Goblin Storm is a game of wonderful complexity, there are many interesting and nuanced features that deserve closer inspection. The goal of this guide is to become a compendium of knowledge that describes all of the major gameplay mechanics of Goblin Storm, complete with descriptions and screenshots where needed.

I will continue to add more content to this guide on a running basis and I will happily add extra sections at request if necessary.

The impulse system, stacking limits and zone of control are the three most critical mechanics for any player to understand. They take a moment to learn, but after you have them down everything else becomes easier.

Since units from both sides move simultaneously in Goblin Storm, the game uses impulses to replicate real time movement in a turn based environment. Impulses are essentially times of the day from impulse 1 (dawn) to impulse 9 (dusk). In the screenshot below you can see how far a heavy cavalry unit can move in a single turn, the black and yellow numbers over the hexes show the impulse that the unit will arrive in the hex.

Every hex has a 4 point stacking limit. To put this into perspective, a single company of soldiers of any type has a stacking value of 0.5. Full strength regiments have a stacking value of 2.0. So you can fit 2 regiments or 8 companies in a hex at the same time.

There are two exceptions to stacking limits.

• Moving along roads during turn resolution. During turn resolution up to 6 stacking points may move along roads. This allows friendly units to move through each other on roads and prevents terrible traffic jams on your precious medieval highways.
  
• Beginning of game deployment. All stacking rules are ignored during beginning of game deployment.

If a hex has more than 4 stacking points at the end of the turn, then the excess stacking points will be randomly ejected into a neighboring hex.

Every stack with 1 or more stacking points projects a zone of control (ZoC) into the surrounding hexes. You can move into and out of enemy zone of control hexes, but you cannot move between enemy zone of control hexes. See the images below for an example.

Here we have a horde of Wolf Prowlers, with the Zone of Control overlay turned on. Friendly ZoC is shaded in gray, enemy ZoC in red. How can we get around the enemy zone of control?

We can move into and then out of enemy zone of control, so this move would work:

But we cannot move between two enemy zone of control hexes. So this move would not work.

Kingdom setup is arguably the most critical phase of the game. The entire scenario revolves around the decisions made during kingdom setup; how much gold the human starts with, how large and well equipped their levies will be and how they will defend their kingdom. All of it hinges on how the human player builds their kingdom. So let's dive into the details!

The exact number of towns, villages and castles is randomized and the defender may place them at their discretion. Only the capital city, abbeys and farmsteads are automatically placed (although their locations are also randomized).

Each settlement type plays a special role in the kingdom.

• Towns are the economic and population hubs of your kingdom, and often the primary targets of goblin invasions. They can only be placed on roads.
  
• Villages form the bulk of human settlements, they are smaller and less prosperous than towns, but they can be placed almost anywhere.
  
• Castles are super-heavy fortifications, that almost never fall if properly defended.

Clicking the Build button on the bottom right side of the HUD brings up the construction menu; allowing you to select which kind of settlement you want to build. The number next to each settlement type shows how many are available to be placed. In the example below we have 3 towns, 7 villages and 3 castles.


After selecting a settlement type to build, drag your cursor around the map. If the hex beneath the cursor is shaded blue, then you can build your settlement there. If it is shaded red then you cannot. Simply left click to place. You can check the estimated statistics of a settlement before you place it by glancing at the settlement card on the bottom left side of the HUD.

In the example below, you can see how adjacent terrain impacts the anticipated population, development and economy of a village:

Adjacent terrain can also affect the types of levies available to a settlement, but we will discuss that in more detail later.

A settlement's statistics significantly alter its role in gameplay. Let's discuss the role of population, development and economy.

Population: How many people are in this settlement. Each population point = 100 peasants. This influences the size of the levy and the number of slaves that the goblins can take from a specific settlement.

Development: How well developed a settlement is. This influences the quality of levies. Higher development settlements are more likely to produce high quality levies such as Town Watch, Levy Horse and Foresters.

Economy: How wealthy a settlement is. The wealthier a settlement, the more gold it contributes to hire units and build fortifications at the beginning of the game. As well as the amount of gold that the goblins can loot from a specific settlement.

When placing your settlements, think about what role you want each to play in the kingdom. Fortifications such as castles are simple; build them on choke points and road junctures to limit enemy mobility and funnel them into traps.

But settlements like towns and villages require more planning. Try to strike a balance between economy and defensibility. It is easy to become too fixated on finding all of the wealthiest locations to build your settlements, and forget to build a kingdom that is actually defensible. Finally, remember that in 4 out of 5 objective types, at least some of your settlements will be the attacker's primary targets. You aren't just building your kingdom, you are creating the battlefield.

Additional fortifications, such as Keeps, Stockades and Watch Towers can be purchased while you are hiring your army. The cost in gold is displayed on the construction menu. All of these facilities are explored in greater detail in the section below.

Now that we know how to build our kingdom, let's take a closer look at the fortifications available to defend your precious gold and pesky peasants. All fortifications (except watch towers) provide defensive combat and fire bonuses, attacker reductions, and most importantly immunity to encirclement penalties.

These penalties and bonuses affect different unit types in different ways. For instance, Castles provide no defensive bonuses to heavy cavalry, but they can double the combat power of light and heavy infantry. Conversely, a Stockade cripples the combat value of attacking cavalry, but has little effect on attacking infantry. Now let us take a look at the details!


Role: Super Heavy Fortification.
Cost: None, 1-3 Castles automatically assigned at game start.
Garrison Spawn: 1-3 companies of experienced professional Infantry.
Castles are the ultimate fortification in Goblin Storm. Castles provide massive combat and fire bonuses to defenders and major reductions to attackers. A properly garrisoned castle will not fall without extreme attacker casualties. That said, do not let the near invincibility of these stone behemoths lure you into a false sense of security. A poorly garrisoned castle can still be taken by the invader and it is unlikely you will ever get them out. Moreover, a strong enemy can simply besiege a castle by maintaining a zone of control lock on all sides and turn your glorious fortress into an elaborate armed prison camp. Castles spawn between 1 to 3 garrison companies at the beginning of the game.


Role: Heavy Fortification.
Cost: 20 Gold.
Garrison Spawn: 1 company of trained professional Infantry
Keeps are not as formidable as castles, but they are still major obstacles for a conquering army. Use them as substitutes for castles or as safe havens for your field armies. Keeps spawn a single garrison company at the beginning of the game, but it is usually wise to deploy additional forces to guarantee that these formidable fortifications do not fall into enemy hands.

Role: Light Fortification.
Cost: 10 Gold.
Garrison Spawn: None

Stockades are the cheapest and least effective fortifications. These rudimentary forts are little more than a fortified tower surrounded by a wooden palisade. They will not stop a determined enemy attack, but they are useful as road bumps to slow down the attackers or as forward bases for your armies to operate from.

Role: Light to Medium Fortification.
Cost: Varies.
Garrison Spawn: Varies, see levy section.
In addition to more traditional fortifications, walls can be built around cities, towns, or villages during the army recruitment phase. A wall can be added to any settlement by selecting it with the town tab active and then clicking on the red highlighted price tag in the bottom left as demonstrated below. Walls can be removed the same way if you decide you need to use the gold elsewhere before the recruitment phase ends.

The price of the wall scales with the size of the settlement, so it is typically not cost effective to wall your largest towns, but it can be a great way to fortify outlying settlements against enemy raiders. Walled settlements are easy to identify on the map due to their unique graphics as well.

The village of Highford, walled and ready to stand against whatever horrors may befall it.

Role: Surveillance.
Cost: 10 Gold.
Garrison Spawn: None

Watch Towers provide no defensive combat bonuses, but they do provide 2-hex line of sight in all directions. If captured by an attacker, the Watch Tower will be destroyed and its line of sight bonus lost.

Understanding the levy system is extremely useful for both sides, because levies are the only reinforcements the human defender will receive during the course of the game. All levies fall into one of two categories, settlement levies, and castle garrisons. Most of this discussion will focus on settlement levies because they are more common and can exercise a significant impact on the course of the game through sheer force of numbers.


Almost every city, town, and village possesses a local defense force called a levy. Settlement levies are easily identified by the yellow stripe on their counter. The size, type, and training level of a settlement's levy is influenced by a number of factors:

• Population: Determines how many levy companies a settlement possesses. More pop, more levies.
  
• Development: Higher development increases the chance to access more advanced levy types. See development brackets below.
  
• Settlement type: Each level of settlement Village>>>Town>>>City, is more likely to possess
  more advanced levies; even at lower development levels. Higher level settlements also possess better trained levies.
  
• Terrain: Some levies such as Foresters, require specific terrain types to be adjacent to the settlement.
  
• Faction: Each faction has a slightly different levy roster. Factions such as Westdale and Dunwall have unusually well trained and equipped levies. While the Oslid have particularly poor levies.

Development Brackets:
To give you an idea of what is considered high, average, or low development, here are the rough brackets used by the game to determine levy quality. Exactly what levy types are available in which bracket varies by faction, settlement level, and a healthy dose of luck from settlement to settlement. For instance, there is no guarantee that an ultra-high development town will have access to the best levies; but it has a far higher chance than an average development town.

• Ultra High: 15+
  
• Very High: 10-14
  
• High: 8-9
  
• Average: 6-7
  
• Low: 4-5
  
• Very Low: 1-3

Levies can be brought into play through one of two ways, both involving hostile action.

Enemies detected nearby: any hostile unit (including beasts) spotted within 10 hexes of a city/town or 5 hexes of a village will cause that settlement's levy to be raised. The levy will be raised at full strength and may be moved like any other unit for the rest of the game.
Surprise attack: if an undetected enemy attacks a settlement the levy will be emergency raised at 50% cohesion. If it survives the attack, it will be able to move like any other combat unit for the rest of the game.

Castle garrisons are professional soldiers who guard fortifications. All castles and keeps will automatically deploy their garrisons at the start of the game. The size and quality of the garrison depends on the type of fortification and a healthy dose of luck. These units are only “levies” in terms of how they are deployed; they are otherwise identical to professional units.

Any levy can be customized by selecting a settlement or fortification with the town tab active. Once the facility is selected, the levy card in the bottom left allows you to customize levy types, add new types, and reassign levy companies between types. We will explore this with the example of Burnly, a typical Westdalian town with high population and average development.
Let's take a look at Burnly's levy. Currently, it has 4 levy companies in total, 1 Levy Archer and 3 Levy Spear companies. We cannot add new completely new companies, because the number of companies available to this town has already been determined by population, but we can change the type and assignment of the companies we do have. Companies can be moved between types with the + and – buttons next to the levy types. Upgrading a levy company to a better type incurs a small fee.
Clicking on a levy type or unused slot (marked by “none”) brings up the list of possible levy types for this town as shown below. Available levy types will be hilighted, while unavailable ones will be grayed out. With a few quick clicks, we can transform the levy of Burnly from an unremarkable 1 Levy Archer , 3 Levy Spear rabble, to a far more capable, 1 Levy Spear, 2 Levy Archer, 1 Town Watch defense force.

The types of levies available for selection will vary depending on faction, development level, and a bit of luck. Proper fine tuning of levies can benefit a defender greatly, but always remember, Levies are meant to be used as reserve troops to supplement your field armies, they are not a replacement for professionals.

There are many types of combat units in Goblin Storm with numerous specialties, but they all share a similar basic structure. The largest units are regiments. Regiments consist of several companies, and each company is composed of individual soldiers.
Regiment >>> Company >>> Soldier

Most units in Goblin Storm are regiments (goblins and undead call them hordes). Each regiment consists of a number of companies that move and fight together as a single unit. For instance, the Ravager Horde below consists of two companies of Shield Bearers, one company of Spears and one company of Bows. Any of these companies may be detached from their regiment to move around independently if you so desire.

So, if regiments are just collections of companies. Then what are the individual parts of a company? If you open up a regiment's card (by double clicking on a unit's graphic at the bottom of the screen) you will see the individual companies inside a regiment listed on their own smaller cards.

Each company is comprised of soldiers, usually 50 per company, but there are exceptions, both larger or smaller. Each company is listed within its regiment on its own unit card. If we take another look at our Ravager friends again, you'll see the cards for each of the four companies of the regiment.

Now, let's take a closer look at each of those companies. Everything you need to know about each individual company is conveniently listed on the company's card:

Training: Better trained companies fight harder and suffer lower cohesion loss. While poorly trained companies suffer a combat value penalty and lose cohesion more quickly. There are eight training levels (from highest to lowest): Elite, Crack, Veteran, Experienced, Trained, Recruit, Conscript, Untrained.
Soldier type: Companies can have up to 3 soldier types.

Morale: Morale is the combat modifier granted by training. A unit with elite training has a +30% combat bonus, while an untrained unit is -40%.
Cohesion: How organized is the unit? Cohesion is lowered by casualties, marching and fighting, but can be restored by resting. Cohesion directly affects the company's combat value. A company at 0.73 cohesion would fight at 73% of its base value.

Strength: Raw manpower, the number of soldiers in the company.
Offensive: Offensive melee value
Defensive: Defensive melee value
Fire: Ranged attack value

Unit type is listed at the top of the company card to the right of the training level. The border color of company cards is also color coded according to type.

• Orange/Brown = Light Infantry
  
• Red = Heavy Infantry
  
• Yellow = Fire
  
• Cyan = Light Cavalry
  
• Dark Blue = Heavy Cavalry
  
• Orange/Brown = Light Infantry
  
• Red = Heavy Infantry

Soldiers

Ultimately, the quality of regiments and their constituent companies comes down to the ability of the individual soldiers. You can check the basic stats of your soldiers at any time by clicking on them on their company card like this:

The top half of the soldier card shows their vital statistics: offensive/defensive melee value, fire value, skirmish modifier, fire protection and a few niche modifiers such as fire bonus when defending fortifications. The bottom section describes the soldier's equipment and lore.

Most of these stats are self-explanatory. But there is a special note about the skirmish modifier. The skirmish modifier shows the % bonus or penalty to melee and fire when this soldier type is engaged in skirmish combat.