Steel and flash руководство

Fighting Spirit: The morale of your army. If it drops too low during a battle, your soldiers may flee from a fight. Managing it is important between fights.

Food Stocks: An army marches on its stomach, and your forces are no exception. This determines whether you must regularly procure food to keep your soldiers in peak condition.

Forage Stocks: Whereas Food Stocks are for your men, Forage Stocks are for any beasts of burden or mounts you might purchase and use. If this is active, any animals you might own will need food as well.

Skills-limit Equipment: Your skill points normally determine how well you use certain weapons, and if this modifier is active those weapons will need a minimum skill value to actually wield them.

Squad Stamina: Stamina limits how long your character can move and fight, and naturally regenerates when you stay put. If this setting is on, your whole army will have to deal with stamina management, which can be a bit of an issue if you travel for too long or if a battle drags out.

Free retreat at squad size: Normally, a retreat costs resources as your army leaves the field. Depending on the difficultly, retreats cost no resources at a certain number of soldiers. The lower the difficulty, the larger the army can get before incurring retreat costs.

We will discuss that later, but for now you have to select the career of your character, which determines starting equipment and stat bonuses. Your last task in character creation is assigning points to your stats and skills, which can get daunting.

o      Health: Determines how much damage you can take before your character dies. Simple as that.

o      One-handed: How well you handle one-handed melee weapons like short swords. If you plan on carrying a shield during a melee, this skill is mandatory.

o      Polearms: Spears, halberds, and jousting lances. If your chosen weapon lets you stab enemies from farther away, this is the skill to improve.

o      Stamina: How long you can move and/or fight before tiring out.

Agility: Staying light on your feet and quick on the draw, ranged skills form half of the available skills under agility.

o      Horse Riding: How well you take to mounted combat and all its benefits and flaws. This also determines how strong your selected horse can become.

o      Bow: Good old-fashioned archery. Great for picking off enemies from afar. This skill affects both damage and accuracy.

o      Crossbow: Compared to bows, crossbows offer stronger shots at the expense of taking longer to nock and draw a new arrow. It is otherwise functionally identical to Bows.

o      Throwing: Throwing knives and axes. Not as much range, but they can also double as melee weapons in a pinch.

o      Shield Wielding: How quickly your character can draw their shield to block incoming attacks.

o      Hunting/Fishing: If your army is camping, you can choose to hunt or fish for additional food and other resources. This skill increases the odds of finding goods from either activity.

Intelligence: Some skills can be improved not only through practical usage, but also through reading related books on the topic. This stat increases how fast you read through skill books.

o      Engineering: Castles require more than men and horses to conquer, and Engineering controls how quickly you can build a siege camp and siege engines to penetrate defenses.

o      Tactics: Unless you have a strong grasp of logistics, enemy armies will typically be larger than your own. This skill gives your army some advantages if it is smaller than the enemy army, with this bonus increasing the greater the difference is.

o      Scouting: Increases how fast you and your army can move on the global map. Its effects should not be confused to how Athletics works above.

o      Surgery: If any of your soldiers are brought down during a battle, this stat decreases the likelihood of any casualties dying from their wounds. Outside of battle, this increases the rate your character recovers from damage, along with any heroes you may enlist.

o      Bandaging Wounds: Working in conjunction with Surgery, this skill determines how quickly regular soldiers recover from their wounds. After a battle, this skill also calculates how much health your forces may recover immediately.

o      Veterinary: The first two skills were for humans, while this skill increases the survival rate and recovery speed of any horses in your army.

o      Leadership: The most important skill for your army, Leadership controls the overall size of your army. If this is too low, you might spend your early game on your own.

o      Training: This skill lets you train your soldiers, as long as their Training skill is not higher than yours. If you want to keep your men at the top of their game without constantly firing and hiring replacements, this is the stat to go to.

o      Trade: Adjusts the prices for any equipment and loot you buy and sell. For more mercantile players, this stat can make trading between cities very lucrative.

o      Persuasion: This skill has a greater effect on dialogue compared to charisma and increases the chance of success during conversations.

o      Courtship: This skill increases the likelihood of succeeding in dialogue with members of the opposite sex.

o      Discipline: You cannot keep soldiers under your thumb forever, especially if resources are running low. This skill affects the likelihood of soldiers deserting from your army, and how many of them leave. This also controls how many prisoners of war you may find after a battle.

Diligence: A curiously-named stat, skills under this stat revolve around logistics and crafting.

o      Blacksmithing: Determines the quality of any arms and armor your character may craft from raw materials.

o      Seafaring: Scouting for bodies of water. This determines how fast you travel on seas.

o      Packaging: This dictates your maximum inventory capacity, taking into account any beasts of burden you may have in your army.

o      Animal Care: Increases the health and lifespan of all animals in your army, both battle and burden. This also affects their regeneration rate slightly.

o      Weapon Care: Controls how fast your weapons and armor degrade over time.

o      Looting: Affects the quality of any spoils of war you may find after a battle.

Map: Displays a larger map depicting who currently owns the displayed cities. As a rule, your faction will always be displayed with bright green text, while every other faction has a unique color. This is great for determining whether yours or your allies’ friendly territory is currently under attack.

Squad: Displays the current Fighting Spirit and Stamina of your army. If Fighting Spirit is low, you can boost it by throwing feasts or rewarding extra gold. If squad Stamina is low, you can restore it by setting up camp.

Setting up camp lets you hunt animals for food, with forested areas or remote locations offering more chances to find fresh game. If you have a fishing rod, either through your starting career or through the market, you can also fish, and with the right resources you can smith your own gear either to maintain or to sell.

States: Shows the current state of diplomacy between the empires, and who is at war with each other.

Inventory: Displays everything you and your forces are lugging around, and lets you equip new gear once old equipment has worn down. You can also throw out unwanted items in case they are no longer of value or if you need the inventory space.

Player: Displays your character’s stats and appearance, and you can customize the latter as needed. Your character’s appearance can only be modified here and not while creating a new game.

Do not be afraid to start at the lower difficulties. With so many factions and armies roaming about, just managing your own character can be a pain. The game has multiple save slots so you can go for easier difficulties to see how the game handles.

Archers with fishing rods. One easy way to make money is to start the game as a hunter, which gives you a bow right from the start as well as a bonus to Hunting/Fishing. If your difficulty level has sufficient gold, purchase a fishing rod from a nearby city and set up camp.

That way, you can hunt or fish and provide fresh food for yourself, while selling any excess for more gold. The gold in turn can be used to hire soldiers, buy yourself new equipment, or train your men.

Know when to attack. Even a simple village will have an archer and/or a crossbowman defending it, which can spell instant death if you try to attack a village by yourself. Whether or not it succeeds an attack also angers whoever was in control of it and counts as a declaration of war. Make sure you have the allies to back up a potential assault.

Remember your men. If Fighting Spirit and Food Stocks are on, remember to make regular visits to the market to keep them well-fed and ready for a fight. Do not forget to make camp and let your soldiers recover lost health and stamina, and you can use the rest to gather a little extra food or manage your loot.