Army Defense: how gold, income and summon limits decide the battle

Army Defense is a real-time battle between two bases. You never steer a soldier: you pick a host in your tray, and whenever you can afford it, that host is summoned from your side and fights on its own. The whole game is about what you summon and when. You can play it in your browser.

The economy in numbers

• You start every battle with 120 gold.
• The timer in the middle of the field counts down 10 seconds. Each time it hits zero, you receive your income, which starts at 35 gold.
• Every summon raises your income for the rest of the battle: +1 for most hosts, +2 for the Blessing Priestess, and +3, +4 or +5 for the three workers. Income stops growing at 85.
• Each kill pays a small bounty of 4 gold.

So the first summons matter twice: they put units on the field and they make every later timer worth more.

Workers: gold that never fights

Spirit Miner (30 gold), Vein Digger (55) and Ore Prospector (90) walk to the gold mines near your base and dig. They never attack. While it digs, a Spirit Miner earns 3 gold about every 0.9 seconds, which is roughly another 33 gold per timer cycle. A Vein Digger earns 5 gold every 0.8 seconds and an Ore Prospector 8 gold every 0.7 seconds. You can keep at most two Miners, two Diggers and one Prospector alive at a time.

Limits that shape your army

• Population: your army can hold 28 population. Most hosts take 1; Cloud Steed and Iron Deva take 2; Bone Colossus, Flame Dragonkin and Demon Lord take 3.
• Per-host limit: each host has its own cap, from six Earth Scouts down to a single Demon Lord. When you hit it, the tray tells you why you cannot summon more.
• Summon spacing: there is a one-second pause between two summons.

There are 16 fighting hosts in all, from the 25-gold Earth Scout to the 250-gold Demon Lord. Hybrid hosts fight in melee up close and switch to chi blasts at range, and every host has a skill on its own cooldown.

Bases and modes

Each base has 400 HP and shoots back at nearby attackers, so a lone unit rarely finishes it. The three battlefields, Heaven Gate, Mortal Frontier and Nether Rift, change the sky and colors, not the rules.

In 1P you play on the left against an AI on the right. On Easy the AI has the same economy as you. On Normal it gets 4 extra income per timer, and on Hard 10 extra, so on Hard an early miner or two helps you keep up. Local 2P puts two people on one device, left tray against right tray, and 2 AI lets you watch two bots play. When you beat the AI, your host picks are saved as a strategy that the bots may reuse later. The leaderboard counts all-time 1P wins; set your name in Settings first.

More on the Army Defense page, or start a battle.