Battles

War is fought in continuous, real-time battles over territory. When two nations clash over a region, a battle opens and both sides pour damage into it until it resolves.

One battle, twelve hours

A battle is a single 12-hour fight over one region. There are no rounds: every hit adds to your side’s running total, and when the clock hits zero the side with the most total damage wins. A tie goes to the defender. If the attacker wins, the region changes hands; if the defender wins, it stays put. Because it’s live, timing and coordination beat scattered hits. Showing up together at the right hour wins battles.

The one exception is an uprising, a resistance battle to free an occupied region, which runs for 6 hours. See Elections and law. When any battle ends, the top damage dealer on each side is crowned its battle hero.

How a hit is calculated

You fight in actions. One action is a 10-hit volley and costs 10 Combat Energy, so a full 100-point energy bar is ten volleys. The volley resolves as one unit: its damage is rolled once, a single accuracy roll decides whether all ten hits land or all ten miss, and a single crit roll decides whether all ten crit. On average that deals the same damage as rolling each hit on its own; it is just swingier.

A single hit starts from a base of 10 damage (jittered about ±5%) and is then multiplied:

1. Progression multiplier (×1 up to ×2). Your Level, military Rank and equipment DMG combine into a multiplier that can at most double the base. The three contribute in fixed weights:

   Source	Weight
   Military rank	35%
   Equipment DMG	35%
   Level	30%

   Equipment DMG gives its full share once your gear totals 32% DMG, and DMG past that adds nothing. Level and rank fill their shares gradually: level gives half of its share by level 21 and rank half of its share by rank 11, and neither ever quite reaches its full share. At level 100, rank 100 and 32% DMG the multiplier is about ×1.92. This cap is deliberate: two players with wildly different levels differ by at most 2× from progression alone. The real spread comes from what’s next.

2. Ammunition. Loaded ammo multiplies the whole hit, and this sits outside the progression cap:

   Ammo	Damage
   Bare hands	×1.0
   9mm	×1.2
   5.45mm	×1.5
   .50 Cal	×2.0

   Every volley fires 10 rounds of your chosen ammo. If you hold fewer than 10, the volley is refused and nothing is spent. When a volley leaves you short of the next one, the battlefield switches you back to bare hands.

3. Crits and food. A crit multiplies the volley’s damage by ×1.5. Your base crit chance is 5%, raised by the CRIT stat on your gear and capped at 30% in total. Food buffs stack on top: Fish adds +5% damage for 30 minutes, Meat +10% damage and +5% crit chance for 60 minutes. Only one food buff runs at a time, so the latest Fish or Meat you eat replaces the one before it.

More situational modifiers apply to the whole volley: a Natural Enemy bonus of ×1.10 when your country has declared the country you’re fighting a natural enemy (checked when the battle opens), and a ×0.75 penalty while you’re serving a court sentence. A unit’s doctrine can add a further damage bonus; see Units and doctrine.

Accuracy and misses

Not every volley lands. A newcomer’s volley misses about 10% of the time. Accuracy (the ACC stat on helmets, vests and pants) drives that down in a straight line to a 2% floor, reached at 300 total ACC, so a fully-kitted fighter almost never whiffs. See Equipment.

Ranks, medals and mercenaries

• Fighting builds ranking damage, which climbs you through the 100 military ranks and raises your damage. See Ranks and medals.
• You earn a single lifetime combat medal that repeats: the first needs 30,000 damage, the second 90,000 and the third 180,000 in total, each gap 30,000 bigger than the last, and every medal pays a flat 10 gold. Unless you’re a mercenary, only damage dealt in battles your own country or one of its allies is part of counts.
• Mercenary unit fighters earn medal progress in any battle, but at 70% the normal rate, the trade-off for chasing gold bounties instead of serving a homeland. See Units and doctrine.

The battle cycle in a war

Battles happen inside a war. Once a declaration of war passes into law, the President or Minister of Defense of either country can open battles, within these limits:

• The target region must be held by the enemy and border a region your own country holds. Land borders and the map’s sea crossings both count; your allies’ regions don’t.
• A war runs one battle at a time, and a region hosts only one battle at once.
• For the first 24 hours of a war, only the declaring country can open its first battle. After that, either side can.
• A war that sees no battle for 7 days ends on its own.

After a battle resolves, the next one in the same war doesn’t open immediately:

Time since the last battle	Who can open the next
First 12 hours	Nobody (locked)
Next 24 hours	Only the winner (priority)
After that	Either side, first to act

That rhythm gives the winner a window to consolidate before the front reopens.

Still tuning

Some combat numbers are still being tuned. The model above (base 10, ten hits per volley, the progression cap, ammo and crit multipliers) is the stable core of how damage is built.