Raids

A raid is an army sent to another player's base. It marches there, fights whoever is standing, and comes home. While it is out, you and that player are enemies — to each other and to nobody else — and the moment it is home, you are not.

Launching a raid

Open the sector map, tap another player's base and choose Raid on their card. The RAID panel opens with their name, rank, level and how many tiles away they are. If their base is shielded, the panel says so before you choose anything — see a shield below.

1 · Which hexagon to hit

Every base is three hexagons. You pick one by where it is — south, north-west or north-east — never by what it is for: you are not shown what role the defender gave each hexagon. Only the Turrets and Walls in the hexagon you pick join the defence.

2 · Who goes

Each kind of unit you own has a row reading N of M free, with −, + and All. "Free" means at home and not already committed: a unit out on an expedition or on another raid is not free, and units you send on this one cannot gather or join another raid until it is home.

Travel

• The slowest unit sets the pace. A march takes 30 seconds per tile at speed 1, divided by the slowest unit's speed — the same rule an expedition walks by.
• Coming home takes as long as going out.
• When you launch, a message confirms it and says when the raid arrives.

Who you can raid

• Only bases you can see. The target must be in your sector and within your sight. Below level 10 that is only the bases in your own cell.
• Not if your sector forbids it. A sector can have raiding between players switched off; the panel says so if you try.
• Not while your offensive hexagon is breached. If a raid on you broke into the hexagon you made Offensive, you cannot launch until it recovers.
• A shielded base can still be raided — but the raid is held at the shield: it marches, nothing is taken and nobody is lost on either side.

Raids in flight

While one of your raids is out, an ATTACK strip sits at the top left of your screen, under the expeditions strip, in the base view and on the map alike. With more than one raid out it reads ATTACKS ×N, and beyond three rows the list scrolls. With nothing out, it is not there at all.

Each raid is one row: whose base, and which hexagon by compass — S, NW or NE, the same as when you launched it, never its role. Then where the raid has got to, as a word, an arrow and a colour, and one countdown.

• Tap a row and the map centres on that column — from the base view, it opens the map first. A wiped-out row cannot be tapped.
• A row leaves the strip when its survivors are home and free to be sent again.
• For the full record, every battle and how it ended, see Operations.

Approach fire

A raid does not reach the base untouched. Every Turret in the hexagon it is aimed at opens fire on the column once it comes within range, and keeps firing until it arrives. Units can die on the way in, and the ones that do not can arrive hurt.

• Each shot hits one unit, picked at random from those still alive in the column. The damage stays on that unit, so a unit hit often enough dies. A shot cannot hit two units: damage beyond what kills one is wasted.
• Time in range is what counts. A Turret's first shot comes one interval after the column enters its range. Infantry walk a tile in 15 seconds, so a column of them is inside a level-1 Turret's range for 45 seconds and takes 2 shots; inside a level-3 Turret's for 75, and takes 6 — 240 damage. A slower column spends longer under fire.
• A Turret fires from the moment it is finished. One completed while the raid is already marching fires only for the rest of the approach. One being upgraded keeps firing at its old level, and switches to the new level's range and damage the moment the upgrade completes. Turrets in your other two hexagons never fire.
• A shield cancels it too. If the defender is shielded when the raid arrives, nobody is lost on the way in either.

What each side sees

• Both: the column's label on the map says Under fire, and so does the attacker's row in the tracker. Nobody else sees the fire.
• The fire itself is a round glow at the gun's muzzle and short shots in bursts of three, with a flash where they hit the column. If your device asks for reduced motion, it is a still dashed line instead.
• The defender sees each of their own Turrets firing at the column in gold, from the Turret itself, on the map and in the base view. Once the firing starts, the defender also knows which hexagon is the target, whatever their Watchtower level, and even with no Watchtower at all.
• The attacker sees red fire coming at their column from the edge of the target base. It does not show where the Turrets are or how many there are.

Condition

A column's condition is the health it has left out of its full health. Units that have died count as having none.

Only the attacker and the defender see a column's condition. It is never shown as a number.

Wounds and healing

• A unit that is hit and survives is wounded, on the way in or in the battle, on either side. Wounds are shared across all your units of the same type, so the game tracks each type's health, not how many of them are hurt.
• Wounded units fight weaker, in proportion to the health they have left. That applies to a raid and to a garrison defending.
• Wounds heal at home, steadily. Any wound is fully healed within 2 hours, and a light one sooner. A raid's wounds start healing once the survivors are home.
• The raid panel shows it. Under Who goes, a type that is still healing shows its health and when it will be whole, such as 84% · whole in 1h 12m. Units sent out wounded march wounded.

When a raid arrives

The battle is settled the moment the raid reaches the base. Nobody plays it out and the defender does not need to be online: two numbers are compared, and the result decides who wins, how many each side loses, and what is carried home.

The two strengths

Each side's strength is its firepower multiplied by its staying power.

• The raid: firepower is every unit's attack; staying power is their health. Your military research raises both, at the levels it had when the raid set out. Units that died on the approach are gone, and wounded units bring less of both.
• The defence: firepower is the defence of every unit standing at home, multiplied by 2.62 because defenders fight from cover, plus each Turret's damage per shot. Staying power is those units' health, plus the health of every Turret and Wall in the hexagon the raid hit. It is measured when the raid arrives. The defender's health research counts. Their attack research does not, because it is not used when defending.

If neither side has any strength at all, it is a draw and nobody is lost.

Losses

Each side loses health in proportion to the other side's edge. The raid loses (1 − edge) of its health, and the defender's units lose edge of theirs. The damage is spread evenly over every unit. Each type loses as many units as its damage covers at their average health, and the rest becomes wounds, so tougher units die more slowly. Turrets and Walls add to the defence but are never damaged, and buildings are never destroyed.

Loot

• A quarter of each resource is at risk. When the raid arrives, 25% of the defender's gold, energy and materials is exposed — never more.
• The survivors carry what they can. The raid takes the exposed amount, or as much as its surviving units can carry, whichever is less, spread across the three resources in proportion.
• Only a win takes loot. A draw or a defender win carries nothing home, and nor does a raid held by a shield. A raid launched before this rule came in can still bring loot back from a draw or a loss, and its report shows it.
• It is moved, not made. What the attacker gains, the defender loses.

Afterwards

• A raid that wins breaches the hexagon it hit. A draw or a defender win does not. What a breach costs the defender depends on the hexagon's role.
• Both sides get a notification saying how it went (see the table below).
• The survivors walk home, as long again as the march out, with the loot.
• No life changes hands. Raiding another player never pays life, and being raided never costs it.
• Every battle has a battle report with the losses and the loot.

Operations

Operations is in the game menu — "Raids you have out, and how every battle ended." It also opens when you tap one of your own columns on the map, or a battle notification. It has three lists.

Your raids

Every raid you have out: whose base, which hexagon, and where it has got to.

Raids you sent, and raids on you

One line per battle, newest first: how it ended for you — Won, Lost, Draw, or held by a shield — which hexagon, and when. Each list keeps your last 20. A line marked Report › opens that battle's report.

A report does not tell an attacker what role the hexagon they hit had. That stays the defender's.

Battle reports

Every battle has a report, seen from your side. Open it from Operations, where each battle's line says Report ›, or by tapping the battle's notification. Reports are kept for 30 days. An older battle, or one from before reports existed, says its report is not available.

The headline

A report for a raid a shield held stops there, because nothing happened.

Effectiveness

The battle's edge, from 0 to 1, marked on a bar with its three bands. Today the defence holds below 0.45 and the raid wins above 0.55, with a stalemate in between. The bands on the bar come from the game itself, so they will follow if those values change. Only the defender is shown the luck, such as luck −6%. An attacker never sees the luck or either side's strength, because those together would give away how strong the defence was.

The units

• Each side's units, by type: how many were sent or were standing, how many died, and the survivors' condition. Whenever Turrets fired on the column, its deaths are split between on approach and in battle, even when the split reads on approach 0. The attacker's report also says "Your column came under turret fire on the way in."
• A defender's report shows the attacker's column with N left in place of a condition, because you are not shown the health of the other side's units.
• An attacker's report shows exactly what the defender lost, as long as at least one of your units survived to see it. If none did, it says "No unit of yours came back to see what they lost." That is not the same as "They lost no units."

The rest, by side

• The defender also sees each Turret in the hexagon, with its shots, hits and kills. It notes that structures are never damaged and how much health the Turrets and Walls added. Why this result opens to show both strengths, your units' firepower with the defender's advantage, the Turrets' firepower, each side's staying power, and your research.
• The attacker also sees the column's health when it marched and after the battle, when the survivors will be home, and Your modifiers: your research and veterancy. Modifiers read like ×1 or ×1.05.
• Loot, as Carried off or Lost. If the survivors' carrying capacity is what stopped them taking more, the attacker's report says so.
• The breach, on the defender's report: which hexagon, its role, and until when. A hexagon with no role just says it was breached. Only the Offensive role's breach has an effect today. See your base.

Under attack

From the moment a raid is launched at you until it is settled, you are under attack, and the game says so in three ways.

• A red border around the whole screen, pulsing gently (held still if your device asks for reduced motion). It stays until the raid is settled.
• A message, once per attack: "You are under attack — An enemy force is marching on your base. Your hexagons keep their roles until it resolves." Tick Don't show this again and you get the border alone from then on.
• The raid on the map. A column marching at you carries a spinning red targeting ring, and a Watchtower tells you more the higher it is — how many, when, and at which hexagon. See the sector map.

What you can and cannot do

• You cannot change your hexagons' roles while under attack — the raid was aimed at the roles as they were when it left, and that is what it meets.
• Everything else carries on: building, training, research, expeditions.
• A shield raised before the raid arrives holds it, even one already on its way. A held raid takes nothing and costs neither side a unit. See shields.

After the battle

You get a notification whatever happened — Your base was raided, Your base held or Your shield held — and the battle joins Raids on you in Operations, with its report. A raid that wins breaks into the hexagon it was aimed at; what that costs depends on the hexagon's role. No building is ever destroyed, and being raided never costs you life.