Stances and formations

This page covers how you control groups of units in Dawn of Embers: stances (how units react to enemies), formations (the shape a group takes when it moves), and the capacity system (how the game shares units out when many are sent to one target).

The stance and formation buttons appear on the HUD when your selection contains at least one land soldier. They are hidden for selections of only villagers or ships.

Stances

A stance decides what a unit does about enemies when you have not given it an order. Select units and pick a stance from the stance buttons. An explicit order from you always comes first: a unit with an attack order keeps attacking, and a unit walking under a move order does not stop to fight.

Stance	In-game tooltip	Details
Aggressive	Attacks any enemy that comes within sight, without being told.	Looks for enemies within its attack range or 9 metres, whichever is larger. The default stance for soldiers.
Defensive	Guards its post. Attacks only enemies that come close, and answers hits on itself and its neighbours.	Engages only enemy units that come within its attack range plus 1.5 metres. Fights back when it or a nearby friendly unit is hit. Remembers where it stood when the fight began. If the fight drags it more than 6 metres away, it drops the target and walks back.
Passive Aggressive	Never starts a fight, but fights back against whoever hits it.	Answers only hits on itself, not hits on its neighbours. Gives up the chase when the attacker moves out of range, and stays where it is.
Passive Flee	Never fights. Runs away from whatever hits it.	When hit, runs about 12 metres directly away from the attacker and drops its current job. The default stance for villagers. A unit under a move or attack order does not run away.

Some story characters, such as escorted scholars, use a fifth stance, Passive: they neither fight nor run. Players cannot pick it.

Formations

A formation is the shape your soldiers take when you order a group of them to move. Pick one from the formation buttons. The choice applies to the next move order.

Formation	In-game tooltip
Grid (default)	An even block. No unit is put in front of the others.
Wedge	An arrowhead. Melee units take the point and the rest follow behind.
Box (open centre)	Melee units hold the edge, ranged and siege units stand inside it.
Line	One or two ranks with a wide front. Melee in front, ranged behind.
Staggered	A loose checkerboard with wide spacing, so the squad is spread out.

Notes:

• Units stand about 1.6 metres apart. Staggered doubles that, to about 3.2 metres.
• A Line keeps a single rank for up to 8 units, then forms two ranks.
• Staggered spacing is meant to limit losses to area damage. Normal unit attacks do not do area damage today, so it mainly matters against Pillar strikes.

How a formation moves

Formations move the way they do in classic real-time strategy games:

• The group follows one path and marches at the speed of its slowest member, so it stays together.
• In a narrow passage the formation squeezes into fewer files, then spreads out again.
• On arrival, every unit settles into its own place in the shape.
• If your soldiers start spread out, units that are close to each other march together as small groups, each in its own part of the final shape. Nobody waits for a group that is far away.
• A unit that gets into a fight leaves the formation. A new move order forms the group again.
• Up to 64 soldiers march as one group. Beyond that, the extra units walk to their places on their own.
• Villagers and ships always move individually.

Rally points

Units trained at a building with a rally point each get their own spot around the rally point, so a batch of new units does not pile up on a single point. Only buildings that train units have a rally point.

Capacity: every target has spots

When you send many units to one target, the game gives the target a number of spots and shares your units out, instead of letting them all crowd one point.

• The closest units take the target's free spots.
• The rest overflow to the nearest other target of the same kind:
  • gatherers go to the nearest node of the same resource;
  • attackers of an enemy unit go to the nearest other enemy unit;
  • attackers of a building go to the nearest other building.
• This happens silently. There is no "target is full" message.
• Spots are tight, so as many units as possible fit without getting stuck on each other.

Limits today

Target	Spots
Enemy unit	3 melee attackers, 8 ranged attackers
Enemy building	40 attackers of each kind
Resource node (tree, bush, stone, gold)	Depends on the node's size and on how crowded the ground around it is
Panning station	Up to 16 villagers (4 spots × 4 villagers), shown on the station as Panners: X/N
Fish, hunted animals, farm fields	No limit

• Overflow looks for another target within about 24 metres of the one you clicked (40 metres for gathering).
• When you send villagers to chop wood, extra standing trees nearby are opened up to take the overflow, up to 12 per order.
• The Panners: X/N counter is the only place the game shows a capacity. Every other target handles overflow silently.
• Construction and repair orders do not use capacity limits yet.

These numbers are early values and may change.