Breaking Defenses

The kill contract

Before any offensive, write the contract: for each defender, which of my units, summing to more than its DEF, will be adjacent and staged on the same turn? If you can't answer for every defender on the route, you don't have an army yet — you have a donation. The two unbreakable facts:

• A defender with DEF ≥ your best unit's ATK can only die to a staged combo. No exceptions, no attrition.
• Any enemy whose ATK exceeds your unit's DEF kills it at zero cost to themselves. Every tile you end a turn on is an offer.

Staging discipline

A combo fires the moment staged ATK exceeds the target's DEF, all stagers survive, and the whole pile spends one action point. That makes combos not just the only way to kill hard targets but the AP-cheapest way to kill anything. Practical rules:

• Arrive together. Units trickling into range get killed one by one. Hold the wave one tile out of the defender's reach, then commit the whole staging ring in one turn.
• Overshoot by exactly enough. Staged ATK must exceed DEF — add one to the count only if a veteran might be hiding in it (a promoted unit carries +1 you can't see at a glance). More than that is wasted presence.
• Mind the second defender. Your stagers survive the combo, but they end the turn where they stand. Check what can reach them after the kill — the classic loss is winning the combo and losing two stagers to the counterattack you didn't count.

Ranged units bend the rules

Archers (range 2) and catapults (range 3) attack without standing adjacent, which means they contribute to kills without ever being on an offerable tile. A catapult's ATK 4 solo-kills any non-veteran unit in the game; two archers stage a DEF 3 target from complete safety. Screens of cheap meat in front, reach behind — the oldest formation in war works exactly as advertised here.

Cracking a city

Cities are captured by presence — get your force onto/around it and hold. A defended capital is usually a garrison of high-DEF units in and behind borders:

1. Kill the garrison on your terms, not at the wall. Bait defenders out where your staging ring can form; a defender that stays home lets you build the ring at leisure.
2. Bring the demolition crew. One catapult + escort deletes one garrison unit per turn from range 3. The defender must either sally (and die to your ring) or watch the garrison evaporate.
3. Expect the recapture window. Taking a city while its owner still fields an army invites the counter-siege. The contract isn't complete until the relieving force is also accounted for.

Defense is cheaper — use that too

Everything above inverts when you're defending. A spearman in a city forces a multi-unit staging party; killing one stager the turn before the combo fires resets their whole attack. When a bigger power marches on you, you don't need to beat their army — you need to make each of your cities cost more than it's worth before their diplomacy sours or a rival smells their exposed flank.