Until today an army in this game could walk anywhere on the map. The only thing slowing it down was time. A long march took a long while, and then the army turned up on the far side of the world as fresh as the morning it left. That never sat right with me, and a few of y'all told me so. Ruleset 37 gives every army a tank of action points. Every hex it walks into costs some of that tank, rough ground costs more, and when the tank runs dry the army has to stop and rest before it goes anywhere. You move, I move. And now both of us have to think about how far.
A world keeps the ruleset it was born with, for life. Action points are ruleset 37, so they apply to worlds created at 37 or later. If you're on 36 or earlier, nothing changes under you. Promise.
Why armies needed a leash
Here's what bugged me. You could raise an army at home, click a city forty hexes away, and go make dinner. The army would walk the whole way and arrive at full strength, ready to turn round and do it again. Distance cost you days and nothing else. That made a forward city pointless, made an ally's land just scenery, and meant nobody ever had to ask the only question a general really asks: how far can my people actually walk before they drop?
So now they drop. Not literally (nobody dies of it) but they stop, and they need rest.
How the tank works
Every army carries 100 action points, and a new army starts full. Walking into a hex spends points depending on the ground:
| Ground | Action points to enter one hex |
|---|---|
| Flatlands | 5 |
| Forest | 8 |
| Hills or desert | 10 |
| Mountains | 15 |
So one full tank is about twenty hexes of open grass, or ten of hills. Time hasn't changed at all: hills still take two days a hex for foot soldiers, same as before. Action points are a second limit sitting on top of the clock.
When you pick a destination, the game takes the route that costs the fewest action points, and uses speed to break a tie. That means if there's any way to get there on the tank you have, it finds it. (Mountains are in the table for completeness. My map maker doesn't actually make any. Yet.)
Rest
The tank only refills while an army is standing still: waiting, garrisoned, or sitting outside somebody's walls. How fast depends on where it's standing:
10 a day in one of your own cities. 8 a day in a city of a kingdom you have an Alliance or a Vassalage with, either side of the oath. 5 a day anywhere else. And nothing at all while it's marching. I tried the version where armies rest on the move, and the tank just never emptied, so what would be the point?
In real terms: march twenty hexes and your army is empty. It needs ten days in one of your cities to fill up again, or twenty out in the field. Until then it can't chase anybody, and it can't run either. The kingdom that's been sitting still has the edge. I think that's how it should be.
The game tells you before you commit
I didn't want this to turn into a guessing game, so the numbers are everywhere you need them.
Tap any hex and the Territory tab has a new line under Status: Movement Cost. It shows on hexes you haven't explored too. Yes, that means a 5 tells you it's flat country out there. I decided that's fine. The march preview was already quietly steering you round hills in the dark, so this just says out loud what it knew.
Open the Military tab and each of your armies shows its tank: something like "Action points 64 / 100 · +10/day in your city · full in 4 days". While you're picking a destination, the dashed route shows the cost, and if your army can't make it the line turns red at the point where it would run dry. Click past that and the game refuses, and tells you exactly what the march needs against what you've got. Stop at the red line, rest, then carry on.
The AI plays by the same rules
AI kingdoms get the same tank, the same costs and the same rest. The one difference is that they plan their own stops: an AI army marches as far as it can afford, camps, and sets off again when it's rested enough to finish the trip or is full. It's exactly what you'd do by hand. They're still coming for you. They just take longer to get there, and they turn up tired.
Two small things follow from that. An AI won't send a lone raider after a trade route it can't reach in one go. And an ally only rushes to your defence if it can actually get there on one tank. A rescue that turns up forty days late isn't a rescue.
Smaller changes
When a march order is refused, the message now says why in plain words, instead of a flat "No path to that territory".
The toast after you order a march now tells you what it cost, not just when it arrives.
What it means for you
| Change | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Distance | Twenty hexes of open ground is one tank. Anything further, plan a stop. |
| Cities | Your own cities refill an army twice as fast as open ground. A forward city is a rest stop now. |
| Allies | An ally's city refills 8 a day. Alliances just got more useful for soldiers. |
| Ground | Go round the hills when you can. Forest costs more than it looks. |
| Defence | An army that just marched twenty hexes is empty. Hit it before it rests. |
Known issues (still open, still mine)
AI kingdoms still rarely finish a Finite world on their own, and marching in stages makes their wars slower, not faster. It's on my list, near the top.
If you want an army to cross the map, you plan the stops yourself. There's no "march in stages" button for players. That's deliberate for now. Tell me if it drives you mad.
A capital left untouched still runs its food to zero around day ninety and stays there. Idle villagers won't fill empty farm slots on their own. Staff the farms by hand and you're fine.
Kingdoms, yours and the AI's, still stay on one tile far longer than I intended. Mustering a settler party is a deliberate act. Do it on purpose.
AI kingdoms still list goods but rarely sell them to you. I said last time it was next on my list. It's still on the list. I'm sorry.
A stall looks the same whether it's stocked, empty or sold out. Read the Wants block on the Workers tab until the art catches up.
If you hit something else, note the game day and what you'd just done. That pair is almost always enough for me to reproduce it.
Peace,
Yadah