Map sites

Ruins

Ruins are tiles that sit on the map and pay out once when a unit steps onto them. Once claimed they disappear; entering a second time gives nothing.

The reward is one of the kinds in the stat block, and which one a given ruin holds depends on the map seed — on the same seed the same ruin always pays the same thing, but you cannot know without going there. The "weight" in the stat block is that reward's share of the selection pool.

Where they are

The map holds 12–20 ruins, and every one of them sits on a passable tile: Mountain and Water never carry ruins. Nor does the tile of a resource node, a bandit camp or a neutral village — one hex carries one marker.

Ruins are placed at least 3 hexes away from a starting city. That is a rule, not a coincidence: a ruin sitting inside the capital's region would be a reward the player collects without making any decision — it would pay out for the seed, not for scouting.

The spread is still fair: every start is guaranteed at least 1 ruin within its own ground, and the difference in access between seats is capped (Map and terrain).

How it is claimed

The reward looks at the tile a unit ends on, not the tiles it passes through: a move whose path crosses a ruin and stops beyond it claims nothing. A ruin is a destination, not a waypoint — pointing a unit at it is a decision, and that decision costs the unit its turn.

Only a move claims the reward: an attack that advances into the tile of the unit it killed takes nothing. A unit that cannot fight can claim one too — the Scout is a ruin's most natural collector.

Ruins are a race: the claimed list is kept for the whole match, so if a rival gets there first the ruin is spent for you too. A bandit (Bandit camp) takes no reward but still spends the ruin by stepping on it: the neutral side's economy never runs, so the reward goes to nobody and the ruin closes for every seat all the same.

A spent ruin leaves the board immediately — the marker disappears even on a tile you cannot see this turn, because a marker that offers no action does not belong on the board. On a dark tile a ruin is not shown at all: you have to lift the fog first (Fog of war).

The vision reward

The vision reward writes the ring around the ruin permanently onto your map but grants no live vision: the revealed tiles become "stale", so you learn the terrain and do not see the units standing on it. On a ruin whose surroundings are already known this reward is wasted — the turn report tells you how many tiles were revealed, even when that number is zero.

The radius is in the stat block, and it sits just above the widest unit vision in the game (Scout). The reason is how fog works: a unit arriving at a ruin has already revealed its surroundings permanently with its own vision, so the reward can only add the ring outside that. The radius is kept at the smallest value where the reward is larger than zero — anything wider would write half the match onto the map in one move and turn scouting from a decision into a seed lottery.

Why it exists

Ruins are what scouting is paid for. Without them, lifting the fog only bought information; with them it buys gold, food or map outright. That is why they arrived in the same wave as the Scout: a cheap, fast explorer needed something concrete to chase.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.