The combat

Exhaustion

Besides the composition of the army, experience of the units and leaders and combat area also the exhaustion of the armies plays an important role: An army gets exhausted because of:

Combats (Exhaustion during comabt can be lowered by researching "Tactics".)
Conquering a field (The passive resistance of the militia; the army's exhaustion increases by one point for each 30 militia soldiers.)
Moving (dependend on the field type and the level of the buildings on the field)
Transportation of siege weapons (for more information, see here)
Hostile espionage activity "Impede advance"

The exhaustion is shown in the area selection. Other players only see vague descriptions and not the precise value, except if they have a spy present on the field. The meanings of these descriptions is explained in the formulary. A big army is far less exhausted after a combat with a small army post, than the other way around, of course.

The reduction of that exhaustion takes place:

automatically every turn by one point; the research of "Field Kitchen" in the "Path of the Military" can double this;
by resting inside your own castle or the castles of allies. The reduction of exhaustion depends on tha castle level.

An attack with a heavily exhausted army is very risky and should be avoided. An army with 50 or more points of exhaustion can nt move any longer and is an easy target. However, the reduction of the exhaustion takes place before a possible move by the army. This means, the army moves as soon as its exhaustion falls below 50. If the target field is a neutral or even hostile field, that army will fight - with an exhaustion of more than 50 (due to the increase of exhaustion because of the moving).

Common fights of alliances

How the members of an alliance can fight together and what they should be aware of you find here.

Withdrawal and shattering of an army

Usually an inferior army retracts on field with more or less heavy losses. However, if the superiority of the winning army is very high (combat value ratio of 2:1 or higher), or there is no field to retreat on, the losing army is shattered. A shattered army disappears from the map and returns to the nearest castle of the army's owner after some time. This timespan depends on the exhaustion of the shattered army and is shown in the Unit Summary.

A combat value ration of 4:1 or higher causes the defeated army to be completely destroyed. All generals die when an army is destroyed. Heroes are shattered and return to their shrines.

Siege of castles

A special case is the attack of castles. Defenders of castles have extraordinary advantages depending on the expansion level of the castle. Also, defending armies are more difficult to shatter in castles (combat value ratio of 3:1 or higher) and they never withdraw. Even if the attacker wins the battle, the defender keeps the castle as long as any member of his army remains. Additionally, the defending army is multiplied by 1.5 for the calculation of its combat value.

The conquer of a castle is only possible with a huge superiority. Instead of attacking a defending army that is barricaded inside a castle, it might be a good idea to weaken the economy of the enemy. Another way is to infiltrate a castle with a spy or to use siege weapons to achieve an attack bonus.

Defeat of a player because of the loss of the last castle, booty fields

When the last castle of a player is conquered, the player is completely defeated and all armies, spies, and ships are deleted. His fields (= booty fields) become neutral but not yet ruins. The milita of these fields are increased to starting level (10 - 20 %) according to the present population on the fields, except if they were higher than that already.

Players that were at war with the player at the time of his defeat can attack these neutral fields at the same honour costs as announced for the war for 200 turns after the defeat. The respective fields are labeled with a flag on the map, in which the honour value and the remaining amount of the 200 turns are shown (see the picture on the left).
If the conquering player has not reached 714k points at the end of these 200 turns, the fields remain booty fields until he reaches the honour boundary for conquering neutral fields ( = 714k points).

After either 200 turns or achieving of 714k points the booty label disappears. Then these booty fields will cost the same honour like neutral fields for the war opponents of the defeated player.

That means, every war opponent has 200 turns time to conquer the fields of the defeated player for the honour costs of his war - even longer, if he still has less than 714k points then. This way, a player can never conquer booty fields of his defeated enemy without loosing honour if the war itself was not honourable from the beginning, even after the mentioned 200 ticks.

During the first 100 turns these booty fields are blocked for all the other players, which is shown to them by a red label.

The defeated player can restart by using the link next to the message that he has been destroyed. By doing this the player restarts with the buildings and resources according to the tick he restarts. Every restarting player keeps all the science features which have already been researched before annihilation and honour points earned in earlier wars.

Loot

The winning armies receive 10 % of all fallen enemies after a combat. The conquer of a castle yields a proportionate part of the ressources from the enemy's stock and research funds and also from his alliance depot.