Combat

Ironhold is pre-alpha. Everything here is checked against the current build, and all of it is subject to change.

How damage resolves

Every attack has a damage type, and every target has an armour class. The two are cross-referenced to decide how much of the attack actually lands. Sending the wrong troops at the wrong target does not just win more slowly — it can barely work at all.

Which units are which class

Siege units are grouped together below, with their individual armour classes shown beside their names. Use those armour classes when reading the damage table.

Reading the table

• Arrows shred light troops and bounce off knights. Archers are excellent against peasants, spearmen and enemy archers, and close to useless against heavy infantry. Massed bows are not an answer to everything.
• Blunt is the anti-armour answer. Macemen exist for knights, heroes and the king. Against light troops they are the worst choice you could make.
• Pierce wants medium targets. Spears and pikes are at their best against swordsmen, macemen and crossbowmen, and merely adequate against heavies.
• Slash is the generalist. Strong into light, even against medium, poor into heavy. Swordsmen and knights hold a line rather than solve a specific problem.
• Bolts are the ranged answer to armour. Deliberately weaker into heavy than a mace, so crossbows are the safe anti-armour pick and macemen stay the hard one — and, like arrows, all but worthless against a wall.
• Nothing but siege touches structures. Ordinary troops chip at walls; arrows are almost completely wasted on them. If you want a wall down, bring the thing built to bring it down.

The practical consequence is that a mixed army beats a bigger uniform one. A wall of swordsmen loses to macemen; a mass of archers loses to knights walking through them.

Siege

Catapults outrange everything and hit hard at the cost of being almost immobile and nearly harmless to troops. Battering rams are enormously durable, cannot be staggered, and exist to remove a gate. Both need an escort. Laddermen offer another approach: they carry ladders to enemy walls so an assault can climb over the defenses.

Walls, gates and towers all have their own health pools, with gates the sturdiest. Breaking a wall is not the only way in: ladders and stairs provide routes to the wall top, including while possessing a soldier.

Fighting in person

Possessing a unit puts you in first person with a real melee kit: light and heavy attacks, a block with a limited frontal arc, and a dodge with brief invulnerability. All of it runs on stamina, which regenerates after a short pause — so spamming attacks leaves you unable to block.

While possessed you take reduced damage and deal more, so a possessed soldier is genuinely worth more than the same soldier under AI control. Nearby friendly units will rally to follow you, and you can shove through your own ranks to reach the front, which is the intended way to lead a push rather than watch one.