couple of exceptions. One, the experience tables for leaders are different than those for armies. Two, upkeep is a recommended value for heroes and legends, not a constant. You can pay a hero whatever you feel like each turn, though it's usually best if you pay them a little more than they expect. Still, you can shortchange them for a turn or two if you really need the money, though of course it will affect their loyalty adversely.
Combat occurs whenever two enemy units attempt to occupy the same hex. Once a unit enters combat, it stops moving for the rest of the day. This means that while a unit may only attack one foe a turn, it may itself be attacked several times if the timing is right.
Example: a Roman legion is attacked early in the turn by a Parthian horse archer. The legion beats back the horse archers, taking one point of damage in the process. The legion holds the hex but stops dead. The horse archers retreat one hex, along the path they entered, and also stop. Later in the turn, a Parthian cataphract attempts to enter the legion's hex. The legion must fight again, and is hampered by the damage it already took this turn from the horse archer.
The order in which units fight depends entirely on who arrived first. Units of time in Fortunes of War are quite small, so there is little chance that units will arrive simultaneously, but if they do the armies will fight in the order in which they received their commands.
Your units and your allies' units may move through each other's hexes, but they may not end their turn in the same hex.
Leaders obey the same movement rules as units, but they exist on a separate plane on the map. Think of the map as having two transparencies, one for armies, one for leaders. Thus, a hex may contain both a leader and an army, but never two of either.
Leaders may engage in hand to hand combat directly against one another, as described in the combat appendix under leader vs. leader combat.
If leaders find themselves alone in a hex with an enemy army they may be captured, as detailed in army vs. leader combat.
If an army fails a morale check in combat, it retreats one hex. The possible paths of retreat are the three hexsides facing away from the victorious unit, excluding occupied hexes, mountains, and seas. If there are no paths available then the army must fight to the death. Who knows, it might get lucky.
If an army must retreat, it then makes a discipline check. If this check is failed, the army is routed.
A rout occurs when all army discipline breaks down and it's every man for himself. Armies in rout are out of control for one turn and will spend the next turn running away from the attacker as quickly as they can. When an army is routed, the winning army must make a discipline check. If this check fails, the winner goes berserk.
Routed armies have a yellow movement vector.
A berserk army is out of control. Berserks occur when an army routs another army and fails its discipline check. The berserking army is automatically given an intercept order for the unit it just routed. The smell of blood is in the air. Barbarians are especially prone to this type of anti-social behaviour. It tends to shorten their lifespans.
Berserking armies have an orange intercept vector.
Cities are under siege if an enemy army is either occupying a city hex or adjacent to a city hex. Siege hampers both the income and production of your foe.
 | Cities under siege will have this graphic on their pane in the city list on your list control. |
The amount of income lost to a city each turn it is besieged is equal to the greater of either:
For siege purposes, only the raw attack value is used. Leadership and experience bonuses do not apply. The minimum income a city can have is zero.
Example 1: A city with an income of 22 is besieged by a berserker (attack=9) and a spearman (attack=5). Two numbers are calculated: the sum of the attack values (14) and a percentage of the total income equal to 2x the sum of the attack values (22 x 0.28 = 6.16, rounded to 6). Therefore the city loses 14 of it's income and only produces 8 gold that turn.
Example 2: A city with an income of 170 is besieged by 6 German horsemen (attack=7, sum of attack=42). By sum, the income loss would be 42. By percentage, the income loss would be 170 x 0.84 = 142.8, rounded to 143. Therefore the city loses 143 of its income and only produces 27 gold that turn.
A city under siege loses the ability to produce units of its caste. It may still produce units of a lower caste.
Thus, capitals under siege may produce city and village units, but not capital caste units.
Cities under siege may only produce village caste units.
Villages under siege may produce no units.
Rebels may siege cities with the same consequences as a siege by players.
There are three ways to win a game:
Players are represented in the game as a ruler, which is a class of leader. Players are eliminated when this ruler is killed or captured. There are two ways that this can happen:
If a ruler is eliminated, his empire falls into disorder. See the player elimination section of the combat appendix for further details.
If you eliminate all other players in the game, you win. Normally this type of win doesn't occur unless the endgame is between two players of relatively equal strength.
Each turn, the scores of all players are listed at the end of your advisor's report. Your score is expressed as both an absolute number and as a percentage of the sum of the scores of all players in the game. If your score ever reaches 66% of the total score, you will be declared the victor and the game will end.
This is the way most games will end. We added this provision because we really hate pointless endgames. Having a score of 66% means you have double the score of all other players combined. Once you reach that point, it's a lot more fun to start another game.
If all surviving players are allied at the end of a turn, the game is declared an allied victory. The player with the highest score is declared the victor.
This allows team games, and also allows players to mutually decide to end a game.
A further benefit of the allied victory condition is that it removes the obligation to crush a toady at the game's end, after you've used him to help you kill the other players. Sometimes allies are so pathetic that betraying them at the end leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. Sparing an ally also makes him easier to manipulate in a future game.
Next section: Espionage