Army

Army

Armies in Aether Kingdoms are different for each faction. Each faction has unique units in each of four categories: melee, ranged, cavalry and special. The category describes their attack type, with special units having a unique purpose.

Unit Stats

Units in Aether Kingdoms have the following stats:

Unit stats icons

• Attack. The attack power of the unit. During an attack, the category of unit (melee, ranged, cavalry) determines its attack type. Special units are counted as melee.
• Melee defense. The defensive power of the unit against melee attackers.
• Cavalry defense. The defensive power of the unit against cavalry attackers.
• Ranged defense. The defensive power of the unit against ranged attackers.
• Speed. How many fields the unit can travel per hour.
• Consumption. How much food the unit eats per hour.

Training units

You can train troops on the Army page. Here you can select the unit you want to train and the amount to train. If you have enough resources and fewer than 5 items in the queue, you can train troops.

Buying units

Instead of paying with resources, you can buy units with Aether earned from events. The cost of units starts higher and goes down as the server progresses. Buying units bypasses the building time and the need to balance resources, but is 1.5x as expensive as buying resources with Aether.

See also: Aether

Human units

Melee

• Militia. A cheap all-rounder for the early game. Used later in the game as cheap filler for fakes.
• Spearman. A tier 1 defensive unit that excels in cavalry defense. Spearman are easy to mass due to their low cost and requirements.
• Swordsman. Swordsman are tier 2 units that require no specific district to train. This makes them great support for specialised units trained in different cities.
• Halberdier. The Halberdier is a defensive specialist. It excels are cavalry defense and holds its own against an equal number of infantry.

Ranged

• Archer. Archers are the basic ranged unit, providing good attack for its cost but expensive to feed in large quantities.
• Longbow. Longbow provide good infantry defense for a reasonable price. They can be built at tier 2 without specialty districts.
• Cavalry Archer. Cavalry archers are the offensive ranged units, while also functioning as a hybrid defender. Requiring a Military district and a city, they are not the easiest to produce but will round out any army.
• Crossbow. Crossbows are the late-game defensive ranged specialists. They bring a lot of firepower, without the need for a specific district.

Cavalry

• Horseman. The Horseman is an early game cavalry unit that runs over everything but the Spearman. With their speed they're also great at farming. Horseman are strong for their cost, but expensive to feed in large numbers.
• Lancer. Lancers are the defensive cavalry unit, unlocked at tier 2. With their high speed, they are essential when a rapid defensive response is required.
• Knight. Knights are capable fighters that available at tier 2. They are great at breaking enemy lines when attacking, while being cheaper than the Cataphract.
• Cataphract. If you want a force that strikes fear into your enemies, then look no further. The Cataphract is the strongest unit in Aether Kingdoms, but also the most expensive.

Special

• Scout. The Scout is a very weak unit, but with a special purpose. Attacking a village or event with only scouts will do no damage but give you information about the target instead. Defensive scouts protect against scouting attacks.
• Settlers. To claim new lands you need to settle a new village. You do this by sending out Settlers to your desired location. You need 1 Settlers unit and enough culture to send them out.
• Noble. To conquer a village from another Kingdom, you will need a Noble to lower the loyalty of that village. Each surviving Noble in an attack lowers the loyalty by 30 points. Reducing the loyalty to 0 will change ownership of the village to the attacking Kingdom.

Moving armies

To move your armies in Aether Kingdom, you'll have to navigate to the Send Troops page. There are two ways to get there:

1. Navigate to the Village Army page and select the Send troops tab.
2. Click on a map tile, like a village or event, and click the Send troops link.

There are 6 types of movement in the game, but you'll only be able to select 3 most of the time. The types are:

• Move. Move troops between your own villages. When you move troops they change their home village when they arrive and you can send them from the new village.
• Reinforce. Send troops to defend any village that belongs to yourself or your Empire. The reinforced troops consume food if they stand in a village. If they stand at an objective or event, they consume food from the home village.
• Attack. Send troops to attack a village or event. To attack a village, you'll need to send an army of at least the target village's population in size. If you win and have any surviving Nobles, you'll lower the loyalty of the village. Attacks on player-owned Objectives have a speed of 3.
• Siege. Sending a siege attack on a village allows you to damage the city if you have a Siege Workshop. Sending a siege attack requires a Military district in the Town or City. Siege attacks have a fixed speed of 3.
• Scout. Attacking a village with only Scouts will show as a scouting attack. The more scouts survive, the more you learn about the target. You can scout the wall level, army size, food in storage and districts a village has.
• Settle. When you have enough culture, you can select the settle option to open the Send Troops page with a settle movement type. You can only validate and confirm the settle option.

Starvation

Troops in Aether Kingdoms consume food every hour. When you have more troops than you can feed from a village, they will start consuming your storage. When the storage is empty, units will start starving.

Units starve in the following order:

1. Reinforcements
2. Own village units
3. Returning troops
4. Outgoing troops
5. Troops defending an event or objective

If no food is delivered to a village where starvation occurs, the army will die over 24 hours. Plan carefully to avoid starvation when making the biggest army you can.

Starvation is calculated by the server that a starving unit is worth 24 times its hourly food consumption. This food is then consumed by the remaining units, until the next one starves. This continues until the net food production is no longer negative, or no army is remaining.

Siege

Siege damage is done if the attacker wins the battle. To set up an attack to do siege damage, you need a Siege Workshop. This requires a Military District, so you'll need at least a Town. A Siege Academy, unlocked through the research tree, increases the siege damage you'll do. Doing siege damage requires at least the population of the village in attacking army size.

Siege damage

What you need to know about siege attacks:

• The speed is always 3 fields per hour (on x1 speed)
• The minimum army size to send the attack is 100 for a Village, 200 for Town and 300 for City
• The minimum army size to do damage is the population of the target
• The number of targets you can damage depends on the Siege Workshop
• The amount of damage you do depends on the Siege Academy
• If you meet the requirements to do damage, you get a damage roll on the Walls for the maximum number of targets
• Wall damage will also happen if requirements are met, but you have no targets selected
• If a target building doesn't exist, a random building is selected
• If no target is selected, no damage is done

Siege workshop

Depending on the level of the Siege Workshop, you can select 0 to 5 targets. An additional target is unlocked at levels 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20.

For each available target, you also get a roll to damage the defender's Walls.

If you select a target that doesn't exist in the village, a random building will be selected to receive siege damage.

Siege academy

The Siege Academy can be built in a village with a Military District after researching Craftsmanship. The Siege Academy increases the damage of your siege attacks every level.

• Without a Siege Academy each target is hit for 0-10 damage
• For every odd level (1,3,5,7,9) you gain +1 maximum damage
• For every even level (2,4,6,8,10) you gain +1 minimum damage
• The maximum damage is 5-15 per hit with Siege Academy 10

Loyalty and conquest

Each village has loyalty to their Kingdom. By attacking with a Noble, you can lower the loyalty of the village to convince it to join your Kingdom instead. When the loyalty of a village hits 0, the attacker conquers it.

Each surviving Noble will lower the loyalty of the village by 30. The more Nobles survive in an attack, the more the loyalty will be lowered.

In order for a Noble to lower the loyalty of a settlement, you must have enough culture for that tier (Village/Town/City). Unlike building up yourself, you can skip the intermediate tiers when conquering. When a settlement is conquered, you will lose 1 Noble to become the new ruler of the settlement. All buildings also lose 1 level.

A village starts with 100 loyalty by default. A Town has 200 loyalty and a City 300. If the loyalty is below the maximum, it will increase with 1% of the maximum per hour, so 1 per hour for a village, 2/hr for a town and 3/hr for a city.

Tiering up a village or a town will increase the maximum loyalty, but not the current loyalty. Keep this in mind, as you will be most vulnerable to conquest right after tiering up.

Note

Tip: You can disguise conquest as a siege attack. A siege always has a speed of 3 fields per hour, regardless of the unit types sent.

What happens to the destroyed/conquered village

A village is destroyed when it has no buildings remaining, or conquered when its loyalty reaches 0.

• All merchants and army from the village disappear. These are troops reinforcing other locations, armies on the move, armies returning home, and whatever else. The same goes for all incoming and outgoing merchants.
• Incoming troops and resources from the Aether store disappear. No refunds.
• Incoming armies from other players will bounce off the target, whether it's conquered or disappeared. This does not apply for attacks landing in the same second.
• Incoming merchants bounce of the target and refund the village of origin the resources upon arrival at the target location.
• Culture from settlers on the way is refunded.

If you last village is destroyed or conquered, you can select a new spawn location. You keep your aether, research and culture, but will otherwise be reset as if you're a new player. If you have very little culture, you will get a boost up to what a new player would receive.