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- How battles work
How battles work
The ideas behind planned warfare: few rules, many interactions.
Depth from interaction#
Covenant keeps its rules small and lets them combine. A road, a hill, a formation, an army's morale and a raid on a farm are each easy to understand. The decisions come from how they meet: which road to build, where to fight, when to chase a beaten army and when to ride past it to the enemy's farms.
What you manage#
| Area | What you see |
|---|---|
| Economy | Food, wood, gold and stone |
| Combat | Health, morale, unit class, formation and position |
| Army controls | Move, attack, formation, stance, quick-select subgroups and your culture's special command |
| Terrain | Roads, open ground, forest, hills, difficult ground, water and bridges |
The game does not show modifier formulas. It tells you what is happening in words, such as FLANKED, SHAKEN or HIGH GROUND. See Reading a battle.
A battle in practice#
Your infantry forms a shield wall in the center while your archers take the hill. The enemy cavalry will not charge the wall and starts to circle, so you select your cavalry and intercept. Enemy infantry pushes through the forest toward your archers and loses its formation on the way. When one side is flanked, its morale drops from Steady to Shaken to Wavering until part of the line breaks and runs. Nearby soldiers see it go and start to waver too.
Your cavalry now has a choice: pursue the fleeing army, or ride around it and pillage the enemy economy.
What the game leaves out#
There is no fifth resource, no hero with equipment or skill trees, no long list of formations, no gunpowder and no weather that changes the rules. Diplomacy stays central: treaties decide who can fight and raid.