Turn order

The order in which the game resolves a turn once everyone has sent orders, and what that order means for gold, spells, movement, battles and supplies.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake6 min read

When every player has finished giving orders and the host runs, all the orders are resolved together, but not all at once: the game works through a fixed list of stages, and each stage is finished for every nation before the next one begins. That list is the turn’s order of play. It decides questions that come up constantly, such as whether a spell lands before an army arrives, whether a pillaged province still pays, and whether an army that has just run out of food fights at full strength.

Every rule here is one the game’s manual states. We have not re-measured any of it, so this page reports what Illwinter says the order is. The manual does not group the stages, so the eight groups on the timeline below are our own way of making a long list readable. Only the order is stated: the stages are not numbered here, because we have not yet checked the numbering and the count against the game. Each stage has a link of its own, so you can point to the exact moment you mean.

For the fight itself once a battle starts, see Combat. For how armies get to the same province in the first place, see Map movement.

The timeline

What the order means for you

The manual adds a number of remarks to individual stages. Together with the order itself they give a handful of practical rules.

Things that always get through

Anything that happens before the first thing that can interfere with it is safe. The manual points out three of these. Gold, gems and items sent in a message are always delivered, because send messages comes first. New recruits are always available, because nothing before recruitment can stop it. A mage’s research always counts, even if he or she is killed later in the same turn, since research is paid out early.

Spells come before movement

Magic rituals are cast long before any army marches, and the battles they cause are fought before movement starts. So a teleport or a Wind Ride that drops a commander into an enemy province gives a battle at that stage, and an army that was about to march from the target province may already be dead or gone by the time its move would have happened. A global enchantment is the exception to the rule that a ritual does its work immediately: it is cast with the other rituals, but its effect on the world is applied later, at global enchantments.

Moving to your own province beats moving to an enemy one

Moves that end in a friendly province are all carried out in friendly movement, before the other movement stage, where everything else goes, including Break Siege. If you want to reach a friendly province before an enemy gets there, you will manage it unless something between the start of the turn and that stage stops you: an assassination, a battle caused by magic, or another early event. The same two-wave idea is described from the point of view of the map on the Map movement page.

Battles come in several rounds

The game does not have one battle phase. Fights are settled after magic, after assassination attempts, after movement, at castle storming, after random events, after the effects of magic items, when hidden units are found, and once more after ageing. The manual says retreats happen after all the battles of a stage are done, which matters when the same units may fight twice in one stage.

Summoned allies and reanimated dead come late, at special orders, after the main battles. The manual draws the consequence itself: allies summoned during a turn cannot fight in that turn’s battles.

Money: pillage, then income, then upkeep

The economic stages run in a fixed sequence: pillage, then income, then unrest alterations, then starvation, then upkeep and desertion. Three consequences follow, all stated in the manual:

• A province you pillage in a turn pays less income that same turn, or nothing, because pillage precedes income. That includes a province you conquered this turn and then pillaged.
• Income is collected before upkeep, so the treasury has the new money in it when units are paid, and desertion is decided at the same stage as the upkeep payment.
• Starvation comes after every battle, so an army that first runs out of supplies this turn fights this turn’s battles without starvation effects. The penalty shows up in the following turn’s fights.

Dominion, then population, then healing

Dominion is spread at dominion spread, and its effects on the province (population dying, insanity, heat or cold spreading) are applied immediately after, at dominion effects. Magic sites that make disease or unrest do their work in site effects. Healing comes near the end: units regain hit points at heal and disease, after all the turn’s fighting, and a diseased unit loses hit points instead. Aging happens only in midwinter and sits just before the last of the battle stages.

Province defence at the end

Conscription lifts a province’s defence to at least one and applies any dominion and commander bonuses, and reduce province defence lowers it again if the population is too small to sustain it. The manual gives ten population per point of defence as the requirement. Both stages are late, after every battle of the turn, so the defence a province brings to a fight is the one it ended the previous turn with.

What the manual does not say

The manual lists the stages and adds remarks to a few, but it does not say:

• how the random order of ritual casting is drawn, only that it is random;
• in which order battles are fought inside one battle stage, or in which order the provinces are handled;
• what the exact effect of each late stage is, beyond the one-line description given for it: the list is a schedule, not a rule book;
• whether the sequence differs for nations or game modes with special rules.

We expect to check the numbering and the count of the list against a version of the game before stating them. Until then this page makes no claim about either.