Manual · Armies
Formation Development
Ranks and experience: how formations earn XP in battle, what each rank buys, where gold can hurry it, and what development is not.
How it works
What development is
Formations earn experience in battle and rise through five ranks, Recruit to Elite. A rank is a threshold of lifetime experience, not a fresh start — the panel always shows the live count beside the meter.
Promotion is an order, and orders have conditions: the gold must be in the treasury, the order is placed at a friendly settlement you hold, the settlement runs one development order at a time, and the formation's company cannot march or transfer while its order runs. An experienced formation can therefore still have to wait — readiness to promote is not the right to promote.
Experience in battle
A formation that meaningfully participates in an encounter — dealing or taking real damage, or working an objective — earns a base award, plus a bonus for victory and a bonus when the enemy stood at least as strong. Contribution within the fight adds more, within caps: one ceiling per encounter, and a lifetime ceiling that no award may exceed.
Experience is per formation and travels with it through transfers, combines, and splits. Rank is likewise untouched by everything that is not battle — including the losses that replenishment repairs.
What ranks buy
For the fighting types, each rank multiplies attack and defence upward from the Recruit base — Footmen evenly, Archers and Cavalry with the attack sharpening faster than the defence. Ranks also carry the signature abilities: the Footmen's brace grows its shield craft, Archers gain the aimed volley and then the longbow, Cavalry scale their charge and finally learn to strike and slip away.
Engineers are the honest exception: no rank adds combat strength, ever. Their ranks shorten siege work — see the Engineers entry. The unit deep dives carry each type's exact ladder.
Paid training and its limit
Up to the Seasoned rank, gold can buy the experience a formation is missing: a promotion's quote covers outfitting plus the training that buys missing XP. Beyond Seasoned, ranks are earned in battle only — no treasury reaches that far.
Cancelling a development order refunds the outfitting in full and the unused training share, and grants no partial experience. The troops were never told; the gold simply comes home.
The militia path
Levied militia never promote — their path is conversion. At a settlement you hold, a militia formation can be equipped into professional Footmen: they keep their name, company, and battle experience, and muster as a Recruit formation would.
Conversion occupies the settlement's development lane like any order, and the town's levy service recovers only after it completes — a town cannot pour out endless levies and convert them in the same breath.
What development is not
Rank is not readiness and not strength. A Veteran formation that fought to a depleted state enters its next battle at depleted health and must rest like anyone; a wounded Veteran recovers its missing strength only through replenishment at a castle that raises its type.
Development changes what a formation is; rest and replenishment change what it has. The three are tracked separately and never trade against one another.
Rules, exactly
Exact values from the current build — not advice, not flavour.
- Rank thresholds
- L1 0 · L2 100 · L3 250 · L4 500 · L5 850 — lifetime XP a formation must hold to stand at each rank; the ceiling is 850 XP
- Battle XP
- 30 base, +10 victory, +10 challenge — for a meaningful participant in an encounter, up to the caps
- XP caps
- 80 per encounter · 850 lifetime — the per-formation award ceiling, and the lifetime ceiling this era holds
- Paid training reaches
- Seasoned (L3) — gold buys missing XP up to that rank; above it, ranks are earned in battle only