← Back to the wiki

Every unit in Aetas belongs to a class: infantry, ranged, cavalry or siege. Each class has a bonus against another class, and that bonus is not ten percent but a factor of two to two and a half. With the right answer you win a fight you would not come close to with the wrong one.

The circle#

• Infantry (spearman, swordsman, pikeman …) stops cavalry.
• Ranged (archer, crossbowman, musketeer …) cuts down infantry.
• Cavalry (scout, chariot, knight …) rides over ranged — and over siege.
• Siege (ram, catapult, cannon …) breaks buildings, and is helpless itself: an unescorted ram or cannon is easy prey for a few riders.

The exact bonuses per unit are in the table on the units page, as a matrix at the top.

Melee or ranged#

A unit with a range under one tile fights hand to hand. Ranged units shoot from four tiles (the archer) to nearly seven (the rifleman), and would much rather do that from behind a line of infantry. Put them in front and they die before their second arrow. Ballistics at the archery range (Middle Ages) adds a tile for all of them.

Formations handle this for you: pick box and your melee moves to the front, your archers behind. Loose spreads them out, against siege engines that hit several units at once. How wide the rows are is up to you: drag with the right mouse button instead of clicking. The formation starts as a square block and gets wider the further you drag.

Send a mixed army off together and it marches at the pace of its slowest unit: your riders wait for the infantry and the cannon, so they don't arrive on their own and the formation holds on the way. Once the group gets there or the fighting starts, everyone moves at their own speed again. Want your cavalry to ride ahead? Select only them. Soldiers far away from the rest, and workers, don't slow anyone down.

Artillery reaches further than any tower: the catapult 8 tiles, the trebuchet 9.5, the cannon 10, the howitzer 10.5 and the field gun 11, and they see as far as they shoot. Rangefinding at the workshop (Renaissance) adds another tile. The ram is the exception: it has to go right up to the wall.

Melee soldiers spread out by themselves: at most four go for the same enemy, and the rest pick another one right next to it. Give them an attack order on one target and they all still go for that one.

A shot is a real thing on the map, not a calculation: an arrow covers ten tiles per second, a catapult stone five and with a visible arc. An arrow follows its target, so it never misses — but it takes time, and you can see that time: against a distant target the damage lands later than your click. Siege shots are different: they fly to where a unit stood when they were fired, so units that keep moving dodge them, while units that stand still or are fighting still get hit, and buildings always do. That is a lobby option, on by default.

Stances#

Every unit has a stance that decides what it does on its own:

• Aggressive — attacks anything that comes into sight and gives chase.
• Defensive — attacks what comes into sight, chases up to seven tiles and then returns to its post. The default for soldiers.
• Passive — does nothing on its own, not even when it is hit. The default for workers.

Put siege and ranged units on defensive or passive, or they will chase a scout all the way into the enemy camp. The three stances are buttons in the side panel, on F,

Attack-move#

Buildings#

Walls and gates stop everything that is not a siege engine. You draw a wall by dragging, in a straight line snapped to eight directions, or in a ring with Ctrl; a gate always stays straight (see controls). Walls, gates and towers can be built on hills, and the dark rock of the mountains on Highlands, Mixed, Plains and Desert can't be crossed at all, so a short wall from rock to rock closes a pass. A gate has three settings: open to your allies, yourself only, or locked. While it is open anyone walks through, the enemy waiting beside it included. Watchtowers shoot back on their own, up to six tiles (the tower upgrades add range). Your town center shoots too, but only when there are units inside — fifteen fit in, and the more of them there are the harder it hits. That is the cheapest defence you have against an early attack: put your workers inside and let the building do the work.

Towers do not get more expensive; that applies to the buildings that make soldiers (barracks, archery range, stable, workshop), 25% of the base price for each one you already own.

The fort is your strongest defence, from the Iron Age (the Franks: Bronze Age; the Norse never get one). Every two seconds it fires a volley of arrows at several enemies at once, up to eight tiles away, plus a heavy bolt at the toughest enemy nearby. Put units inside and more arrows join in. Without siege you will hardly dent a fort, and even siege has a harder time with it than with other buildings. It is a special building, though: every fort you already own adds 75% to the price of the next, and two of your forts need at least twenty tiles between them. Inside the fort you research Crenellations (Middle Ages: more arrows, a tile more reach) and later Bastions (Imperial Age: the heavy bolt becomes a cannon that also hits the enemies next to its target), and the tower upgrades make the fort's arrows hit harder too. Artillery outranges a fort as well — which is exactly why you need riders to keep it away.

Against buildings you need siege. A ram against a wall is slow; a ram against a wall with twenty spearmen next to it is a plan.

Hospital#

Wounded units heal at the hospital (from the Iron Age), instead of being thrown away and replaced: four hit points a second, for every unit within eight tiles. Herbal Medicine makes that 50% faster and two tiles further, Surgery (Renaissance) twice as fast as without medicine. After a fight you barely win, that is the difference between pushing on and starting over.