Hordes

Hordes are large groups of a single kind of NPCs that appear in a wilderness area. Battling Hordes or their counterpart Armies will cost the player 3 turns and will provide more experience than a regular NPC.

Basic Information

Until the Last Battle, there will only be one horde out at a time and everyone will have 20 hours to defeat it or try to help it. A new one will appear every 36-48 hours. Hordes will not target the same city twice in a row, but other than that, they will mostly select a random city. There are a few factors that will increase or decrease a city's chances of catching a horde. For Example, Cities with the lowest order or that have Seals will have better chances of catching one than the city with the highest order that doesn't have a Seal etc.

When a Horde is gathering, the Rumors page will have a message letting you know where. The Cities list will also have a horde icon next to the city being targeted. The Horde will be made up of one kind of NPC, so some hordes will be stronger than others depending on which NPC they are. As the age goes on, hordes will get stronger.

Fighting Hordes will boost positive alignment. Fighting Armies will give negative alignment.

Hordes

To battle a Horde, simply go to the area the horde is gathering in and click the Horde button to initiate a battle with it. The horde will fight just like a normal NPC of that kind, however, their health is that of the entire horde. Let's say it's towards the beginning of the round and the horde has 5,000 health. You're a level 1 with 50 health. You win a horde battle by doing more damage to the horde than it does to you AND surviving the battle (having health left). So if the battle ends with 4960 health and you have 15 health, you win (40 damage dealt vs 35 damage received). But if the horde ends with 4900 health and you have 0, you still lose even though you dealt twice as much damage as you received.

So if the horde has so much health, how can you beat it? Well, the damage dealt to the horde by all players carries over. So if your battle ends and the horde has 4960 health, the next battle anyone has against the horde it will start with 4960 health. So basically you're all working together to deal 5000 damage to the horde in 20 hours. If you succeed, the horde is defeated. If you fail, the horde wins and attacks the city.

The size of the horde's health is determined by a combination of things. The highest player's level and Health, and the number of characters in the world.

Horde Health = (2 x (Health of the Top level player) x ((Total number of characters)/5 + ((Level of the Top Level Player)/10 rounded up)) x 10)

Effects of a Horde

Hordes have several negative effects on things while they're actively gathering and more if they aren't stopped. There are also positive effects if they are defeated.

First, here's what happens while the horde is gathering in the Wilderness Area:

• Estates in that Wilderness Area will only add half their normal Ji to surrounding cities and none to the city targeted by the Horde.
• No Estates can be purchased or upgraded in that Wilderness area
• Traveling from that Wilderness area reduces stamina by 2. This is in addition to normal Travel stamina loss and always hits the player regardless of whether their horse is fed or not. So if you don't have a horse, you lose 3. If you have a fed horse, you lose 2 and your horse stamina goes down 1.
• All city bonuses in the targeted city are cut in half (ie. The extra 2% you can bank goes to 1%, 4% off on Repairs goes to 2%, etc).
• No upgrades may be purchased in the targeted City.
• No taxes collected in the targeted city while horde is present.

If the Horde is not defeated before they attack:

• Each Estate in the Wilderness loses 2 of it's highest level upgrades (selected randomly if tied). One upgrade could lose 2 levels or 2 upgrades each lose 1 level. If this lowers the number of upgrades to an Estate to downgrade it to a lower level, such as from Village to Hamlet, then the Estate gets downgraded.
• The targeted City loses it's highest upgrade (selected randomly if tied). Unique upgrades will count as tied with whatever your highest level non-unique upgrade is, so there's always a chance to lose them if you have them, but they aren't automatically lost.
• Half the stock in city's shops is lost, rounded up. This includes the Shop, as well as consumables produced by players available at the Inn, the Wise Woman and the Tavern.
• Half the coin in city bank is lost.
• All clans lose 10% of their Ji in the city.
• All players in the targeted City get moved to the Wilderness area the horde attacked from.

If horde Defeated:

• All effects of the horde being present are removed
• All clans gain 3% of their Ji in the City

Armies

Each city will have it's own army as a defense against hordes. So when a Horde starts to gather for an attack on a city, the city's army is sent out to fight it. If you want to help the horde, you must kill this army. To do this, simply go to the wilderness area with the horde in it, and click the Army button to initiate a battle with it. These battles will be the same as a Horde battle, except the health level of the Armies is based on the City Defense number of each City.

Army Health

The health of city armies starts out at 10,000. Every hour change, the army's health increases based on the Ji of the clans in the city:

• Army health increases by 3% of the Ji of the Ruling clan and clans allied with them.
• Army health increases by 1.5% of the Ji of the clans neutral towards the ruler.
• Army health decreases by 2% of the Ji of the clan who are enemies of the ruler.

You can find the strength of each cities army on the City info page under the Defense column or in the City itself.

After an army has battled (updated either when the horde is defeated or when it attacks), half the amount of damage the army took during the battle is subtracted from the armies base health. So if going into the battle, the army had 50000 health, but only had 10000 left at the end of the battle, the army would be reduced to 30000 health (50000 - (40000/2) = 30000).

Note: Health of the army displayed in the city doesn't reflect how much health a battling army has yet. This stat is shows what the health of an army would be at the beginning of the next horde and isn't updated until the battle is over. All health gain/decrease during horde battles doesn't effect the current battle and won't be applied until the next horde.

There a couple restrictions on army health:

• If the army's health is ever reduce to below 10,000 (outside of battle), it will remain at 10,000. This stops the city from being completely defenseless, though at high levels 10,000 health isn't going to do much.
• If army health is ever double what the health of an attacking horde would be, it will remain at double. This is to help prevent cities ending up with ridiculous sized defenses. Once the army gets so big, the people just won't justify supporting a larger army.

What happens if an Army is Defeated?

If an army's health is dropped to 0 and defeated, there are a few penalties:

• The health remaining for the horde is doubled, so the sooner you kill the army, the stronger the horde will be.
• The Ji of the Ruling clan in the targeted city is reduced by 3%. This is due to their failure to properly defend their city.
• 50 Chaos will be added to the city.

Army Types

Just like hordes, armies are made up of a single NPC. However, where Hordes are a randomly selected NPC, Armies are picked by which city is being attacked. Each city has a chosen NPC to defend it. Some make a lot of sense, like Whitecloaks defending Amador, but others are more of a stretch, like Lions defending Caemlyn. Below is a list of which NPCs will be defending each City.

City	City Defender
Mayene	Guard Dog
Tear	Drunken Soldier
Illian	Brigand
Ebou Dar	Damane
Tanchico	Seanchan
Cantorin	Raken
Falme	Lopar
Bandar Eban	Wolf
Maradon	Asha'man
Chachin	Soldier
Shol Arbela	Mad Male Channeler
Fal Dara	Warder
Thakan'dar	Myrddraal
Rhuidean	Aiel
Stedding Shangtai	Deathwatch Guard
Far Madding	Merchant Guard
Caemlyn	Lion
Cairhien	Bandit
Tar Valon	Aes Sedai
Lugard	Mercenary
Emond's Field	Wolfbrother
Salidar	Wilder
Jehannah	Dragonsworn
Amador	Whitecloak