The Anarchic Kingdom: Your First Attack

Friday, 15th December 2023

One important thing to note about The Anarchic Kingdom is that all the action in the game takes place simulaneously at the end of each turn. What you're doing during your turn is giving orders. Those orders will be carried out at the end of the turn, at the same time as all the other players' orders.

Another thing to note is that the game is entirely deterministic. When a player is attacked, the amount of land taken is completely dependent on the number and quality of forces that are attacking; there is no randomness in this result. The same goes for gold and castles taken, and military forces lost or destroyed. The only apparent randomness is in what your opponents decide to do.

So when you give orders to your forces, as we're about to do, don't be surprised that they won't move immediately. And when you recruit more military, don't expect to see those new units until the following month. That out of the way, let's actually do something with our first turn.

Attacking enemies is the main action in the game. Defensive play isn't advantageous; even if you minimise the amount of land taken by protecting it with all yoru forces, you'll still lose some land to any attack, and if you're not attacking, you won't gain any other land in its place.

So let's choose someone to attack. On the first turn, there isn't any reason to choose one barony over another; all of them start out the same size, with the same resources. The only choice you really have is to attack nobody (an unwise choice, as mentioned above), attack one barony, or attack multiple baronies.

I don't know if it's better to attack one barony or multiple on the first turn; it really depends on what the other baronies do. If you choose one target, and other baronies attack them too, you'll have to share the spoils with the other attackers. So attacking multiple baronies might be a good way to hedge your bets. On the other hand, you'll have to split your forces to attack multiple baronies, making it easier for your targets to defend against you.

Page through the baronies and make a choice. When you're looking at the enemy barony, an "Attack" option appears at the bottom of the screen. Select "Attack", and you'll see the Attack Screen. Here you'll be asked for the number of Knights and Footmen to send. I'd suggest sending half your forces out in total, keeping half your footmen for defence, and half your knights for future turns.

Selecting Done saves that order, although you can modify it at any time before the end of the turn by viewing the same barony and selecting Attack again; your figures will still be there.

Before ending the turn, there's another step you should take: recruiting more forces for next month. I'll talk about that in the next article.