Map sites

Bandit camp

A bandit camp is a tile that sits on the map and houses neutral units. Unlike ruins it is not a reward but a threat: the camp's bandits attack units that pass nearby.

Bandits belong to nobody. They have no row on the scoreboard, they found no cities, they sign no truce with anyone and they cannot win the match — they are part of the board, not a fourth rival.

Every camp spawns 2 bandits; one stands on the camp tile itself, the rest take neighbouring tiles. The map holds 4–8 camps and every one of them sits on a passable tile: Mountain, Water, resource nodes and ruins never carry a camp.

Camps are placed at least 8 hexes away from a starting city: a bandit on your doorstep on turn one would be a punishment for a decision you never made. They also keep at least 5 hexes from each other, so two camps' threat rings never overlap.

Camps are shared out between the seats — each camp counts toward the nearest start — and the difference between those shares is capped. But nothing is guaranteed: a camp is a threat, not a reward, so there is no "one camp per seat" rule and in some matches a seat never meets one.

How far bandits come

A bandit never moves more than 2 hexes from its camp. That ring is its leash and nothing breaks it: a bandit will not chase you across the map and will not come to besiege your city.

The threat is therefore a question of place, not of time: walking past a camp is not free, but staying away from it is always an option. If you stay in range the bandit attacks the weakest unit next to it — a wounded Pioneer or a Scout that cannot fight back is the worst candidate for a stroll past a camp.

Bandits play at the end of a turn, all at once, after every seat has moved (The turn cycle). Ending your turn inside a camp's range is therefore a decision you get an answer to straight away.

Bandits never attack cities. They will not batter your walls, lay siege or take your capital.

Two ways out: buy it or clear it

A camp leaves the board in exactly two ways.

Buying it (mercenaries). With a unit next to the camp you can hire its bandits with gold: you pay the price, the bandits become your units and the camp disappears. The base rate is 12 gold per bandit; the real price is that rate multiplied by the balance of power, and that multiplier is squeezed between 0.5 and 3. So a healthy army buys a camp at half the base rate while a player whose army has melted pays three times it — a bandit is a gang, not a merchant, and it writes your weakness into the price.

The two sides of the ratio are measured differently: your strength counts your army (scaled by health) and your cities, while the camp's strength counts only the bandits it has left. That is why a camp gets cheaper as it is worn down in battle — killing one of its two bandits and buying the other is a play of its own.

Bought bandits do not act that turn: they change hands with their current health, their position and their spent action. They refresh at the start of your next turn like the rest of your army, and from then on you pay their upkeep.

Clearing it. When you destroy the camp's last bandit the camp falls. You get no gold for it; what you get is the threat removed. The bandit standing at the camp's door hits hard but has little health, so attacking it is a trade — the Spearman exists for exactly this job.

Choosing between the two is arithmetic: buying costs gold but hands you soldiers, clearing costs an attack turn and leaves you nothing but an empty tile.

A fallen camp leaves the board immediately — the marker disappears even on a tile you cannot see this turn. On a dark tile a camp is not shown at all: you have to lift the fog first (Fog of war).

Why it exists

The bandit camp fills two gaps at once. The first is the Spearman: for the first twenty turns of a match a defensive unit was an insurance policy — you built it, it waited on the flank and in most matches it never fought. The camp gives it something to do before a rival arrives.

The second is gold. Rushing, repairing and buying tiles all spent gold on your own empire; buying a camp is the only gate that buys soldiers off the board (Economy).

Don't confuse a village with a camp

There is a second neutral structure on the map: the Neutral village. Neither belongs to a player, but what you get is entirely different:

• A camp gives you units. The price follows the bandit count and the power ratio; the camp leaves the board.
• A village gives you a city. The price follows the health it has left; the village stays on the board, only its owner changes, and it counts toward your city cap.

A camp's bandits roam; a village stays put. A camp has no health of its own (its bandits do); a village has health (and no bandits).

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