Combat

**Combat** occurs in turns when units come into contact and rather than having a polite conversation about history and culture, they decide to shoot each other. Combat is resolved in several stages.

## Special features

### Suppression

Suppression means that a portion of the target's unit strength does not participate in combat, i.e. is not used in combat calculation. Suppression is caused in regular combat and is cleared after the engagement is resolved.

Long-term suppression is a different beast. It's caused by artillery, strategic bombers, and capital ships and lasts until the unit is attacked directly or the turn ends. By temporarily disabling a part of the unit's fighting strength, suppression allows for breaking up powerful enemy units and reducing your own losses on the attack.

Suppression is shown on the UI bar on mouseover, displaying the precise number of suppressed points. It's also indicated by the unit's strength color. Yellow means moderate and red means heavy suppression.

### Entrenchment

Whenever units remain stationary, they automatically entrench themselves, increasing their ability to defend. Units gain one point of entrenchment per turn they remain immobile and lose one point of entrenchment per any enemy attack. As expected, entrenchment greatly increases the ability to defend a location:

* Units receive +1 defense against ground and air attacks per point of entrenchment.
* Units with an entrenchment level of 2 or higher cannot be forced to retreat or surrender.
* The higher the entrenchment level, the higher the chance of a rugged defense.

A rugged defense occurs when the defender manages to surprise the attacking unit and engage them at close range, dealing high casualties and breaking up the attack. You can see the chance of a rugged defence in the extended combat prediction window, opened by Ctrl+click on an enemy unit.

As can be seen, entrenchment is a vital part of combat. Softening targets by the use of long range units to suppress and remove entrenchment is a good idea. Alternatively, the use of special units with the Military Engineer trait like Pioniere, as that trait makes the unit ignore enemy entrenchment level and attack as normal.

## Resolution

### Suppressing fire

This phase only occurs if the target unit has a friendly artillery unit adjacent to it. It will automatically fire on the attacker, suppressing and/or destroying a part of the attacker's strength.

### Initiative phase

The first stage, where the game determines who actually shoots first. It compares the base initiative of the units, applies modifiers, and then the dice roll (if the option is selected). It is entirely possible to be the *defending* side in combat, even if attacking, if the initiative or rolls goes the wrong way.

Applicable modifiers include:

* Experience (see tables)
* Heroes (if the right bonus is present)
* Terrain features (the defender's terrain is used)
* Weather: Poor weather conditions cap the effective initiative.
* Class-specific bonuses (eg. a tank or recon attacking an anti-tank unit will result in the latter receiving +3 to Initiative; anti-tank units attacking tanks or recon units will get a -3 to Initiative).
* Adjacent units: The defending unit receives a -1 initiative penalty for every additional adjacent enemy unit able to attack it.
* Units without fuel suffer a -2 penalty to initiative.

### Combat phase

In this phase the game compares the relative attack and defense values of the sides, determining their effectiveness. First it calculates it for the attacking unit and then for the defending unit (return fire).

Any suppressed unit strength does not take part in combat. Furthermore, the combat phase also takes the Initiative rolls from the previous step and compares them. The unit with the highest initiative will shoot first - regardless if it's the attacker or the defender - while the difference between their relative initiative scores determines how much damage and suppression the side with the higher initiative manages to deal before the other side returns fire.

Every point of difference allows for dealing 20% of effective damage before the enemy responds, i.e. a 4 point difference in initiative would result in 80% of the damage applied before the target returns fire. This stacks with suppression, and in the right circumstances can result in the unit with lower initiative being prevented from returning fire. Any fractions are rounded up in the equation.

### Final calculation

After taking into account the previous steps, the game determines the fate of the units: The attacker and the defender. There are several possible results:

* Stand ground: The unit remains where it is, with any losses sustained.
* Retreat: Every hit you score on an enemy unit in combat converts to a kill or suppression. The defending unit retreats if all of its strength was either killed or suppressed.
* Surrender: This enemy unit has surrendered. This happens if the defending unit is forced to retreat and has nowhere to go.