AI-Generated

Combat

Combat in Thronewake is “basically the same as Travian” (the developer’s words), adjusted for the lack of a hero. Defense is deliberately strong, because the win condition — building the Ancient Monument — requires enormous defense.

Movement types

When you send troops from the Rally Point you choose a type:

Attack — a full battle; can destroy troops and (with siege) buildings, reduce loyalty (with leaders), and conquer.
Raid — steals resources; lighter losses; cannot conquer and cannot reduce a Wilder Site’s loyalty.
Scout — reconnaissance.
Reinforcement — sends troops to defend a village (yours, an ally’s, or a pact member’s). When sending to your own villages the default type is Reinforcement.

The population “morale” multiplier (authoritative)

The default combat calculation applies a multiplier to the attacker based on how much more population the attacker has than the defender’s village. This multiplier can be less than 1 but never below 0.667. In other words, attacking a much smaller target reduces your effective strength (down to ~0.667×) — this is the morale mechanic. (Since update 03/06 the morale bonus is based on the total population of the attacker and the main defender, not just the village.)

Because Wilder Sites have no population, this multiplier once misfired there (making defenders up to 1.5× too strong); it was removed for Wilder Sites (28/05).

Casualties, reinforcements & starvation order

In a raid, the percentage of troops (or troop-equivalent) that die sums to 100% across both sides — so a combat log showing “defenders lost 91%” indirectly reveals the defender’s relative strength.
Reinforcements are consumed before the main defender’s own troops.
Even an empty village has some flat defense (from Residence/Palace and Watch Tower), plus a bonus to the smaller-population side — so raiding “nothing” can still cost you troops.
Combat reports always show at least one unit, and can be slightly delayed but show the intended battle time.
Starvation: external reinforcements starve before your own troops (see Units → upkeep).

Bigger army = fewer losses

Against the same defender, a bigger attacking army takes proportionally fewer losses (raiding 1,200 with a small force might cost 30% of your troops; overwhelming force loses far less). Use the Combat Simulator to plan.

Rams

Built in the Workshop; used in attacks to damage the Watch Tower (wall). Tribe Watch-Tower durability determines how many rams are needed. Ram damage to buildings increases with Smithy upgrades.

Catapults

Built in the Workshop; destroy buildings and fields.

Base speed 3 tiles/hour (6 on a 3× world) — slow.
Targeting: you can choose up to 4 catapult targets in one attack. Target #3 requires 100 catapults, target #4 requires 200. Choosing multiple targets splits the catapults evenly across them. Catapults hit the highest-level matching field/building. (Earlier the max was 2 targets.)
If an attack uses more than 2 catapult targets, the defender is told “More than 2 catapult targets”.
The Stormbrew Works effect forces your catapults to target randomly. The Shadow Veil artefact makes enemy catapult targets random.
Population/morale strongly affects catapult damage. Catapulting a much smaller target (when you have higher population) reduces your catapult effectiveness — even ~15 more population than the target is enough to leave 2–3 building levels alive rather than fully destroying them (a defender’s Watch Tower/Residence/Stonemason’s Lodge add to this). A common fix is to add one extra catapult per target to finish off the last levels. (This is why catapults can feel “weaker than Travian” against small players — it’s the morale multiplier, working as intended.)
You cannot catapult a level-0 building; once (for example) a warehouse is at 0 you can target fields.
A siege-destroyed level-0 building leaves “rubble” worth ~10% of its build cost, collectable by the defender. Destroyed buildings can be rebuilt with a speed bonus.

Wave Builder

When sending an attack you can add multiple waves — up to 8 — each carrying its own units, so multiple hits can land in the same second (essential for conquering: e.g. wave 1 hammer, wave 2, wave 3 chiefs). Each wave is separated from the next by exactly 1 second in the tool, and the game sorts waves by travel time. Notes:

Sending from multiple tabs/browsers is blocked, which made instant-chiefing harder; a workaround is to send extra waves and cancel the unwanted ones.
You can cancel an attack up to ~8 minutes after sending (and a specific research extends attack-cancel).
With catapult targets across waves, an 8-wave attack can hit up to 16 total targets.

Fakes

A fake is an attack sent with few (or cheap) units to bait the defender into splitting their defense.

A defender sees the count and type of an incoming attack only if the number of incoming attacks is ≤ their Rally Point level. So sending more simultaneous attacks than the target’s Rally Point level hides your real one among fakes.
The Research “Diplomatic Awareness” raises the reveal threshold (letting a defender detect more, or an attacker make cheaper convincing fakes — it changes the count needed for incoming to stay hidden).
History: fakes were only added mid-way through the 2nd world. Before that, scouts revealed incoming numbers if you had more scouts than incoming troops; that was replaced by the Rally-Point system so faking is possible.

Traps (Thornsnare Grove)

The Verdant Wardens tribe building. Traps capture incoming enemy attackers up to the Grove’s total trap capacity (which scouts can’t see).

Traps trigger only on enemy units (valid hostile/at war), never allies; scouts cannot be trapped.
Freeing trapped troops: their owner attacks (a successful attack frees them, but ~25% die when freed) or the trap’s owner releases them (no deaths). Otherwise they die only by starvation.
Units killed in traps count toward the defender’s PvP score (update 10/08). See the Verdant Wardens page for the full trap ruleset and the reinforcement-speed buff.

Herbalist (healing)

The Herbalist (“hospital”) heals fallen troops after battle (Travian-Kingdoms-style):

Heals up to 40% of fallen units. Siege, leaders, and settlers cannot be healed.
Wounded units stay wounded until you heal them (they don’t slowly die), but the Herbalist has a capacity limit — not every unit can be healed if you lack space. When space is limited, the Herbalist prioritizes the stronger units first.
Healing costs half the resources and time of re-training the unit in a Barracks/Stable of the same level as the Herbalist. (A level-10 Herbalist heals in ~half a level-10 Barracks’ time.)
Requires Academy level 15 to build. Barracks- and Stable-trained units share one heal queue. Rider’s Wells reduces cavalry heal time.

Combat Simulator

A Travian-style simulator (in the Rally Point, or https://www.thronewake.com/simulator):

Requires attacker and defender population inputs (because of the morale multiplier).
Roughly 99% accurate when the parameters (population, Smithy level, guards, etc.) are set correctly.
The loot figure it shows is the theoretical maximum those troops could carry in a raid — you won’t always get it all (someone else may have raided first).
Shared combat reports include an “Add to Simulator” button.

PvP vs PvE & scoring

Separate PvP and PvE attack/defense scores are tracked; leaderboards distinguish them. Attacking/raiding an alliance member or same-IP account gives no loot and no score.