Broadwater, the Large map

A wide country cut by a river, a bridge in the east and a ford in the west. Broadwater is 36×36 tiles, about 7 times the ground of The Causeway Meres and Reedford. It is an experiment beside those two: a new match never lands on it by chance, you pick it in the Conquest panel. Your town sits at column 19, row 3, on the near third; Haskett’s lair at column 19, row 34, on the far third. Columns count from the west edge, rows from the near (town) edge, as on the resources page.

Tiles

36×36

Par days

18

Towns

2

Lairs

38

Wardens

3

Mines

12

Dwellings

11

Chests

28

Piles

54

Watchtowers

4

Places

6

The two towns

Broadwater is the only map with a second town. Yours flies your flag from day one. The other stands at column 14, row 28, on the far third, and who holds it is up to the Rival switch under the map choice in the Conquest panel. With Rival on, the default, it is the computer rival’s home from day one and there is no lair at its gate: you cannot take it, only beat him. With Rival switched off it is held by nobody, with a horde lair at its gate, and the rest of this paragraph is how you take it. That lair’s troops are drawn from the match seed: in one match it was 6 Carrion Kites, 16 Gorse Hogs and 3 Barrow Bears, and beating them paid 300 gold and 597 XP, and 1 Barrow Bear joined (what each lair size pays). Walk in after the fight and flag it. From then on it is a town of your own people: the same buildings at the same costs (12 in a new match), paid from the one purse. Each town keeps its own one-building-a-day limit, so with both flagged you can put up two buildings a day, and each sells its own weekly stock of creatures. With Town forks on, the lock is per town too: a building is locked only by its twin standing, or ordered, in that same town, so a Muster Yard in your town leaves the Archery Butts open in the second, and with both flagged you can field both halves of a pair, one in each town; the rival’s town is locked the same way, by its own buildings.

Mines

Broadwater holds 12 mines, every one behind a lair, and it is the only map with gold and crystal mines. A flagged mine pays every day; if you flag them all, the map pays 1000 gold, 6 wood, 8 ore, 3 crystal a day.

Dwellings

There are 11 dwellings, several of a kind, each refilled at the start of every week (every 7 days). A dwelling sells the creature your people hire there (which creature for which people).

Lairs, piles and chests

38 lairs stand on the map, 3 of them wardens; most stand in front of something worth taking. With Rival on there are 37: the horde lair in front of the second town is not there, because the rival lives in that town. What is inside each is drawn from the match seed within its size (the sizes).

The 54 piles are picked up by walking onto them; most hold a fixed resource, 27 hold one drawn from the seed. The 28 chests each offer gold or XP (the amounts).

Watchtowers

Walk onto a watchtower once and the fog lifts for good on every tile within 9 of it. Broadwater has 4; the two small maps have 1. A watchtower gives nothing else: no gold, no troops.

The roaming rules

Broadwater is a map to explore, and its rules say so. There is no day limit: its 18 days are only the score’s par (100 points for each day you finish under it, none past it). You win by beating Haskett and lose if your army is beaten; with Rival on, beating the rival hero also wins it for you, and he wins it if he clears Haskett’s lair before you do (the rival). His lair is not sealed: you may fight him on day one. The 3 wardens are still there (the near third, west side, the middle third, east side and the far third, west side), but they never grow, and each one you break takes 15% of his might away, so with all 3 broken he fights at 55% of himself.

The rival

With the Rival switch on, which is the default (it sits under the map choice in the Conquest panel, and the game remembers how you left it), Broadwater is a race. A computer hero starts in the second town with the same army and purse you start with, and plays his day each time you end yours, under every rule you play by: the same movement, lairs, prices and one building a day. Switch Rival off and the map is yours alone, the second town back behind its lair.

• When he attacks you. Only when he stands next to your hero and his army is at least 1.5× as strong as yours (strength measured the way the game weighs a lair’s guard). A battle between the heroes ends the match for whoever loses it, so he will not risk it on an even fight; while he has that edge, your hero is one of the things he walks toward, worth 5000 gold to him. You can attack him from the next tile too, at any strength.
• How he fights lairs. He only considers a lair whose guard is at most 80% of his army’s strength. For those he plays the exact fight out in advance and attacks only if he wins and keeps at least 70% of his army; otherwise he leaves it, and he never walks through a lair he has not chosen to fight, so a mine behind a hard lair waits. Haskett is the exception: on a day the exact fight says he wins, he goes straight for the boss and fights whatever it costs him.
• What he walks to first. Everything he can reach, valued in gold and divided by its path cost plus 10, so far things count for less, but a pile next door does not outrank a mine a few steps further on. A mine counts as 7 days of its income (a unit of wood, ore or crystal as 40 gold), a pile as what it holds in those terms, a chest as its gold (he always takes the gold), a dwelling as 500 gold plus what he can spend there, a building or a hire in his own town as 400 plus the spend, and a lair he is willing to fight as 300 plus its gold. In a sample match where you only end your days, in his first 3 days he hires at a dwelling on day 1 and flags a mine (gold) on day 3.

How a match with him ends: you win by beating Haskett or by beating the rival in a battle between the heroes (a draw there counts as your loss). He wins if he clears Haskett’s lair before you do, or beats your army when he attacks. If his army falls in a lair he is out of the match and you play on alone.

War bands

On Broadwater you can hire troops where the hero is not. At a town that flies your flag, or at a dwelling, while the hero stands somewhere else, the recruit row offers Send to hero, with the days the trip will take. Pay the same price as ever and the troops set off toward him as a war band. A dwelling sends only once the hero has visited it: until he has stopped on it at least once, tapping it from afar still opens its card, but the row reads “Visit this dwelling once to recruit from it” instead of offering a send. After that one visit it sends from anywhere for the rest of the match. Your town needs no visit and sends from anywhere.

• The march. A band walks 6 tiles a day whatever the ground, along the cheapest road to wherever the hero stands that evening, so it follows him if he moves. That is slower than him on road, where he walks 12 tiles; the same as him on grass; faster than him through forest, hills and swamp: roughly half his road pace, so a band from the far side of the 36×36 map takes about a week.
• Joining. It joins his army the moment the two touch: on the same tile or on any of the eight tiles round him, diagonals included, whether he walks up to it from the front, the side or behind, or its march ends beside him. His walk stops there, and the troops go into the stack of the same creature or a free slot. If his army has no room it waits, keeping to his heels, until a slot is free.
• Ambushes. A band whose day’s march steps within 1 tile of a monster lair you have not cleared (diagonals count, and so does the lair’s own tile) is set on by its guards at the first such step. The fight is settled automatically over 2 rounds. The survivors halt there for the rest of the day and march on the next; a band wiped out is gone, gold and all. The lair stays as it was, its guards unhurt, and each lair strikes a given band only once. Wardens are lairs too and strike until broken; a cleared lair never strikes, and Haskett keeps to his lair. A band on the hero’s own tile is never struck. Against an ordinary lair the fight can cost a handful of spearmen most of their number and a bigger band far less, so a band is safest on a road whose lairs you have already cleared.
• The safe road. When a band’s cheapest road passes a lair and a way round exists, the recruit row also offers Send by the safe road, with its own days. A band sent that way works out its road afresh every day so that no step comes within 1 tile of any lair you have not cleared, so it is never ambushed while that holds. The way round costs more ground, so it usually takes as long or longer; days count tiles walked, though, so a detour over fewer tiles can now and then arrive sooner. On day one of a sample match, counting every dwelling as already visited, 7 dwellings would offer it: 5 take the same days either way, 1 takes longer (8 days instead of 7) and 1 arrives sooner (8 days instead of 10). If on some day no way round exists, say because the hero has walked through a pass that an uncleared lair watches, the band takes the cheapest road that day, its tile line reads “by the cheapest road: no safe way round the lairs today”, and it can be ambushed as usual.

War bands exist only on this map. On The Causeway Meres and Reedford and in the Duel you recruit only where the hero stands.

Haskett on Broadwater

He starts stronger here and grows more slowly: 70% of his full might on day one (14% on The Causeway Meres and 10% on Reedford), then 2% more each day (3% on the small maps), less 3% for every lair you clear. Breaking a warden counts as clearing a lair as well as taking its own share. These numbers are before any Warpath level. His hit points follow his might:

So waiting still costs: on day 18 with no warden broken he is at 104%, while a hero who breaks all 3 wardens by then meets him at 52%. How Haskett fights.

More: Codex · Resources, mines and the town · The Causeway Meres and Reedford · Lairs

Play Pick the Large map in the Conquest panel to play Broadwater.