Wandering lords

Some lords in the realm are run by the server, not by a player. They are called wandering lords. They hold villages, build, research, scout, train soldiers and clear camps by the same rules you do, and they keep the ladder busy at every rank while the realm is still filling up. A wandering lord's profile says "Wandering lord" under its name. Everywhere else (the map, reports, the leaderboard) it looks like any other lord.

The basics

• Wandering lords are ordinary lords in every rule. They pay the same costs, wait on the same timers, need the same research and ranks, and need a fresh scout report to attack, just as you do.
• They live at ranks between the weakest and the strongest active player, spread so every rank has company. As players rise through the season, wandering lords rise with them.
• Their villages never take more than a quarter of the realm's village sites.
• They keep a day like a person: each one is awake for 12 to 17 hours of the day and does nothing while asleep. Its villages and castle still defend themselves at night, as yours do.
• A wandering lord that gets ahead of its place on the ladder slows down, so they do not race past the players they keep company.

What they do

A wandering lord:

• builds in each of its villages, roughly in the order a careful player would: housing and food when short, then wood, stone and food chains, then popularity, military and prestige buildings as its rank allows;
• sets rations and ale it can keep up for a game day, and raises tax only while popularity stays comfortably high;
• researches, favouring the branches that suit its temperament, buildings it can then raise and the drills its soldiers need;
• recruits scouts and sends them to stashes, deer herds and barrows within 20 cells;
• trains soldiers once it has a Barracks, up to a share of its troop cap that depends on its temperament;
• scouts nearby wolf dens, bandit camps and outlaw camps, and attacks one when its army outnumbers the defenders by a clear margin (1.5 to 1 for the most warlike, 2.5 to 1 for the most peaceful);
• claims finished quests;
• joins guilds, founds them, and builds orders and Houses on top of them (see below);
• swears fealty to a stronger neighbour or takes vassals of its own, and keeps the duties both ways;
• answers the levies of its guild and the bodies above it, and calls levies as a Warmaster or leader;
• goes to war with other lords, players included, within the limits below: it raids, captures and razes villages, strikes back at whoever raids it, and marches out to break a siege before its own walls;
• builds and mans a castle, and repairs it after a battle;
• keeps spies at a Watch House and sends them against its rivals;
• takes part in realm events and gives to wonders;
• posts soldiers to the capitals its bodies hold, sends them goods, and repairs and raises them;
• keeps monks, calls the Truce of God and puts bounties on raiders;
• trades at markets, moves goods between its villages and takes on delivery contracts;
• holds feasts, takes town charters, plays its cards and now and then buys a card pack with gold;
• founds new villages as its rank allows;
• answers your letters and speaks in guild chat;
• leaves the realm when players need the land (see "Making room").

They answer what you send them the way a person would: not the moment it arrives, but on their next turn awake, at least half a game hour later (up to an hour for the less sociable temperaments).

War on other lords

Wandering lords keep to fair limits that hold for every one of them:

• A wandering lord never sets out against a lord more than 3 ranks below it, unless that lord raided it in the last two game days.
• It never sets out against a lord in peacetime or sanctuary, against its own guild or the bodies above it, or against its liege or vassals.
• No player has more than one wandering lord set against them in a game day.

Within those limits:

• Warlords and courtiers of rank 2 or more pick a rival: a lord within 30 cells, at most one rank above them, that they have not let be in the last 3 game days. Nearer lords, and lords with more Renown, are likelier picks.
• Any wandering lord whose villages were raided in the last two game days takes the raider as its rival instead, at any rank.
• It declares war on the rival as a lord, scouts the rival's nearest village, and attacks it from its village with the biggest free army, keeping 30% at home. Like any attack on a village, the army camps before it for a few hours first (Sieges and strongholds). It only marches when its army outweighs what the scout counted by 1.6 to 1 (warlords) up to about 2.2 to 1 (stewards). Each standing tower counts the defenders 15% heavier, and each stretch of wall 1%.
• The order is Capture when a warlord or courtier with room for another village goes after another wandering lord, or after a player who raided it first and stands no more than one rank below it. It then goes for a village of the rival's that is not their stronghold (the stronghold falls only when it is their last). Warlords sometimes Raze a raider's village instead; zealots never raze. Every other attack is Pillage, so a player who has not raided a wandering lord never loses a village to one.
• While it has a rival it keeps its army and captain home for the war instead of clearing camps, and keeps one scout at home (warlords always do) so it can look over the rival's village.
• It attacks a rival at most once a game day. After two attacks, three game days, or a scout report showing odds it does not like, it ends its war and lets the rival be, but never while its own army is still on the way: ending a war turns such an army home.
• When a lord's army camps before one of its villages, it marches on the camp from the village with the biggest free army (keeping a fifth at home) if that army outweighs the lookouts' estimate of the besiegers by 1.5 to 1.
• A lord with an open bounty on them is a likelier rival, within all the limits above.

Capitals

Every 4 game hours, a wandering lord looks at each capital its guild or a body above it holds:

• As its leader or Castellan, it orders repairs when the treasury can pay the gold part, or else raises the castle a level when the treasury holds twice the gold part of the price.
• It sends goods towards a repair or the next level: what is still needed, up to a fifth of each store (more for stewards).
• While the capital holds fewer than 40 soldiers per castle level and it has nobody posted there yet, it posts 15% to 30% of a village's free soldiers (the most for courtiers), commanders and siege engines left at home.

Castles

From rank 1 a wandering lord builds rings of wall around its keep, a batch of up to 40 pieces at a time while fewer than 20 are waiting, and only what it can pay for:

1. A wooden ring two tiles out from the keep, with a wooden gatehouse in the south side.
2. With Palisades researched, wooden towers at the ring's four corners, and pitfalls on every other tile of a line two tiles further out.
3. From rank 5, with Stone Walls researched, a stone ring seven tiles out from the keep, a stone gatehouse in its south side and small stone towers at its corners.

It puts its archers and crossbowmen on the towers and walls, the biggest perches first, and everyone else on the ground between the keep and the gate, and moves them whenever its troops change. Whenever a piece is damaged or destroyed, it has the castle repaired.

Spies

• Each village with a finished Watch House keeps 2 spies (3 for warlords and courtiers), within its rank's limit, training one when it has the gold.
• Once a game day it sends a spare spy (it keeps one at home on guard) into its rival's nearest village to infiltrate. At war, a courtier or merchant sometimes steals research or sets a saboteur on the building queue instead.
• A wandering Spymaster or leader shares its freshest scout report on its rival's village (under 6 game hours old) with the first of its bodies it may share with, once per report.
• A wandering Spymaster or leader marks lords who raided it as enemies of its guild and the bodies above.

Realm events and wonders

A wandering lord takes part in realm events that touch it or happen within 40 cells of its home:

• Plague: it gives food and up to 500 gold. Famine: it gives food. Tithe: it gives materials, food, drink and gold. Each gift is up to 8% of each pile of 50 or more, from the village with the most to give (less for a warlord, the most for a zealot), at most three gifts per event, 12 game hours apart.
• Tournament: it enters its toughest soldier when its purse holds at least four times the entry.
• Relic procession: stewards and zealots send a fifth of one village's free soldiers to walk with it, once.
• Raider hosts: warlords scout a host and march on it at 2 to 1 or better.
• Revolt: a steward, merchant or courtier who may pay from a treasury pays the rebels off.
• Wonders of its bodies: it gives up to 10% of the goods still needed, at most three times, 12 game hours apart.

Faith and bounties

• Each village with a staffed church keeps 1 to 3 monks (more for the devout).
• A monk blesses the lord's least happy village every 6 game hours, heals each of its villages while a plague touches it, and walks with a relic procession nearby.
• Under attack by a lord's army, a steward or zealot with 1,000 faith calls the Truce of God over the village, if its church is ready.
• A zealot keeps 1,000 faith back for that. It also preaches against a rival it is at war with, and sends a monk to excommunicate a raider who has a sin on record, at most once a game week.
• A lord with soldiers to spare goes after an open bounty on a camp or raider host within 20 cells of a village before any other camp: it scouts it first, then attacks at 2 to 1 or better. A lord with a rival saves its army for the war instead.
• A merchant or zealot puts a bounty on a raider it is at war with: 5% of its purse, from 100 to 2,000 gold, for 72 hours in two payouts, if its purse holds six times as much. One bounty per raider.

Trade

A wandering lord trades every 1.5 to 3 game hours (merchants most often), always keeping one cart at home:

• It sells a good once its store is fuller than 55% (merchants) to 76% (warlords and zealots) of capacity, down to 15 points below that line, at the market in reach that pays best.
• It buys wood, stone or iron that falls below 10% of capacity, a cart load at a time at the nearest market it can reach, while its purse holds at least 1,000 gold plus 300 per rank.
• With several villages, it sends staples and food from villages above 40% of capacity to any below 15%.
• Stewards and merchants take on one open delivery contract at a time that they can fill from stock while keeping a fifth of the store, and deliver it. Yours included.
• A merchant short of a staple posts a delivery contract at its own market, at most once a game day: up to two cart loads, 24 hours, paying 1.4 times the good's base price.
• A merchant also works the order book at its own market: it fills the best buy order paying at least 1.1 times the base price for a good it can spare while keeping 30% of the store, and posts a sell order, a cart load at 1.25 times the base price for 3 days, for a good it holds too much of, with at most two of its own orders open.

Feasts, charters and cards

Every 3 game hours a wandering lord:

• holds the richest feast a village may hold whose bill it can pay twice over (three times over in gold);
• takes a town charter when a slot is open and it can pay for it, choosing by temperament: stewards Granary then Timber, warlords Garrison then Mining, merchants Market then Port, courtiers Brewing then Mining, zealots Cathedral then Granary;
• raises the buildings only its charters allow, one at a time;
• plays one card from its hand, on its least happy village (or a building under construction, for building cards). A card the realm refuses waits a game day;
• with more than eight cards in hand, trades its five humblest for a better one;
• buys the cheapest card pack once a game day when its purse holds 5,000 gold plus 2,000 per rank, buying the Crowns for it with gold.

Founding villages

Every 6 game hours, a wandering lord below its rank's village allowance (counting commanders already marching to found one) sends a commander from home to found a village on a free site within 25 cells of its first, unless it is ahead of its place on the ladder or wandering lords already hold their quarter of the map.

Letters and chat

• Write to a wandering lord and it writes back, after a short while, in character. When Claude writes its letters, ask it sincerely whether it is a player and it says it is a wandering lord run by the realm; the set phrases used otherwise do not take up questions at all. Its profile always says "Wandering lord".
• In the realm's chat, wandering lords tell everyone about things they have just done: declaring a war, founding a guild or higher body, a great feast, founding a village, raising a capital, marching to capture or raze. Each says so at most once every 6 game hours, and the courtly and warlike tell the most.
• Name a wandering lord in the realm's chat and it answers there. Ask a question there and now and then an awake wandering lord answers it, courtiers first.
• All wandering lords together say at most 8 lines an hour in the realm's chat (the realm's admins can change this, or keep them out of it), so players are never crowded out.
• A wandering guild leader welcomes new members in guild chat. Name a wandering lord in guild chat and it answers, at most once every 2 game hours. When you talk in guild chat without naming anyone, a wandering guildmate sometimes joins in (about one time in four, at most once every 3 game hours each).
• In guild chat they also tell their guildmates when they call a levy, send troops to aid a vassal, or march out to break a siege.
• A wandering lord that declares war on you sends you a letter saying so, and its requests for fealty carry a short note.
• When they reply, they see the last few lines of the chat, so they follow the conversation. Its words never change what it does.
• Each wandering lord writes in its own way, like the players around it: some friendly, some blunt, some typing fast in lowercase, some jokey, some forever planning, some grumbling about bandits. Some say hi first, some keep it to a few words, and each signs letters its own way (first name, full name, an initial, or not at all). A lord's way of writing comes from who it is and never changes. They write plain modern English, not olde speech. Letters and chat are written by Claude (Haiku) when the realm's admins switch that on, and from set phrases otherwise.

Guilds, orders and Houses

• A wandering lord of rank 1 or more without a guild asks to join the best guild in the realm: guilds with more lords, and more players especially, rank higher, and nearer is better (twice as much so beyond 60 cells). If nobody answers within a game day it withdraws and tries elsewhere.
• It founds a guild of its own (from rank 2) when no guild nearby has room, and sometimes a warlike or courtly lord does so anyway while the realm has fewer than one guild for every six wandering lords.
• Asked to join a guild, a guildless wandering lord accepts. A wandering guild leader or Marshal accepts about 85% of requests to join (all of them, for a courtier).
• A wandering guild leader keeps the Marshal, Warmaster, Diplomat and Steward seats filled from its highest-ranked members, and its Marshals invite guildless lords within 60 cells and 4 ranks of their own, two at a time. Each lord is invited once, and at most one player per turn, so you will not be pestered.
• Leading a guild of 3 or more, it asks for the guild to join an order nearby, or founds one at rank 5 when there is none (a House at rank 8, a Kingdom at rank 11, as the Age allows). Leaders of orders and Houses invite bodies of the tier below that have no parent yet.
• Offered a truce or non-aggression pact, it accepts unless it is the most warlike kind, which accepts only some of the time.
• A courtly or peaceable lord who may make pacts for its top body offers a 3-day non-aggression pact to the nearest top body of the same tier within 60 cells that it is neither at war nor in a pact with, at most once every 3 game days.
• In a guild within two seats of full, a wandering lord who may remove members takes the seat of a player who has not been seen for 21 days.
• A wandering lord leading a guild where at least 3 players have been seen in the last 3 days, and they are at least half the guild, hands the leadership to the highest-ranked of them.
• When war is declared on its side, a wandering lord declares war back, unless it is a steward or merchant.

A wandering lord can lead a guild or House, but a body led by one can never claim the Crown.

Fealty

• About half of wandering lords, and every courtier and zealot, want a liege. Such a lord (rank 1 or more) asks the highest-ranked lord 2 to 8 ranks above it, within 60 cells (120 when nobody is that close), who still has room for vassals. Unanswered after a game day, it withdraws and asks someone else.
• Asked to be a liege, it accepts while it has room, at the default tribute, unless it is a merchant, which turns about three requests in ten down.
• As a vassal it calls its liege for aid when an army (not just a scout) is marching on one of its villages. It renounces a liege who left a call for aid unanswered, or whose rank has fallen to its own or below.
• As a liege it answers a call for aid by stationing about a third to a half of its nearest village's free soldiers (the most for a courtier) with the vassal, and recalls them after two game days.
• A warlord or courtier liege with 2 or more vassals calls a feudal levy, 30% of their troops for 12 game hours, on the nearest outlaw fort, robber baron's keep, rebel band or raider band within 25 cells.

Levies and musters

• A wandering vassal always answers its liege's feudal levy with the share asked, unless its own villages are under attack, in which case it refuses and pays the Renown for it, as you would.
• A guild or body levy it answers by temperament (about two in three for most, nine in ten for warlords and courtiers), with 40% to 70% of one village's free soldiers (the most for warlords), from the village with the most to send.
• Commanders stay at home, except that the first wandering lord to answer a call with no captain or marshal yet in it sends one, since a host with nobody to lead it is called off.
• A warlord who is Warmaster or leader of a body that holds a capital calls a levy, at most every two game days, on the nearest tiered target (tier II to IV) within 30 cells of the capital with the biggest garrison, rallying there, with 8 game hours to gather.

Temperaments

Each wandering lord has one of five temperaments, which tilts what it builds and researches first and how many soldiers it keeps.

Temperament	Research it favours	Share of troop cap kept	Highest tax
Steward	civic, farming, industry	35%	Normal
Warlord	military, defence, industry	90%	High
Merchant	commerce, trade, logistics	35%	Mean
Courtier	civic, military, commerce	50%	High
Zealot	religion, civic, farming	45%	Normal

How many, and at which ranks

Every 10 real minutes the server counts:

1. Every village site on the map, and every village wandering lords hold. Wandering lords may hold at most a quarter of the sites. While they are at that limit, no new wandering lord arrives.
2. The players who have signed in during the last 14 days, and the lowest and highest rank among them. With no such players, the range is Peasant to Reeve (ranks 0 to 6).
3. How many wandering lords the realm wants: 3 per active player, at least 12 and at most 400, as land allows.

New wandering lords are added at the emptiest rank in that range, counting players and wandering lords together, and at most one arrives per server tick. Each keeps its place on the ladder as a fraction of the way from the lowest to the highest player rank, so a lord placed halfway up stays about halfway up as players rise.

A wandering lord arrives already at its rank, with the buildings, research, stores and soldiers a lord of that rank could have, and as many villages as its rank allows (within the land limit). It has no cards, Crowns, premium or cosmetics.

It settles on the free site furthest from every village already on the map (the best of 400 free sites looked at), so wandering lords spread evenly over the realm and fill its empty parts rather than crowding together. Its other villages lie within 20 cells of its first. Lords who settled in a crowd before this rule move out over time (see "Making room").

Making room

Wandering lords hold at most a quarter of the village sites, and they give land back when players need it:

• No new wandering lord arrives while the free sites number at or below a reserve: 20 sites or 3% of the map, whichever is more.
• Every 10 real minutes, if wandering lords hold more than their share, or the free sites fall below that reserve, one of them leaves: the one with the fewest players depending on it (as their liege or the leader of their guild), then the lowest in rank, then the one with fewest villages. One leaves at a time.
• A lord who is leaving stops everything else. It hands each body it leads to its highest-ranked other member, a player before a wandering lord (or disbands an empty guild), leaves its guild, frees its vassals and renounces its liege, ends its wars, and calls home its scouts, spies, monks, siege camps, founding commanders, capital postings, levy contingents and stationed troops. Once nothing of its own is on the road (carts included), or after two game days at most, it is gone and its sites are free. Its open orders, contracts and bounties are withdrawn.
• Founding a new village, a wandering lord never takes the land below that reserve either.

Lords who settled close together before wandering lords looked for open land move out over time: once a census, the most crowded one whose nearest neighbour is under 12 cells, and that has nothing on the road, moves whole to the free site furthest from every village, if that site is at least twice as open. Its other villages follow within 20 cells. Buildings come along where the new ground allows; one it cannot hold (a quarry with no stone near) is paid back in goods.

Interactions

• Ranks and Renown: wandering lords earn Renown by the same rules and appear on the leaderboard.
• Military: they can be scouted, raided, besieged and captured like any lord.
• Automation: their scouting and camp attacks pick targets the way auto-scouting and auto-fighting do.
• Guilds and Houses: they join, found, lead and climb bodies by the same rules as players.
• Vassalage: they swear fealty, take vassals, call for aid and station troops.
• Musters and levies: they answer and call levies.
• Lands and territories: they post soldiers to, supply, repair and raise the capitals their bodies hold.
• Military and Sieges and strongholds: they raid by the same rules, with a scout report, a war and no peacetime.
• Castles: they build, man and repair castles.
• Espionage: they train and send spies.
• Realm events: they give, enter, escort and pay off.
• Faith and Bounties: they keep monks, call truces and post bounties.
• Markets: they sell, buy, move goods and take on contracts.
• Feasts, Town charters and Cards and Crowns: they feast, take charters and play cards.
• Inbox: they answer letters.
• Ages, wonders and the Crown: wandering lords cannot wear the Crown and earn no season-end legacy rewards.

For maintainers

The design, the decisions behind it and the build phases are in docs/design/ai-lords.md. The code is in server/src/features/ai/: the census in census.ts, temperaments and waking hours in personas.ts, arrival at a rank in seed.ts, the scheduler in brain.ts, and one file per behaviour in modules/. Wandering lords act only by sending the same client messages a player's browser sends (act.ts), so a rule change applies to them with no AI change. PlayerState.ai marks them; PublicLord.wanderer carries the profile line. Setting AI_LORDS=off in the server's environment stops them. Admins manage them from the Wandering lords tab of the admin panel (docs/ADMIN.md). Letters and chat are queued in modules/talk.ts and written in talk/writer.ts: Claude (claude-haiku-5-5) when talkLlm is on (AI_TALK_LLM=on), within talkPerHour calls an hour, and canned lines otherwise or on any error; a player's letter is passed to the model only as quoted text to answer. Each lord's voice (one of 12 styles in talk/voice.ts, with lowercase, terseness, greeting and sign-off habits) comes from a hash of its id; temperament sets what it talks about, the voice how. The one-AI-lord-per-player-per-day rule is saved with the AI state (claims), so a restart keeps it. Retiring is retire.ts (unwinding by message, then Game.removeLord, which calls every feature's onLordRemoved hook); moving crowded lords is spread.ts with Military.relocate.