Manual · The Land
Terrain and Roads
Six terrains and the roads across them: what ground costs to cross, what it defends, where cavalry charge, and where the map cannot be crossed at all.
How it works
The six terrains
The land is fields, forest, hills, mountains, river, and the crossings that span it — with roads laid over whatever ground they cross. Every hex of a campaign is one of these, and the same six shape every battlefield a battle opens on.
The two layers use their own tables that currently agree: what ground costs on the march is what it costs on the field, but the campaign and tactical rules stay separate so one can be tuned without silently moving the other.
Crossing the land
Every company moves on the same allowance each turn, spent hex by hex: fields and crossings cost the standard step, woods and hills double, and roads buy their standard step across any passable ground. Mountains and the river cannot be entered at all — the map is crossed where crossings admit it, which is why crossings are fought over.
A cut-off force marches on a reduced allowance until its lines mend; supply and terrain between them decide the pace of every campaign.
Ground that defends
Forest and hill defend: a formation attacked while standing on them takes less damage, cover blunting the strike. Open field and crossings defend nothing — and a crossing is open in both senses, ground you must hold with troops rather than timber.
Ground also denies: cavalry earn their charge only on open ground, so woods and hills are where lines go to meet horse — the cover and the denial in one package.
The land recruits
Terrain is also the recruitment map: the terrain around a castle fixes its domain's tags, woodland grants Archers and pasture Cavalry, and the universal types need no special ground. Mountains guard nothing recruitable but everything passable's absence; the river's crossings carry trade gold to the domains that hold them.
Read the map twice, once as roads and once as rosters — the terrain you must cross and the terrain you must own are rarely the same.
Rules, exactly
Exact values from the current build — not advice, not flavour.
- Campaign entry cost
- Fields 1 · Forest 2 · Hills 2 · Mountains impassable · River impassable · Crossing 1 — movement points per hex entered; roads cost 1 on any passable ground
- Tactical entry cost
- mirrors the campaign table (impassable stays impassable) — a separate tactical table that currently matches, so tuning one never silently changes the other
- Defensive cover
- Forest +25% · Hills +25% — for a formation attacked while standing on that ground
- Open ground
- Fields and Crossing — where cavalry earn their charging bonus