Lords, Stars and Shadows: The Strategic Layer of Zodiac Legion

Welcome, noble friends! June is the month of the diplomatic Gemini, so what better time to bring you an update about the strategic layer of Zodiac Legion? Grab some lordly refreshments and read on, as we bring you new details on managing your domain, engaging with neutral factions and pushing back against your wicked enemy.

The Zodiac Citadel: Your Seat of Power

In Zodiac Legion, you don’t only assign units to tactical missions. You are the Grandmaster of a chivalric order, and thus you have to oversee its growth and operations. Everything starts at the Zodiac Citadel, which is your central seat of power. You won’t have to trouble yourself with clerical duties such as keeping the granaries stocked – let’s leave that to the stewards. Your responsibility is to make use of all the precious materials your knights bring back from their missions. Gold is always needed to pay for the most mundane of things, in this case new facilities. As your Citadel has seen better days, you will need to rebuild it to its former ancient glory, and gold will cover most of that. The Citadel is composed of fortified elemental towers housing basic buildings, such as barracks, observatories and so on, which ensure that your campaign runs smoothly, and these can be further upgraded as you progress in research. Building upgrades serve primarily to improve your operations, by boosting resource gains or letting knights recover from wounds more quickly.

Knowledge, Magic and Zodiac Power

Yet as they say, there is no wealth like knowledge, and your missions can also yield you arcane grimoires to advance your magical research. Such tomes will let you make new findings in seven different magic schools, unlocking further tiers with more powerful abilities for your knights.

Finally, zodiac gems and runes allow you to empower your Zodiac Champions. Embedding them in specific constellations will grant new abilities to all Champions under Zodiac signs related to that constellation’s element and modality.

But all of these upgrades will strain your research potential, requiring you to assign your research points carefully. Consider your priorities well as you ponder whether to invest your research in the Citadel, in magic, or in your knights! Because the Zodiac Legion is far from alone in this world...

The Neutral Realms: Allies for a Price

As you play, you’ll gather favour (or ill will) with eight neutral factions, each of which can offer you something different as an ally. Depending on your needs, you may benefit from the moon magic practised in Selenissa, the marksmanship of Iolarlan, or the fabled smiths of Verencras. Their help won’t come for free, however. Or rather, it may, if you raid the ancient sites of power in their lands, but they might have some reservations about that.

Regardless, you would be wise to gain influence with the neutral realms, because if you don’t, the enemy will. Each faction has an influence rating divided between the Zodiac Legion and your mortal foe – the Dragon Covenant. The Covenant will infiltrate the factions to convert them against you, and you’ll have to thwart its efforts or risk facing the entire world alone. As you fight back or ignore the Covenant’s incursions, the tug-of-war for influence in that land will shift a little in one direction. Let it fill up completely in the Covenant’s favour, and this realm will become your sworn enemy as well.

The Dragon Covenant: A War in the Shadows

Allowing the Covenant to spread its influence can have terrible repercussions. Much like the Zodiac Legion, your enemy is also waging a war and looking for opportunities to boost his efforts and economy. Where the Covenant is winning, it becomes a lot more active, which eventually also lets it expand to other provinces. Once that happens, it will establish a field base there, and this is something you must prevent at all costs. Unlike the majestic Zodiac Citadel, the Covenant’s bases are little more than hideouts, as the immortal Archons who guide it wish to remain in the shadows. You may be alerted that a new base has been established somewhere, but you won’t know where exactly. To reveal its location, you will need to help the local faction, interrogate prisoners captured during counterattacks or engage in cloak-and-dagger activity.

When you finally learn where your enemy is hiding, you can smoke him out of his den. Gather a party of your finest knights and dispatch them to the base to strike a severe blow to the Covenant’s operations. It will also pay to learn which particular cabal of the Covenant has established that base, to have a better idea what may lie inside. The Covenant is an alliance of four cabals specialising in different dark arts, and knowing your enemy will let you come prepared – depending on the cabal, you will face an onslaught of hybrid abominations, necromantic horrors, wicked craftsmanship or pure arcane destruction.

Storming the Base: A Garrison That Fights Back

Shutting down a base will not be easy, though, as the defenders will take all the advantage they can from fighting on their own territory. The enemy AI will first set up its units based on strategic and tactical considerations. It will identify critical rooms, chokepoints and important access ways, and then assign units to parties accordingly. Some will guard the objectives, others will patrol the grounds, and others still will stand by as reserves. It’s also important to mention that the entire garrison has a dynamic “life” of its own, with every unit or party assigned to a different role that it fulfils from the start of the mission. Patrols will scout the area on their own, alarms will rouse idle groups to action, and hunter-killer parties will actively follow your trail. In Zodiac Legion, the enemies don’t kindly wait for you to appear before they start moving.

The garrison will also receive reinforcements as the mission goes on, and here a lot will depend on your performance. Reinforcements are primarily governed by three factors: the global alarm level that rises as you draw more attention to yourself, the total time you’ve spent on the mission, and the enemy’s reinforcement budget. Therefore you may face less opposition if you adopt a stealthy but swift approach. Yet even without reinforcements, the defenders will prove a force to be reckoned with. Our latest upgrades to the enemy AI allow it to use its units in a much more tactical capacity. Archers focus-fire units with volleys, shielded footmen escort their less protected friends, and shock troops attempt to overwhelm your overextended units with sheer numbers while trying not to move too far out of position themselves. Parties assigned to guard critical rooms will not be baited out of them. Hunters will follow your “scent” through rooms that you’ve just left, and proceed along the most likely directions you may have taken afterwards even as the trail goes colder and colder.

This is all we have for you right now. More will follow as we expand the strategic and tactical layers of Zodiac Legion, because we still have a lot to add. More ways to expand the Citadel, more diplomatic options with the neutral realms, more machinations of the Covenant, and more enemy types and behaviours in combat. All is coming to life as was written in the stars.