Engineers

The key to the gates

Every fortified wall ends at a gate, and every gate yields to patient battering — but a ram crew breaks in far faster than any shoulder working without equipment. Against a defended fortress that difference is the difference between reinforcing walls and standing in the keep yard.

Because they are raised at any secured castle like Footmen, no army is ever locked out of siegecraft. What is required is forethought: the ram is prepared before the assault, beside the target, with the crew's company standing to it.

Ranks that sharpen the work

Engineer progression is honest about what it buys. No rank adds a point of attack or defence — a Veteran crew swings a ram, and swings a sword, exactly as hard as the day it mustered. What ranks shorten is the work itself: an experienced crew raises a battering ram in half the time a fresh one needs.

Their experience comes the same way as everyone's — battle, and the one-time award earned exactly when a ram stands ready. An Engineer formation that has raised rams and fought sieges is a master of the craft and a mediocre swordsman, by design.

Engineers in a fight

In the line they are Footmen in every particular that matters: the same balanced attack and defence, the same retaliation when a blow is survived, the same wounds and rest — and they inherit none of the line's fighting tricks. Engineers never brace; the shield craft of the line is not theirs.

Against a gate, though, they are the war's specialists. Unequipped, they batter like Footmen; carrying the ram their crew built, they strike the gate far harder — and only the gate. The ram never touches a soldier: against troops, a ram crew is just Engineers.

Mobility

Engineers march at the Footmen pace on the field, and the campaign road keeps its common pace for everyone alike. They are workmen, not riders — the company hauls timber and tools at the same speed it hauls pikes.

Resilience and recovery

Their resilience is Footmen resilience, frozen: the same base defence at every rank, while the fighting types around them grow. In a long war a Veteran line shelters its Engineer companies increasingly well — and increasingly must.

Readiness bands, rest, and replenishment treat them like any formation, with one note worth keeping: an engineer company deep in siege work is a company that must be paid and fed like any other, and unpaid turns pause the build they stand to.

Strengths and vulnerabilities

Strengths: the fastest lawful way through a gate; recruitment anywhere; a craft that earns its keep in every siege; and a development path that keeps paying even though the fighting never improves.

Vulnerabilities: they never grow in a fight, never brace, and their signature work freezes the whole company in place beside the enemy's wall for everyone to see. A ram project is a standing invitation to a sortie, and the answer to it is a friendly line standing over the builders.

Beside the walls

The build demands adjacency: the company must stand in a hex touching the target castle, and stay there. Lose the adjacency — by marching, by being pushed — and the work is cleared. The finished ram waits beside those same walls, bound to that one castle, until the assault spends it.

Between the order and the finished ram, only building work freezes the company; once the ram stands ready, the company may march — at the price of discarding a ram already paid for. Sometimes that is even the right call; usually it is a lesson.

Deployment and combinations

The siege order of march writes itself: the line screens, the Engineers build, and when the gates open the assault goes in with the ram crew at the fore. One crew carries one preparation, and one company runs one at a time — a second ram wants a second company standing beside the walls.

In open battle they deploy as Footmen and are spent as Footmen; their reserve is that any castle can replace them. On the fortress field, remember the swap: the crew fights troops as plain Engineers and saves its edge for the timber.

Common mistakes

Expecting Veteran Engineers to fight better. They never do; the gold spent on their ranks buys speed at the walls and nothing else, which is precisely enough.

Expecting the ram to travel or to serve another castle. It is bound to the fortress it was built against and consumed by that assault; a battle breaking out elsewhere interrupts any other standing siege work, and defenders never carry rams. Moving the crew company by transfer or split even clears the project outright.

And the two quiet ones: ordering the ram while wages are in arrears — the order will be refused — and letting wages slip mid-build, which pauses the work beside the enemy's walls while the enemy watches.