The Battlefield

Not everybody fights

The ground in front of a city is finite. Whoever fits forms the line; whoever does not waits in reserve.

That is why the battle panel says “5,000 men here, 800 fighting”. It is not a bug: it is the central rule.

The city sets the size of the ground

The ground is chosen from the defending city's Town Hall level and frozen when the battle opens; a city that grows during the battle does not widen it. The figures are in citizens' worth of frontage, and the same width serves both sides' lines.

The ground

The reserve and the support reserve take no frontage at all.

Front line

The heavy infantry stands here: Spearman, Hoplite, Thureophoros, Phalangite.

The front line's job is as much to shield what is behind it as to strike. But shielding is not a switch: the fuller your line, the more it holds, and as it thins the enemy reaches further past it. One soldier cannot screen an army.

Ranged line

Archer, Slinger, Cretan Archer. They shoot from behind the front line. Only the Archer and the Cretan Archer can shoot over a wall; the Slinger's stone does not carry that far.

Only ranged units standing IN the line shoot; an archer in reserve looses nothing. Every volley spends ammunition. A formation that runs dry does not die — it falls silent, and gives its place in the line to men who still have arrows.

Flank

Peltast, Swordsman, Prodromos, Heavy Swordsman, Companion Rider. They go for the enemy flank first.

Once the enemy flank is cleared, the ranged line and the siege engines behind it are exposed — and cavalry is more effective still against those targets. Not even cavalry can reach the support column, though. In a walled city the defender's flank is behind the wall and the attacker's in front of it: while the wall stands a flank reaches nobody, but the attacker's flank becomes the target of the arrows from the wall once its front line has fallen. When the wall falls, the flank comes into play.

Swordsmen stand on the flank too. Once the opposing flank falls they reach for the ranged line first; they turn on the front line only when nothing is left behind it, and they hit it very weakly. Unlike cavalry, the Heavy Swordsman is there to hold the flank rather than to break it.

Siege line

Engines strike the wall first, and they are the only lane that can damage it at all. Only an engine standing in the line does anything; a catapult in reserve does nothing. With no wall, or once it has fallen, shooting engines look for the enemy's engines first.

Most engines spend ammunition. The Battering Ram and the Chelone do not — but they strike only the wall, never a man. A ram waiting in a defending city does not take the field.

Reserve

The reserve is not an army held back. It is the army waiting because there is no room on the ground.

When a place opens in the line — somebody falls, or runs out of ammunition — the reserve fills it at the next round boundary.

Support reserve

The priest, the physician and the engineer do not stand in the ordinary lanes. They take no frontage, strike nothing and screen nothing, and nobody can strike them; they work between rounds.

If every one of your SOLDIERS falls, the support column is lost with them: the camp is overrun.

Who reaches the line?

Every unit has a deployment priority and the ground fills in that order: heavy infantry before light, heavy engines before light.

There is one exception, and it is ammunition: a formation that cannot fire yields its place to one that can.