Combat

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Combat description

All units and buildings have a certain number of hit points. When a unit or building is attacked, it loses hit points based on the attacker's training and experience level, and based on the amount of armour it has. Units can also lose hit points through starvation.

Units die (and buildings are destroyed) if they completely run out of hit points. Damaged units can regain hit points by being healed in a hospital, buildings can regain hit points by being repaired.

The amount of damage done by an attacker is based on its basic damage, plus its experience level, minus the amount of armour the defender has. Although the principles are the same, different types of combateer attack in different ways:

• Warriors walk up to their enemies and hit them repeatedly. Their attack speed skill controls the number of blows they can land each second.
• defence towers throw rocks at nearby ground-based enemies. They take a long time to reload and need to be restocked with stone every so often.
• explorers emit a pulse of energy whenever an enemy gets within one square of it. At first, this pulse only affects other explorers adjacent to it, but training in a level 3 school allows explorers to attack ground targets. Explorers can emit a pulse once for every three moves they make.

Managing combateers

You can get information about individual units and buildings by clicking on them. The graphs? and statistics? menus also give an overview of how your population is doing.

Armour

Some units (and some buildings) are armoured against enemy attack. Each point of armour deflects one point of damage done by an attacker, although warriors and defence towers will always deal one point of damage no matter how much armour you have.

Warriors start off with 10 points of armour, minus 10 points for each piece of fruit they ate in the last inn they went to. A warrior that took two pieces of fruit with his last meal will have -10 armour, meaning that he takes 10 extra points of damage for every blow he is dealt. Armour lost due to fruit doesn't accumulate, so if the warrior eats no fruit the next time he takes lunch, he will go back to having 10 points of armour.

Basic Damage

Defence towers do a certain basic amount of damage based on the level they've been upgraded to. Level one towers do 30 points of basic damage, level two towers do 40 points, level three towers do 60 points.

Explorers' air damage is worth 8 basic points, as is their ground damage once they've learnt it.

A warrior's basic damage depends on its attack strength. Learning attack strength to level 1 gives it 8 basic points of damage. Learning it to level 2 gives 16 points, level 3 is gives 24 points, level 4 gives 32.

Experience

The more experience a unit has of combat, the stronger he gets. Units start off with no experience, and gain one experience point ("XP") for every point of damage they do to an enemy (after armour is taken into account). Eventually, they will get enough XP to go up to the next level of experience, which means that every blow they land in combat does another point of damage. As they go up a level, their new level is shown in yellow next to them for a moment.

For convenience, here is a list of experience levels - in practice, it's very rare to get above experience level 10.

Details of the experience system

The details of the experience system are given here, but if you're not interested in numbers, this section can be safely skipped.

The formula for working out the number of XP needed to advance from one level to the next is cl2 where l is the level you want to get to, and c is a constant based on your unit type (20 for warriors, 50 for explorers). Experience gained getting to one level doesn't count towards the experience you need to get to the next, so the total amount of experience you need to get to a particilar experience level n is the sum of cl2 from l=1 to l=n.

Getting into a fight

Explorers won't attack unless they fly directly into (or over) an enemy unit or building. Defence towers will attack any enemy unit or building that comes into its firing range. Warriors will attack any enemy they can see within an 8x8 square around them.

Putting it all together: an example

Note: This could be expanded and moved into the unit section later on.

A new warrior emerges from one swarm, a new explorer emerges from another. They each start with an experience level of 0 and 0 XP. They each deal 8 points of damage for every attack they do. They each take a moment to look around for things to do. The explorer sees nothing to do, so he begins to fly across the landscape to see what he can find. The warrior sees several barracks he could train in, and a war flag in the distance. He prefers the war flag, which he immediately heads toward.

Soon, the warrior finds himself in combat. He and three other warriors surround a market and start attacking it. Each blow he lands should do 8 points of damage, but the market deflects 2 points with its armour. After he hits the market four times, he has done 24 points of damage and gained 24 experience, so he gains an experience level. Now, each blow he lands does 9 points of damage, minus 2 because of armour. The warrior gets three more blows in before his team-mates destroy the market. As the warrior retires to a nearby inn for lunch, he has 1 experience level and is 25 points towards reaching level 2.

In the mean-time, the explorer happens upon an enemy explorer. The explorers fight, dealing each other 8 points of damage for every blow they land. Luckily, the enemy explorer had previously lost a hit point through a moment's starvation, so dies after being dealt 24 points in 3 blows. Like the warrior, the explorer has gained 24 experience, but because he needs 50 experience points to go up a level, he remains at level 0. After the fight, the explorer has only one remaining hit point, so makes his way straight to the nearest hospital.

The warrior finishes his lunch and takes an orange, which takes his armour level from 10 down to 0. He looks again for something to do. There are no war flags any longer, although there is a guard area nearby. Most of the teams barracks are full with other warriors now, but there's space in a level two barracks, which he immediately signs up for.

As the warrior enters the barracks, the explorer leaves the hospital. Still not hungry, he looks for something to do. There is an exploration flag on the other side of the map that needs more explorers, which he heads for. But he gets hungry before he can make it there, so turns round and heads for an inn. After lunching at the inn, he sees a level 3 school with an empty place, so goes there to train.

The warrior leaves the barracks with an attack speed of 3, so now he will attack three times as quickly as before. There are now two guard posts - one nearby and one in the distance. He heads to the nearby one. Soon, two enemy warriors pass near the guard post. He goes to attack them, and it turns out neither of them have any experience, skill, or armour. They are no match for him, and he gains two experience levels fighting with them before they flee. The warrior gives chase, but they have a much higher walking speed, so they manage to escape. The warrior heads to hospital then to an inn.

When the explorer leaves the inn, he heads back toward the exploration flag set there before. When he arrives, he finds a level 3 enemy inn, which he attacks. Since he can only do it 7 points of damage with each attack, it takes him a long time to finish off the inn. However, since no workers attempt to repair it, he eventually manages to deal the 350 points of damage necessary to destroy it, putting him at experience level two.

As it happens, this was the enemy's last inn, so victory comes quickly as the few remaining enemies convert rather than starve to death.

Combat Strategy

• Since warriors will only attack visible targets within a box 8 squares wide around them, paint guard areas so that units can't sneak past without being spotted, or run past taking only minimal damage.
• You can draw warriors into combat with war flags and explorers with exploration flags. However, you may want to try increasing the minimum experience level on your war flags so that you have enough troops to do the job, but weaker warriors stay at home to train.
• Gaining experience is good, but training is better. Destroy war flags as quickly as possible, so that your warriors have time to train between battles. Well-trained warriors tend to gain experience levels faster anyway.
• Keep an eye on the wound graph?. If the amount of wounding rises briefly, it may mean your units are under attack. If it continues to rise (or remains constant) for a long time, you need more hospitals.
• At the start of the game, warriors will have more armour than attack strength, so are almost invulnerable to each other. During this period, you might want to harrass your enemies with small attack parties that simply retreat when faced with significant opposition. However, as barracks are set up and globs start eating fruit, fighting gets more dangerous for warriors - so it becomes important to go into combat with more, better trained, warriors than your enemy.
• Defence towers are quite useful early in the game, as they have enough armour to defend themselves against warriors and do enough damage to get past the warrior's armour. However, it can take the entire capacity of one defence tower to see off a warrior, so you will need a string of towers (or a secure supply line) to defend against any real enemy attack.
• As the game progresses, Defence towers become increasingly vulnerable to enemy attack, but upgraded defence towers can become useful when workers try to steal resources - a level 3 defence tower can kill a worker in four shots.
• If nothing else, defence towers can be a good first line of defence, letting you see the size of the enemy force, softening them up and keeping them busy while your own warriors are on their way to the battle.