Greetings, emperors!

So far in this series I’ve covered population, grain, stone, engineers and how all the resources fit together. Today I’m starting a new chapter, because the combat system is getting a significant overhaul. A big one.

Let me start with what the current system already does well. Armies in Imperium Sine Fine already have an organisation value. When it drains to zero, the army is routed. This means battles don’t always have to be fought to the last soldier, an army can break and flee while many of its troops are still alive. That’s a good mechanic, and it stays.

The problem is that right now, organisation drains at fixed values regardless of who is fighting whom. Losing a round costs you 6 organisation. Winning a round costs you 3. That’s it. A thundering heavy cavalry charge and a grinding infantry skirmish drain organisation at exactly the same rate. They should not.

And there is a second problem. Settlements have no organisation value at all. A garrison fights at maximum effectiveness no matter how long the siege has lasted, and a city can only fall by having every last defender killed. There is no arc to a siege, no mounting pressure, no moment where the defenders’ will finally breaks.

The new system fixes both of these things, by making organisation drain dynamic and meaningful, and by bringing settlements into the same system.

To do this, two new values are being added to every troop type in the game.

Shock Value (SV) represents how psychologically threatening a unit is. How much it shakes the enemy’s nerve rather than simply killing them. A charging heavy cavalry unit has a very high SV. Infantry grinding against a shield wall does not. Ende Ghouls, rising from the bodies of your fallen comrades, have the highest SV of any unit in the game.

Resolve (RSV) represents how stubbornly a unit resists being demoralised. How firmly it holds its nerve under pressure. A dwarf shield wall holds formation under a storm of arrows. A conscript garrison breaks when the gate cracks. The Ende feel no fear at all, they have nothing left to lose.

Together, SV and RSV form what I’m calling the morale axis, running completely independently from the physical axis of MV, AV and RV. Think of it like this:

The physical axis answers: how hard do you hit, and how well do you absorb it?

The morale axis answers: how frightening are you, and how steady are your nerves?

A side can be winning on one axis and losing on the other at the same time. A cavalry charge can be shattering enemy morale while the cavalry itself is taking heavy physical losses. A dwarf shield wall can be almost impossible to demoralise while being slowly ground down by superior numbers.

This transforms organisation from a fixed background mechanic into something that reacts dynamically to who is fighting whom and how. A cavalry charge feels like a cavalry charge. A siege feels like a siege. And the Ende feel like something no living army ever wants to face.

In my next post I’ll go into detail on how armour has become much more important in the new system, and how the physical axis now works.

Cheers!