Disembarking armies or spies

Disembarking units from landing crafts

Landing crafts can disembark armies and spies on any coastal area (with or without a building), as long as this field is a plain or a wood (but not a mountain). If the target field is owned by another player, you have to be at war with that player, of course.

Disembarked units can re-enter the ship only in a harbour. Therefore you should be carefull that your target field fulfills the minimum distance requirements for a harbour to be built. However, spies can also leave the island by using their own boat.

Disembarking units from other ship types

All other ship types need a harbour to disembark armies or spies.

• Armies:
  When you are at war with another player, you can conquer his harbour by disembarking armies onto that harbour. Because of the fierce resistance to such a manoeuvre, the defenders are rewarded a defence bonus dependent on the level of the harbour. This bonus is applied to every attacking army: Defence bonus = 10 + 2 * harbour level. This defence bonus also applies if the attacking armies are disembarked from a landing craft.
  However, if hostile armies attack the harbour from a regular land field, the defenders do not receive this special defence bonus against those armies - even if the attack occurs parallel to an attack by seaside.
  Ships that are anchoring in the harbour during the attack do not help to defend the harbour - there will be no ship combat; the catapults will not be fired. But armies that are loaded on those ships do participate in the defence. If the harbour is conquered, loaded units will retract onto their ships and will be destroyed together with these ships.
  An order to disembark in an enemy harbour can be given before war actually starts. The army will not leave the ship before the first tick of the war, however. If the harbor is demolished before war starts, the disembarking order will remain active (the ship and army icon in the unit summary will still flash). There will be no notification that the disembarkation failed. You will have to manually cancel the disembarking order to be able to move your ship further on.

• Spies:
  Spies can be disembarked onto any harbour, no matter whether you are at war with the owner or not.

Disembarking onto harbour ruins

Is it possible from small and medium galleys besides onto harbours also to disembark onto harbour ruins. Armies can be disembarked onto own and allied harbour ruins, spies onto any harbour ruin. The disembarkation from these ship types lasts six turns. The disembarking ship must not be moved during that time, or the disembarkation is canceled. Ordering troops to disembark in an enemy harbour ruin is possible before war actually starts. However, the 6-tick-countdown starts on the first tick of the war.

When a harbour is restored during the countdown, this does not affect the countdown. It is possible however to cancel the current disembarkation order and give a new order to disembark in the restored harbour in a normal manner.

How to disembark units

(1) Select one or more armies (press the CTRL-key to select multiple armies) and click on the "Drop off armies" Button (2). This opens a popup (3), in which you can see the close surroundings of the ship. Fields that can receive the armies are marked in green (4). Select the target field, and the army will be dropped onto that field in the next tick and will attack the field. Once the order to disembark has been given, the lamp blinks yellow (5); the lamps for that ship and armies also blink yellow in the Unit Summary page. In the case of spies with a disembarking order, their lamp in the unit summary will be green. Landing units costs movement points. Ships that drop off armies can move one field less than their normal maximum that turn. If spies are disembarked, no more movement is possible at all. Disembarking units from a ship takes movement points. Because of this, ships that disembark units are can move one field less than their normal speed in that turn. If you disembark spies, your ship is not able to move at all on in this tick. Ships that are armed with catapults can only attack on the movement point on which they disembark. They will, however, always defend themselves if attacked. For more information read the Battles at sea section.

Canceling disembarking

First press the button "Drop Off Armies", just like when ordering units to disembark. To cancel disembarkation, pick the field of the ship itself as the target field. The lamp in the unit summary will stop blinking and you can order your ship to move on, or order a new disembarkation.