Battles

One engine, five modes, two ways to play

Every battle in Clash Front runs on the same 3D engine the MOBA uses. Command mode is the default — watch and order. Hero mode drops you inside the fight as your Master. You pick when to spend your live-battle slot.

The five battle modes

DUEL

Two armies collide on open ground, at least one with a real stake. The MOBA-equivalent 2-CC fight. Balanced defender behavior; both sides push middle.

SIEGE

Attacker vs an occupied fortification. LARGE+ estates ship with pre-baked walls, gates, towers. Defender holds inside walls; sortie only when the gate breaks.

GUARD

No CC on either side — wild monsters or pets-only homesteads. Kill-all-to-complete. Camp mobs leash to nearest tower, don't chase far from their anchor.

CLASH

3+ armies (or two with no clear stake). Last standing wins. Starts on per-edge fair spawns. Available only on parcels whose geometry supports fair edges.

DOMINION

Simultaneous arrival on unowned land. Hold the center = take the parcel. The natural resolution when neither side "owns" the ground yet.

Not every parcel supports every mode. CLASH and DOMINION are capability flags on the map's geometry (~97.5% of real parcels support them; slivers fall back to DUEL). See the maps and roadmap pages.

Attacker vs defender — what happens

Mode	Defender default	Player override	Fortification baked?
DUEL	BALANCED — half-guard CORE, half-push midlane	HOLD / SORTIE / AGGRESSIVE per Master	None
SIEGE	HOLD — stay inside walls, use towers, sortie only if gate breaks	AGGRESSIVE counter-sortie / SORTIE at low tower HP	KEEP / CASTLE / PALACE ring by estate size
GUARD	HOLD near anchor — mobs leash	N/A (system-driven)	Wild — occupier modules on pets-only
CLASH	AGGRESSIVE — everyone attacks, no CC to defend	HOLD as a gambit (bait rivals)	None
DOMINION	CONTEST CENTER — all units gravitate to the objective	HOLD center / SORTIE to deny approach	None

Command view or hero view

Command mode (default)

Top-down overlay. Watch the fight in real time, drag stances, set standing orders, recall your Master, call FLEE. No 3D skill required; costs no live-battle slot.

Stances: HOLD · SORTIE · AGGRESSIVE · DEFEND · FOLLOW · ALL-IN
Standing STRATEGY: FLEE_IF_LOSING auto-retreats when stock + fielded units both drop below floors
Master recall: pull your hero back to the CORE if things go sideways
Keyboard shortcuts + help overlay (?)
Kill feed, damage floats, wave countdown, HP bars over units

Hero mode

Full 3D MOBA. Embody your Master via the champion draft. Skills, item shop, lane pressure — everything the MOBA has. One player, one hero at a time (multiple players allowed on either side).

Seamless switching mid-battle: enter Hero via ⚡ doorway on the parcel card
Multiple Masters per side — command channel + real 3D concurrent
Arriving mid-battle from a march = mid-battle reinforcement + a NEW LANE from the arrival edge
Late-seat join window is bounded (⚙ 120 s); after that, the seat closes

The command queue — live is a scarce resource

Live 30 Hz battles need real server capacity. So live is opt-in at march time, not automatic:

MARCH (default) = auto-resolve, playback-only. Fast, headless, always-on.
MARCH & COMMAND = live, steerable, hero-mode enabled. Costs a slot AND a fee.
Fee ladder rises with queue depth: 1 · 3 · 5 · 10 · 20 CT. Max 5 concurrent per player. Fee burns (CT sink).
Non-overlap enforced: your queued commands can't schedule to run at the same time as each other.
Cancellable before start → fee refunded, march continues auto.
Pre-commitment is absolute: a battle that starts with no committed command resolves accelerated + playback-only. "⚔ Too late to take command now."

Why: without this, a single big empire could saturate the live 30 Hz pool. The queue keeps live battles scarce, valuable, and worth the cost.

Retreat, FLEE, and the pincer

Two different words. They mean two different things.

Retreat from current engagement — a positional order inside a battle. Units back off toward their spawn corner. Master respawns are unaffected.
FLEE (full-battle withdrawal) — you're done. Two-press confirm. Soldiers drop packs/equipment for the run (+35% speed). The army marches off the battle parcel back to a safe adjacent hex.

Retreat direction: came-from first. The hex you marched in from is the primary retreat destination. If it's friendly / neutral, safe passage. If it's now hostile-occupied while you were fighting — you're PINCERED.

Pincer: your came-from is enemy-held. A new battle spawns automatically. If you win, you occupy the pincer hex and continue. If you lose or FLEE again, your soldiers are ABANDONED — army disbands entirely, but your Master returns to the undeployed pool.

Loser defenders don't evaporate either — they retreat through the same ladder as attackers (owner rule 2026-07-14, "either side should be able to flee").

Mid-battle reinforcement (Scenario H)

Your ally is fighting on Parcel X. You march an army there. What happens when you arrive?

The hex is locked — the battle is running. Your army halts at the edge and is queued to reinforce the lane matching the edge you arrived through:

Masters join immediately (don't count against the 16-soldier lane cap; new lane from the arrival edge).
Soldiers queue: concurrent lane soldiers never exceed the cap; extra armies EXTEND the push instead of stacking density.
Same-edge reinforcement = queue behind the existing lane. Approach from a different edge = open a NEW lane pathing to enemy CORE.
Withdrawable before your soldiers commit (POST /api/reinforcement/withdraw). March away = auto-withdraw.

Arrival direction becomes a real strategic choice, not just "you missed the fight."

Hero-vs-hero duels

Two Masters standing alone on the same land can settle it 1-on-1 — no armies wasted. v1 is a card-based fight: paper-rock-scissors at its core (AGGRESSIVE > TRICK > DEFENSIVE > AGGRESSIVE), decided by your Master's real rating + HP + equipped artifact spells, with animated head-shots and blows and K.O.s. Turn-based, not networked — clean and quick.

When you win, you decide what happens next. The loser's Master defaults to RELEASE — they walk back to their governor's undeployed pool, ready to redeploy. Or you can choose KNOCK OUT: their eyes flutter shut, head slumps, screen dims — Master goes to KO state (via the live Masters API), and their owner has to revive them before using them again. Merciful or brutal — your call.

v2+ (upcoming) opens live 1v1 on the 3D engine — a tiny arena, no army — that's when Masters go head-to-head in real time.

The v1 combat contract — one number, immutable

Under the hood, every battle in Clash Front settles against a single effective strength number per side. That number folds in everything that matters — troop composition × class base × weather × terrain × hero artifact aura × morale × food × fame × enrichment × prosperity. Computed once at battle start. Locked for the whole fight.

Weather stays fixed per battle. The sky at kickoff decides the affinity swing for the whole fight. Visuals may still drift (a storm moves through, clouds part) but the combat math is baked in.
No mid-battle drift. Long fights don't get periodic recomputation — but if a battle runs long and drains carried food, the settlement math applies the drain to casualties. You'll see it in the after-battle report, not on a bar mid-fight.
Hero duels never fire during army battles. They resolve outside the fight, and their impact — a KO'd Master, a morale shock to their nearby troops — lands on the NEXT battle's effective strength calc.

The math is intentionally simple so the game reads clearly. Weather visuals, the match-start banner ("☔ Rainy — 💧 Water +15% · 🔥 Fire −15%"), and the HUD affinity chip carry the entire visible feedback layer.