Musters and levies

A guild, order, house or kingdom can fight as one army. A levy calls on the body's lords to march troops to a rally capital by a deadline; a muster sends the troops already posted in the body's capitals. Either way the troops fight one battle as one force, and the loot, the Renown and the losses are shared by what each lord put in.

The basics

• Only the body's leader and its Warmasters can call a levy or a muster. A Warmaster of a body higher up can call one for any body inside it.
• A levy names a target, a rally capital and a deadline. Every lord inside the body is told. Lords answer from the Musters tab of the Realm panel by marching troops from a village to the rally.
• At the deadline, everyone standing at the rally marches together. Troops still on the road get nothing and go home.
• A muster draws troops from capital garrisons straight away and marches as soon as the last of them reaches the rally. The troops still belong to the lords who posted them, and survivors go back to their capital.
• Each lord's share is the worth of the troops they sent over the worth of the whole host. A tenth of the loot goes to the calling body's treasury.

Calling one

The Musters tab in the Realm panel has a Call to arms form for anyone who may call. Pick the body, levy or muster, the target and the rally capital. Targets come from the map (camps, forts, enemy villages and capitals have a "Call a levy or muster" button in their panel) or from your recent scout reports. A host does not need a fresh scout report to march.

Rule	Levy	Muster
Who may call	leader, or a holder of the levy and rally powers (Warmaster), here or above	leader, or a holder of muster and rally, here or above
Rally	a capital held by the body or a body inside it	the same
Deadline	1 to 48 game hours after the call	when the last contingent reaches the rally
Troops from	lords' villages, at home and off the castle walls	share (1% to 100%) of every lord's posted troops in the capitals picked
Siege engines	may come	cannot, since they are never posted in capitals

A lord with the power in more than one body sees each body in the form.

Targets

Target	Allowed when
Tier I to IV AI target (camps, dens, forts, keeps, strongholds, old castles)	always
Tier V (the Usurper's citadel)	a kingdom's call; or a house's call when at least 2 different houses have calls on it that are gathering or marched within 24 game hours of each other. Guilds and orders cannot call on it at all.
An enemy village	the body, or a body above it, is at war with the lord or a body above that lord; no pact binds them; the lord is out of peacetime
An enemy capital	the body or a body above it is at war with the capital's holder or a body above it. Taking the keep hands the territory to the body whose war it is, for good.

A lord's own war never carries a body's host. The target is checked again when the host sets out and when it arrives: if the war has ended or the target is gone, the host turns back without a fight and nobody gains or loses anything.

The tier V rule is checked at the deadline. A lone house levy on the citadel gathers as normal, then is called off with a message if no second house has joined in time. The houses do not march together: each fights its own assault, and since the citadel keeps its losses between assaults, they wear it down between them.

Answering a levy

Lords inside the calling body see the open levy with a countdown, the host so far and their own share. To answer, pick a village and the troops to send. They leave the village at once and march to the rally capital; the form shows roughly how long that takes and warns if they would arrive after the deadline.

• A village answers one open call at a time. If its troops already stand in another levy (a guild's and a kingdom's, say), the lord must withdraw them from that one first. Troops from a different village can answer the other call.
• Before the deadline a lord can withdraw a contingent: it turns for home from wherever it is.
• A lord who leaves the body before the deadline has their troops sent home from the rally.
• While away, the troops do not defend the village, but they still count against its troop cap.

At the deadline

1. Contingents still on the road turn for home from where they are. They get no share and lose nothing.
2. If nobody stands at the rally, or nobody there is a captain or marshal, the call is off and everyone marches home.
3. The tier V rule and the target are checked again.
4. Everyone at the rally marches as one host at the pace of its slowest unit, with storms on the way slowing it as usual.

The host fights on arrival in the default formation; there is no line-up screen. Its research bonuses are each lord's bonuses blended by share. Cards (battle boosts, march speed) do not apply to a host.

The calling body's leader and Warmasters can call off a call while it gathers. Everyone marches back: levy troops to their villages, mustered troops to their capitals.

Shares

A unit's worth is its training cost in gold, counting goods at their market base price and weapons at a set worth (bows and pikes 12, swords 24). The full table is in reference/musters.md.

value(lord) = sum over their troops of count × unit worth
share(lord) = value(lord) / sum of every lord's value in the host

• Loot the host takes: the body's cut is floor(n × 10%) of each good. The rest of each good is split by share, rounded down, with the units left over going to the largest remainders. Each lord's goods are carted home at once to the village they answered from, up to its storage.
• The body's cut goes into its treasury as gold: gold as is, goods at market base price.
• Renown the host earns (kills, clearing a tier I camp, taking a keep, a village's Renown taken in a raid) is split by share the same way.
• Losses: for each unit, the dead are split over the contingents by how many of that unit each brought. So each lord loses the same fraction of every unit they sent.
• Tier II to V targets: the damage the host deals is booked against the target per lord, split by share. When the target falls, its hoard and Renown are split by everyone's damage over every assault, as for lords attacking alone (military.md), and the body's cut comes off each host lord's goods.
• An enemy village gives the host 30% of each good it holds, up to what the survivors can carry, as a pillage by one lord would.

Worked example

Aldric sends a captain and 30 swordsmen; Brun sends 10 swordsmen and 20 archers.

Lord	Troops	Worth
Aldric	1 × 240 + 30 × 84	2,760
Brun	10 × 84 + 20 × 32	1,480
Host		4,240

Shares: Aldric 2,760 / 4,240 = 65.1%, Brun 34.9%.

The host takes 500 wood and 200 iron. The body's cut is 50 wood and 20 iron, worth 50 + 20 × 4 = 130 gold in its treasury. The 450 wood left splits 292.9 to 157.1, so 292 and 157 with the last unit to Aldric (larger remainder): 293 and 157. The 180 iron splits 117.2 to 62.8: 117 and 63. The 100 Renown from kills splits 65 and 35.

The host lost 10 swordsmen and 6 archers. Aldric brought 30 of the 40 swordsmen, so he loses 7.5 of them; the remainders tie, and the tie goes to the first contingent, so Aldric loses 8 and Brun 2. All 6 archers were Brun's.

Musters

A muster takes the chosen share of every posting in each capital picked, rounded down per unit (all of it at 100%). Troops drawn from the rally capital stand there at once; those from other capitals march to the rally. The host sets out when the last arrives, so nobody is ever late to a muster. Mustered troops keep their owners: losses, loot and Renown go to the lords who posted them, by the same shares. Survivors march back to the capital they came from and stand there again, or walk home if the lord or the banner has moved on meanwhile.

While mustered troops are away they are not posted, so the owner body pays no garrison upkeep for them. Upkeep owed up to the moment of the muster is charged as the troops leave, and it starts again when survivors stand in the capital once more.

Feudal levies

A liege can also call a levy on their vassals, without any body. It runs as above, with these differences (the full rules are in Vassalage):

• The household is the liege and their vassals. The rally is one of the liege's villages.
• The liege asks for a share (10% to 50%) of each village's free troops; a vassal may not send more of any unit than that.
• Vassals can refuse, and refusing or not answering costs Renown unless they are excused.
• Targets are tier I to IV AI targets and villages of lords the liege is at war with. Capitals and tier V are not allowed.
• No treasury takes a cut: all the loot is shared by worth.
• It shows in the Musters tab of every lord in the household, named "Household of" the liege.

On the map

Contingents marching to a rally are drawn as each lord's army. Once some have arrived, the host camps beside the rally capital as one army marker named after the body's levy, with the deadline as its countdown. The marching host is one army marker too; its panel has a Musters button that opens the tab. A host marching on a village shows in the defender's incoming attacks.

Results

After the battle, the call stays in the Musters tab for three days with the outcome, each lord's share, worth, loot, Renown and losses, and the body's cut. Every lord in the host, the defender and anyone else who shared in a tiered hoard get the battle report.

Interactions

• Realm events: a levy may name any event host as its target, and the Events tab has a Levy button on each host.
• Guilds and houses: the Warmaster office and its powers levy, muster and rally, which flow down; wars and pacts decide which villages and capitals a host may attack.
• Military: units, march speed, the battle, tier II to V targets and their shared hoards.
• Lands and territories: rally capitals are capitals the body holds; the body's cut goes into its treasury; a host that takes a capital wins its territory for the body whose war it is.
• Castles: capital garrisons are what a muster draws on.

For maintainers

Source files:

• server/src/features/musters/index.ts: calls (levy, muster), answering (join, withdraw, adminFill), the deadline (depart), callOff, fought (shares, treasury, marching back), map movements and the musters view.
• server/src/features/musters/logic.ts: mustersContent, WEAPON_GOLD, unitCost, troopValue, shares, cutAndSplit, splitRenown, tierVAllowed.
• server/src/features/musters/war.ts: checkTarget, bodyWar, HOST_TARGETS, and checkHouseholdTarget and householdLiege for feudal levies.
• server/src/features/military/index.ts: sendHost, hostBattle and tierAssault (shared with lone attacks).
• server/src/features/capitals/index.ts: drawPosted (settles upkeep first) and returnTroops for musters; afterBattle hands a taken capital to the captor through conquer in lands.
• server/src/features/registry.ts: musterApi and HostOutcome, the seam between military and musters.
• server/src/features/admin/scenarios.ts: levyScenario (see docs/ADMIN.md).
• clients/web/src/features/musters/index.ts: the Musters tab and the map buttons; the tab is one entry in realmTabs in clients/web/src/features/lands/index.ts.
• packages/protocol/src/features/musters.ts: shared types and messages.

Key constants: treasuryCut = 0.1, minHours = 1, maxHours = 48, tierVHouses = 2, tierVWindowHours = 24, finished calls kept 3 days (KEEP_MS), 20 calls shown (MAX_SHOWN), village loot share 0.3, CAPTURE_RENOWN = 150.

Oddities found while writing this page:

• The rally capital is checked only when the call is made. If the body loses it (to a conquest, say) while the levy gathers, the host still marches from there.
• Loot that does not fit a lord's storage is lost, as with tiered hoards.
• adminFill stands new soldiers at the rally; survivors then join the lord's village above the troop cap.
• A host's battle report lists the host's shares by worth, except when a tiered target falls, when it lists the hoard shares by damage instead.