Defense and intelligence

The Wall

As long as the Wall stands, the gates to the City and the treasury stay shut:

• The raider can only reach the produce piled up outside the Wall, and the higher the Wall, the smaller that share (The Wall gate).
• An outer raid can't break the build queue, lower loyalty or tear down buildings.
• The garrison fights from the battlements: each Wall level adds 3% to your defense. The garrison only fights if it would win; if it wouldn't, it shuts the gates and doesn't lose a single soldier.

The only way for a raider to get past the Wall is the ram. What hardens your Wall:

They all multiply together (Siege).

Warnings and the response window

If your holding has a building that gives warnings, every raid that sets out against it opens a response window: word reaches you, and you make a decision before the raid arrives.

• Only the strongest warning building counts; warnings don't add up.
• The window closes before the raid arrives; for a raid from a nearby holding, the window may close as it arrives.
• The raider doesn't know a window has opened.
• The warning comes as a live notice, a report and, if you're not in the game, a phone notification.

Four responses

In each window you give one response:

1. Dig trench: adds power to your defense. If you have a Trench item, you use it up: your defense is 40% stronger, with no cooldown. Otherwise the Wall digs the trench: starting at Wall level 3, each Wall level adds 3.3%, up to 42%. After the Wall digs a trench, the holding has a 12-hour cooldown (the Wall's Moat specialization halves it).
2. Meet them outside (sortie): half of your garrison rides out and meets the raid in front of the Wall. A sortie gets no Wall or defense bonus, but it catches the rams before they reach the Wall; if the raid is destroyed here, it never reaches your holding.
3. Recall armies: turns all of your marches on the road back home; you defend with the army that returns.
4. Call for help: word goes out to the members of your alliance; sending help is their decision.

Defensive deeds

Defending troops

• Spearmen are strong against cavalry raids, Shieldbearers against mixed raids, Guardsmen against every kind of raid.
• Archers rain arrows on the attacking infantry before the clash.
• Watchmen and Naphtha Throwers never leave their holding: the Watchman is the Wall's toughest sentry, and the Naphtha Thrower burns the raid's siege engines before they reach the Wall.
• You can send reinforcements to your allies' holdings; their army fights alongside your garrison (Reinforcements).

Scouting

A march made up only of scouts is a scouting march: it doesn't fight, costs no raid charge, needs no declaration of war and can be sent to protected players too (during Founding, scouting holdings has to wait as well).

• Scout strength: each scout's strength grows 3% with the Stable's level; the Watchtower adds 25%, the Beacon 50% (only the larger one counts).
• Scout contest: scouts in the defender's holding resist the scouting. If the defender's scout strength is greater, the scouting fails, all the scouts die and the defender learns who sent them. A tie goes to the scouts.
• Successful scouting reveals the size of the garrison, the Wall level, the resources in the storehouse and the loot you could take right now; it also shows specializations that affect defense, and the player's house. Trenches don't show: they are dug when a raid approaches.
• A holding with scouts notices it was scouted but can't tell who did it.

Scouting an altar

Sending scouts to an altar tells you who holds it, its garrison and its fortification, or that an empty altar is empty.

Watching the roads

A holding with a warning building also watches the roads around it. The sight range grows with the building's warning strength:

• Enemy armies and caravans passing near the edge of your sight range appear on the map and in your sightings.
• Movements of your allies and of players you have a pact with aren't listed.
• Armies on their way home aren't visible; loaded caravans on their way home are.
• Soldiers stationed at an altar watch their surroundings too: 6 km with soldiers alone, much farther with a scout at the altar.

Interception

You can meet an enemy army or caravan on the road if your holding can see it:

• Only movements that holding sees can be intercepted; allies and players you have a pact with can't be.
• No interceptions during Founding or during a protected start.
• Intercepting an army needs no declaration of war: you can meet a raider headed for your holding on the road. Intercepting a caravan needs a declaration of war or an alliance war in force between the two sides, in either direction.
• An interception costs 1 raid charge. Any fighting unit that can leave its holding can go.
• Your army must reach the target's path before it passes; if it can't make it, the march doesn't set out and no charge is spent.
• On the road there is no Wall, no defense bonus and no Plunder mode: the loser loses its entire army. Morale applies.
• A caravan doesn't fight: intercept it and its cargo is yours, as much as your storehouse can hold. You only learn what it carried when you take the cargo. The Escort saves half the cargo for a caravan, and gives an army 20% more power, once. The Hidden Passage slips an intercepted movement away through a secret path, once.
• The intercepting army marches home from the meeting point, and it can be seen on the way back too.