Combat Math — Terrain, Ratios, Defense Posts

Every tile you take runs through the calculation below. Knowing it turns “should I attack?” from a feeling into arithmetic.

Terrain changes your losses

Terrain	Loss magnitude	Ticks per tile	Reading
Plains	80	16.5	20% cheaper, fastest
Highland	100	20	Baseline
Mountain	120	25	20% costlier, 50% slower

Lower ticks per tile is faster. Press Space for the terrain view and push toward plains first. The difference in ground covered per troop is large.

A “highlands 5.0” figure circulates in some writeups. That looks like the defense post multiplier (×5) mistaken for a terrain value. Terrain values are 80, 100 and 120, and they are magnitudes, not multipliers.

Multipliers stacked on top

Modifier	Effect	Condition
Defense post	Losses ×5, speed ×3 slower	Within 30 tiles of the defender’s post
Fallout	×3 – ×5	Attacking irradiated tiles
Attacking a Tribe	×0.7	Human or Nation attacking a bot — 30% fewer losses
Attacking a traitor	×0.5	Target is marked a traitor — half losses
Large defender	×0.7 – ×1.0	Defenders past ~150k tiles get easier to hit
Large attacker	Penalty	Attackers past 100k tiles lose efficiency
Troop ratio	0.6 – 2.0	defender ÷ attacker, clamped

The game actively handicaps the leader. Big empires attack less efficiently and defend worse. Comebacks are structurally possible.

Attack ratio

Attacker losses blend two terms: 0.6 × (ratio term) + 0.4 × (defender density term).

The ratio term carries clamp(defender ÷ attacker, 0.6, 2.0). The floor of 0.6 is reached at attacker = 1.67 × defender, and losses stop improving there. Advance speed uses a separate clamp that already maxes out at 1.00×.

The other 40% never changes, however many troops you send — it depends only on the defender’s troops ÷ tiles. So you cannot drive losses to zero by piling on; you pick thin targets instead.

→ Full breakdown in What Attack Ratio Should You Use?

Wilderness is a different formula

Unclaimed land is simpler. Loss per tile = terrain magnitude ÷ 5. Tribes pay only ÷10.

• Plains 16 / Highland 20 / Mountain 24

The troop count at which advance speed maxes out differs by terrain: plains 6,600, highland 8,000, mountain 10,000. Beyond that, extra troops buy nothing.

Early-game optimization: overcommitting to wilderness gains no speed. Hold the ratio low (10–30%) and expand in several directions at once — advance rate scales with border length.

Encirclement — zero losses

Completely surround a player (so none of their tiles touch water or the map edge) and their territory is absorbed instantly with zero troop losses. Their accumulated gold transfers too.

Finding a small isolated tribe and wrapping it is the strongest early move in the game. Scan your surroundings right after spawn and mark encircleable neighbors.

Retreating

The red ❌ in the event panel cancels an attack in progress. The cost is 25% of the attacking force.

Paying 25% to save 75% from a losing fight is usually correct. Troops are not consumables — they are your growth engine.

Retreating a boat sends it back to its origin; if that land has changed hands in the meantime, it attacks there instead. Nukes cannot be recalled.

Going around by boat

⚠️ Boats do not ignore defense posts. Several guides claim they do. The game creates a normal attack from the landing tile, and the defense post check looks at the tile being taken, not where the attack came from. Land next to a post and you eat the same ×5.

What boats actually give you:

• The landing tile itself is free — normal combat starts after that
• You can pick a coast with no defense post. That is what “going around” really means
• Up to 3 at once
• Sunk by a warship means total loss of the troops aboard — warship patrol range is 100 tiles
• Landing simultaneously with a ground attack splits the defense and helps a lot

→ See Defense Post Range and Placement.