AD: Warlords

Revered, almighty, legendary. The First Autumn Emperor’s legacy is undisputed. He began as a minor warlord, who would one day unify the country, discover firedust, and repel the greatest barbarian invasion ever. His personage is an enigma, but his exploits are legend. Could you have ruled in his place?

In these times of turmoil,  do you have the cunning to unite the warring provinces , rally them to your cause and become the first Autumn Emperor? The field is yours: rise to greatness or languish forever in obscurity – can you build a powerful empire that will stand the test of time?

Manage your empire turn by turn: Build epic cities, raise armies, recruit generals and undertake portentous quests. Engage in espionage, sabotage and diplomacy in your mission to dominate the realm.

Fight your battles in real time: Direct your armies using simple brushstrokes on handpainted battle maps. Flank, encircle and outmaneuver your enemies, or turn the tide of battle with special abilities.

Got any burning question related to gameplay that wasn't addressed in our tutorial video? List them here!



What should I do during the first few months?
Focus on improving your infrastructure first unless you are confident of being able to conquer a province quickly. New units not only require a gold upkeep to maintain, each unit you hire also reduces your population by 800 people, thereby reducing your overall income.

Farms and Marketplaces are buildings that provide an immediate advantage and are safe choices if you have no plans to construct buildings with harder prerequisites. A Constabulary may also be very useful if your Order is low as Order also affects gold income and population growth at higher or lower ranges.

Note that neutral provinces will not attack at all, and it is quite unlikely that opposing warlords would choose to attack you in the starting months (unless provoked), so use that time to make yourself stronger.

Meanwhile, use your officers to gain a further advantage. Among other things, officers can be used to improve your own provinces, you can send them to other provinces to gather Intel for later battles, or use them to engage in diplomacy with other warlords. A trade treaty will not only increase your total gold income by 10%, all provinces that neighbour that of a warlord with a trade treaty will also gain additional income.

Basics
Conquering a province requires you to take down the enemy fort, which is usually in the center of the province.

In order to do so, you will have to fight a few battles to progress deeper inside the province, and every step of the way you would be deciding your path of progress and also the mission your troops will undertake.

Do you want to make a detour to pillage a enemy village? Or do you want to immediately storm the enemy gates and rush into the city? The choice is yours.

Mission Details
When you choose a mission, you may also get additional information like the terrain that will be prevalent, or the number and type of enemy troops and other defences.

A high Intel value increases the level and accuracy of the information provided to attackers. On the other hand, a high Alertness level will help defenders obscure some of these information.

Troop, Decree and Officer selection
There are limits to the number of troops you can send depending on the mission you choose. Very generally, you will have to send fewer troops for missions that require you to infiltrate or rush past enemies, and these missions usually have timers and Fog of War. Remember that each unit only has one action per turn. So think carefully about the balance between the number of troops you send to battle and the number of reserve troops you leave to protect your cities against invasions.

You will also be able to choose up to 3 decrees to use for each mission. Decrees provide a variety of advantages to different types of units, but each decree can only be used once per turn. If you know that you will be fighting a major battle later on, it would be better to conserve your decrees.

Lastly, you can select an officer to lead your troops in combat. Officers not only provide an attack bonus to all troops depending on their strength stat, officers also may have Traits that can confer combat bonuses.

An officer will be able to command troops as long as he or she is in the originating or targeted province, and if the officer is not wounded nor imprisoned (Exhausted officers can still command troops). Officers do have a chance of becoming wounded in combat, especially if the battle was lost or forfeited.

After Combat
A good number of missions give specific rewards on successful completion.

Officer and troops that survive the battle also gain experience points and may level up to become stronger.

Troops that were just moved or were already used in combat this turn (exhausted) cannot be assigned to another mission unless it is to defend your own fort in a final Siege mission.

Troops replenish (heals) 15% of max HP at the end of each turn, and a unit requires 400 population to go from 0% to 100%.

Disbanding any unit will return a proportion of its health back into population, but note that hiring any new unit will cost you 800 population.

Getting back into battle
Often you will not be able to finish a battle to the end within a turn.

You can end your turn to refresh your troops, all your progress is saved, but the opponent can choose to perform counterattacks during the end of a turn and you will be pushed back if you fail to hold ground.

At the start of the next turn, just tap on Invade again select your opponent's province to continue the fight where you left off.

What are global events?


You have probably been adversely affected by one. Was it the plague or floods? Or if you were lucky, was it the bountiful harvest? Or even banditry? Some of these are events that occur randomly and they may or may not affect your provinces!

There will be a notification at the beginning of each turn when a global event occurs, and you can click on the "i" in the notification box to go into the world map. There, click on any event in the list to the left to get further information and to also see which provinces are affected by the particular event.

How do I get more officers?



 * Officers can be obtained as a reward from quests.
 * If your relationship with a society reaches a certain level, they will bestow you with one of their best men.
 * Officers are also a rare reward from destroying enemy prisons.
 * New officers may choose to join you over time, and every Palace raises the chance that this may happen.

How do I get more gold?

 * Perform more missions for gold rewards.
 * Construct more Marketplace and upgrade them.
 * Build Trading Houses and make trade alliances with friendly provinces.
 * Build up relationship with the Ministry of Gold.
 * Allow your population to grow (every 20 people gives you 1 gold a turn).

How do I train more troops?
Firstly, you need to have constructed any one Unit Building to be able to hire that unit type in the province. The camp will actually look different for provinces you can hire troops from.

Next, tap on a camp and then the Manage button to zoom in, and then tap on the icon in the centre of the camp.

After you select a type of unit in the pop-up box, click on train to queue them. The number displayed on the symbols for the newly queued units tells you the number of turns required for that unit to be available for use. Each province can usually train 2 units per turn.

If you wish to cancel your queue, just tap on any of the queued units, and the gold cost will be refunded in full.

Wounded or Imprisoned Officers
Officers can be wounded during battles or failed espionage attempts.

A wounded officer will not be able to to lead troops in combat, and while they can still perform officer missions, they have their stats reduced by half and are far less effective.

A wounded officer will recover over time, and a higher strength stat may reduce the time it takes for recovery.

Officers can also end up being imprisoned by the enemy.

If that happens the officer is removed from your control, and will not even be selectable.

You can get your officer back if:
 * The officer manages to escape.
 * You sent another officer to perform a rescue mission.
 * Your imprisoned officer receives help from a Society.
 * You manage to conquer the province the officer is imprisoned in.

Alertness
Having a high Alertness gradually reduces the amount of Intel an opponent has on that province over time, and it increases the chance that espionage actions fail.

As an attacker, you may receive false or incorrect information on enemy defences if they have a high Alertness value in the defending province.

When defending from outside attacks, Alertness gives you information on the number and type of units the opponent has sent to attack.

Alliance, Truce and Trade
If you achieve an Alliance with another warlord, you enable other diplomatic options with that warlord, and he or she becomes far less likely to attack you.

Warlords may still choose to attack and break an alliance, but relations between both parties will be severely impaired, and the attacker will also lose some trust (Disposition) with other warlords.

If you have a Truce, this ensures that the other party will not attack for the duration of the truce.

Each Trade Treaty will increase your global income by 10%, and also gives you an additional 10% bonus income in each province that neighbours your trading partner.

Neutral Provinces
Neutral Provinces will not attack, although they will build and hire armies.

It is possible to Annex (take over the province without fighting) a Neutral Province, but each province belongs to a particular Society and there are different criteria to annex one.

Order
Each province has its own Order value which reflects how loyal and content the population is.

A high Order will give a bonus to gold income and population growth, while a low Order enforces a penalty and may even cause the province to revolt and become Neutral (not affiliated with any warlord).

Order will rise in a province over time, especially if you have a Constabulary, and certain officer actions will help raise it.

Order will fall when the province is involved in wars, when there is heavy conscription of troops, or it can be made to fall via officer espionage.

Replenishment
All units recover 15% of their hitpoints at the end of each turn.

A unit takes 400 population to recover from 0 to 100%, so replenishment does not occur if your population is very low (near 5,000).

Tooltips
Most items in the game has a tooltip that reveals more information if you hold your finger on them.

Officer Stats
When you select a mission for an officer, there stats that affect the results of the mission will be highlighted at the bottom right of the screen.

Battle Strategies
If you have obtained a sufficient amount of Intel, you can see how many troops the opponent is sending to meet you in combat, and sometimes instead of sending your full army, you could less lesser troops if you're confident of winning, or you can even just send a single sacrificial unit just to exhaust your opponent's troops.

Beware that exhausted troops can still be used in to defend a Siege battle, and that officers may get injured if they lose a battle.