Raising Armies

Armies are bought in bursts

Soldiers cost stockpile, and stockpile accumulates while you develop. The natural rhythm is: long peace of pure economy → a burst of recruitment from savings → a war → back to economy. Two numbers bound every burst:

• Your war chest — capped at 5 × players per resource, so a "full" 6-player chest of one resource (30) buys, say, five militia or two swordsmen.
• The army cap — 3 × players total units on the board per side (18 in a 6-player game). You cannot simply out-mass the table late; composition matters.

The practical discipline: keep enough banked to answer an invasion the same turn it appears. A useful floor is one wave of defenders — two or three units of your best line — purchasable at all times.

What to actually buy

• Sentries and spearmen are the best resource-per-DEF in the game. A spearman (DEF 3) parked in a city is unkillable by any single attacker short of a catapult, and forces the enemy to bring a staging party. Defense is structurally cheaper than offense — exploit that when behind.
• Brutes are the workhorse of offense: ATK 2 for 6 wood means staging pairs that crack DEF 3 anywhere.
• A catapult (ATK 4, range 3) solo-kills every non-veteran unit in the game from beyond retaliation. It dies to a stiff breeze (DEF 0) — escort it. One catapult turns sieges from arithmetic problems into demolition.
• Knights are the finisher: ATK 3 with MOV 2 threatens two tiles of reach, catches runners, and takes ground fast. Expensive (6 food + 15 ore) and worth it in the endgame.
• A friar with any serious force — and a monk raising the line around him — quietly convert fair fights into unfair ones.

Unlocks are a war ahead of time

The good roster is gated: no iron, no spear-and-sword line; no scrolls, no ranged; no horses, no cavalry. These are tending decisions made ten turns before the war. When you scout your land, note which specials it offers, and steer a city to hold each one you'll want. Denying a rival their unlock tile is equally real: a swordsman empire that loses its only iron tile can't replace its losses.

Veterans are compound interest

Third kill promotes: +1 DEF (or +1 ATK for sentry/spearman). Because combo kills credit every stager, a disciplined army levels together — three units staged on three kills each are three veterans. An army of veterans breaks the game's clean numbers: a veteran swordsman at DEF 4 has no natural predator except a catapult or a mob, and a veteran spearman at ATK 2 is an anvil that bites. Feed kills deliberately; retire veterans to city garrisons where their bonus defends a star.