Raiding: stealth, patrol and pillage

How sneaking, patrol, pillage and the raid order work, what a raid costs the victim, how a province's defence answers it, and what the manual leaves unsaid.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake10 min read

A raid is an attack on a province’s economy instead of on its army. The raider slips in, takes what the province has, kills some of its people and leaves a province that pays less. This page sets out the rules that govern it: how units move unseen, how a province looks for them, what pillage does, what the raid order adds, and how a province’s own defence answers. Everything is the manual’s account, restated, except where a sentence carries a Measured mark: those are our own results from hosted test games, already published on Economy, and each mark opens to show how we know.

The shaded callouts titled Our take are short advice from one player, not rules. Where the manual says nothing, the last section says so.

Moving unseen

Units with the stealth ability travel between provinces without being seen, though the usual limits on movement still bind them (Map movement). Sneaking is their default order, and it is how they enter hostile ground undetected. The move costs what any move costs. The difference is that a sneaking unit arriving in an enemy province takes no part in a battle that turn. A unit that is already lying hidden there may be told to attack the same turn. To make a stealthy unit move openly, and so fight, hold Ctrl as you click the destination.

Three conditions limit it.

• A stealthy commander sneaks only if every unit under him or her is stealthy too. Otherwise the commander moves normally, and removing the other units later does not switch the order back on its own.
• Entering an enemy province costs an extra 4 map move points, or 3 for a stealthy mover (Map movement).
• Stopping in an enemy province brings combat unless every unit that enters is stealthy. If one or both forces are undiscovered, no battle takes place.

How raiders are found

Whether hidden units are found depends on the hiders’ stealth, how many of them there are, how many are looking, and the strength of the searchers’ patrol. The manual names two kinds of searcher.

• A patrolling commander. A commander must be set to the Patrol order to search. Fast units, flying units and units with a patrol bonus search better.
• Province defence. Provincial defence searches automatically each turn, as long as the level is 15 or greater. Each point above 14 counts as one point of patrol strength, so PD 25 searches with 11 (Province defence).

The search sums the patrol strength of every patrolling unit, subtracts half the province’s unrest (counting at most 100), and adds PD minus 14 when PD is at least 15. The searchers roll 2d25, open-ended, on top of that total, and the hiding side rolls 2d25, open-ended, on top of its stealth strength. The stealthy units are found if the searchers come out higher. The manual says PD is a weaker searcher than a real army, and that discovered units fight at once, in the stage called sneak discovery (Turn order).

Two points follow from the same page. Unrest works against the search, because it is subtracted from the searchers’ total, so a restless province is easier to raid. And Defend, the default order, does not search at all, while Patrol does (Map movement).

Some spells strengthen the search. Earth Sense detects and traces enemies who try to sneak around in the province, even invisible ones, and adds +100 to patrol strength against enemy units. It is broken if its caster leaves the province.

What pillage does

Pillaging hurts the province in four ways: unrest goes up, people die, the province’s supplies shrink, and the pillagers come away with gold and food. A bigger force has better odds. Speed and size help, and barbarians and units with Fear are the best of all. The food and supplies the raiders gain are good for a single month (Economy).

Two of our hosted results pin down the odds and the toll. They come from one small test game, so they describe how the host behaves in those conditions, not every game.

• A pillage attempt succeeded exactly when the province’s population, counted in tens of people, was below 15 times the pillagers’ strength. Measured · n=138
  How we know

  Tier

  Measured

  Source

  Our tests

  Method

  Hosts of one small test game on 6.37 (the FP2 fixture): province bytes were set in the save, one host turn was run, and the result was read from the log. commanders were ordered to pillage, with populations set either side of the bound. n counts the attempts.

  Sample

  n=138

  Game version tested

  6.37 · current

  Tests

  T-0036

  Checked from the test's results file

  T-0036: docs/evidence/COLLECTOR-PILLAGE-01/implementation.md, line 9, sha256 58856f98aed1ed891f6d88fbff3725b9c3c91f43feced73b6debcb5a9fa5cf38
  T-0036: docs/evidence/COLLECTOR-PILLAGE-01/implementation.md, line 20, sha256 58856f98aed1ed891f6d88fbff3725b9c3c91f43feced73b6debcb5a9fa5cf38

  Last checked

  2026-10-02

• A success killed floor(population × fraction ÷ 3000) tens of people, where the fraction is the one the host logs for that pillage. Measured · n=31
  How we know

  Tier

  Measured

  Source

  Our tests

  Method

  Hosts of one small test game on 6.37 (the FP2 fixture): province bytes were set in the save, one host turn was run, and the result was read from the log. the logged kills of each success were compared with the formula, using the population left by earlier attempts that turn. n counts the successes.

  Sample

  n=31

  Game version tested

  6.37 · current

  Tests

  T-0037

  Checked from the test's results file

  T-0037: docs/evidence/COLLECTOR-PILLAGE-01/implementation.md, line 11, sha256 58856f98aed1ed891f6d88fbff3725b9c3c91f43feced73b6debcb5a9fa5cf38
  T-0037: docs/evidence/COLLECTOR-PILLAGE-01/implementation.md, line 22, sha256 58856f98aed1ed891f6d88fbff3725b9c3c91f43feced73b6debcb5a9fa5cf38

  Last checked

  2026-10-02

The first result means a big province is protected by its own size against a small raiding party, and the second fixes how many people one success removes. Neither says how much gold a success yields, or what the pillagers’ strength is for a given force. The manual does not say, and we have not measured it.

What it costs the victim

Pillage comes before income in the turn’s order, so a province pillaged this turn pays less, or nothing, the same turn. That includes a province you conquered and then pillaged (Turn order). Fewer people means a smaller base income, since income is population divided by 100, and more unrest divides it further, by one plus 0.02 per point (Economy). Unrest also cuts resources, and at 100 it stops new recruits (Province defence). The population killed does not come back at once: the manual lists pillage among the things that shape population, together with growth, dominion, patrol and events (Province attributes).

The raid order

A raid is a single order that moves an army and has it pillage on arrival. Only a commander who has the Pillager ability can give it, and only when the army he leads has a map move of at least 20. It works like Move followed by Pillage, with one cost: the pillaging is weaker. Units without the pillager ability add nothing, and the ones that have it pillage at half strength. Raiders often meet resistance, and if they do, they must win that fight or nothing is pillaged (Economy).

The manual’s example of a raid is a commander with map move 22 leading knights of map move 20, where roads and borders set how far they can go in a turn (Map movement).

Raiding against province defence

Province defence is the answer the raided province already owns, and it works whether or not a commander is present.

• It is not part of the army the owner commands, it fights when an enemy arrives and it is restored after the battle, so long as the owner still holds the province (Province defence).
• When a patrol discovers an enemy, the whole defending force in the province engages it.
• When the army routs, PD units count for only a quarter of their hit points towards the army’s total, so a defence with a lot of PD takes longer to reach the rout line.
• It can be at most one point per 10 population, and it costs nothing to keep.
• A fort’s defenders on the Defend order are besieged rather than fighting outside, while units on Patrol fight outside (Siege).

What a raider meets is therefore the PD, any army on Patrol, and any fort. A raid that loses its fight yields nothing. The unrest and population a pillage leaves behind then fall on a province that its owner can defend again next turn.

What makes a good raider

Collecting what the rules above reward:

• Map move. The raid order needs 20 or more, and a raiding army moves at the speed of its slowest member (Map movement).
• Pillage ability. Only units with the pillager ability add to a raid’s pillage strength. The manual’s unit lists show it as a Pillage value on the unit, and the item and unit pages show the same figure.
• Size and fear. Large units and units with Fear pillage better, and barbarians exceptionally well.
• Stealth, where it is wanted. Stealth lets a force arrive without fighting, but a stealthy commander must have only stealthy units under him.
• A target below the bound. A province must have fewer than 15 times the pillagers’ strength in tens of people for the attempt to succeed at all, by our measured result above.

What this page does not say

• The manual does not say how much gold a pillage yields, or how pillage strength is worked out for a given force. Our tests did not measure either.
• It does not say how fast the population killed by a raid is regained, beyond the factors listed on Province attributes.
• It does not give the stealth strength of any unit or the exact rule for the number of hiders and searchers beyond the roll above.
• It does not say whether our measured bound holds for a raid, where the strength is halved. Our hosts used the Pillage order.
• Our two measured results come from one small test game, with provinces edited in the save. They show how the host behaves under those conditions, and they do not say how often a raid succeeds in a normal game.