The War Room: Battlefields and Fronts

Land wars fought by troops on real ground: how battlefields open, the War Room's tools, fronts and swarms, fortified lines, supply and what the difficulty changes.

Beta channel only. This system is not in the stable release yet. To try it, install the beta build, which installs alongside the stable app and keeps its own saves.

On beta the game fights its land wars itself. Where two countries at war hold land that touches, a battlefield opens: hundreds of troops a side move over the real ground, and who holds what is decided by where they go, not by a sentence in an event. The War Room is where you command yours. On the stable build a land war is told by the time skip and moved by its formations: see military and combat.

Battlefields

A battlefield opens by itself where the two sides of an active war hold land that touches. A war fought overseas opens one too: when the sides do not touch and your land troops already stand on the enemy's land, a battlefield opens where most of them are. Troops carried across the sea and put ashore open one round the place they land. At most 12 battlefields are open in a world at once.

• Troops. Each side is given troops by its strength, up to 400. Your infantry, armour and artillery formations near the line join as troops and come back as formations, at the strength they ended with, when the battlefield closes. An army musters over weeks: not every troop is there on the first day.
• Ground. Each troop paints the ground it crosses in its side's colour. Ground cut off from every source of supply is filled the day the ring closes if it is empty and under 1,500 km²; anything else is a pocket, whose troops fight at a disadvantage, waste away and give up after ten days. A place under siege is shut in and holds out for 45 days. A region counts as taken once more than 60% of it is held, and changes colour on the map once all of it is. A capture the story writes for a region on a battlefield is left out: the troops take it or they do not. See territory.
• Fought before it is told. When you skip time, the period's land war is fought first, and the time skip's story is written from what happened, at no extra request.
• Troops tire as they march and fight and recover at rest. Fortified lines must be broken through. Weather and ground matter: rain, storms, mud, snow, blizzards, frost, heat and fog slow armies and blunt attacks, harsh winters wear down armies caught out in them, frozen lakes and seas can be crossed, and rough ground slows an advance.
• In the air. Every country at war flies its air arm over the battlefields it fights on. The side that holds the sky fights harder below and slows the other's columns. Yours fly in support of your troops; a commander the game runs may instead send its aircraft against your troops or keep them on the ground. Each side's aircraft are drawn circling over the battlefield.
• Under a ceasefire a battlefield stays, marked as such, and its fighting halts.

The Fronts feature switches all of this on or off for a scenario or a game, in the Features tab, with a Pace of an advance from 25% to 300% of the usual (100 by default). Off, land war is the formations and the regions the story hands over, as on the stable build.

Opening the War Room

While your troops are on a battlefield, a round red War room button with crossed swords stands beside the toolbar, where the 🔍 search button usually is (search moves over; on a phone the button stands above the toolbar). Press it. The War Room takes the whole screen: every other control is put away, the map is fitted to the battlefield inside a steel frame whose top bar names it, who fights whom and the date, and the panel stands on the right. The × in the panel's head shuts it, and so does Esc with no tool in hand; the button beside it, Show the whole battlefield, fits the map again. On a phone the panel fills the screen: Map folds it down to show the map and the troop tools, and Generals brings it back.

Nothing moves while the War Room is open. Every order you give here is carried out when time next passes. While a turn is being resolved, no orders are taken until it has landed.

If you fight on more than one battlefield, each has a tab across the top of the panel.

The troop tools

The tools for your troops are on a rail down the left of the map. The number at its top is how many troops you have picked out. A small plate beside the rail says what the tool in hand wants.

A small tab beside the rail tucks it against the edge and brings it out again.

Routes into other countries. A route that runs into a country not in this war is an attack on it. The panel says so in amber on the route's row: when your troops reach its border it is at war with you, and its land is fought over.

Transport. The menu lists only what carries troops in the game's year, with how many formations each carrier takes and how far it goes in a day. One dispatch carries at most 40 formations. The troops board when time next passes, and the panel shows the way found for them and how long it takes, or why they cannot set out. Enemy fleets and aircraft along the way can catch a transporter.

Diversions work only through a spy of theirs you have turned: that agent sends them your diversions in place of your plans. If you have turned none, there is nobody to show a diversion to, and an agent of theirs you have not caught sends them your real plans. See espionage.

Deploy: a front or a swarm

Fronts have not always existed. The Deploy tool asks which you want:

• Front: draw a line. Your new troops here come in along it, on ground your side holds near it.
• Swarm: click a place. Your new troops gather there as a group under one general of their own. Once deployed, a swarm's troops move and fight one by one like any others. New troops join the swarm while it is still near the place; once it has marched on, the next ones gather there as a new swarm under a new general.

Formations to call up says how many fresh formations the deployment calls up there when time next passes, up to 60. Leave it empty for as many as a usual draft brings, or put 0 to only move where new troops arrive. A call-up is limited by the men your country has left and the room along the front, not by how large your army already is. Levies, drafts and reinforcements keep coming in there afterwards.

The deployment's card under Planned movements says how many are coming, how many came and on what day, or why none could be called up: no more men fit to serve, no room left on the battlefield, no ground of your side's along the line, or the fighting halted. Redraw and Remove are on the card.

Unless the scenario says otherwise, a war's troops are raised as swarms in games set before 1900 and along fronts from 1900 on. When the War Room opens, Deploy starts on the way you deployed there last, or else on that.

Fortified lines

Fortify draws a line you want built, over land your country holds; water may be crossed, another country's land may not, not even a little way past the border. Once it is drawn, a plate beside the rail asks how strong it is to be. Level 10, a line nobody passes, is for scenario designers alone.

Siege guns do it in a third of the time. The plate gives the line's length, how long it takes to build and the date it would stand from, reckoned from its length and level, your treasury and the men you have, and what it costs of your war resources each month while it is built. Name it if you wish, then Confirm, Draw again or Cancel. Your lines are listed in the panel, standing or being built; Stop building it gives one up. A line holds nothing until it stands. A scenario can switch fortified lines off, and then the key is greyed out.

Supply

With Supply down, the map shades the ground: yours in amber is stretched past where supplies come in full, yours in red is cut off, and pale ground is theirs, cut off. The plate gives each in square kilometres. It shows once time has passed on the battlefield.

Your country's war resources pay for fortified lines while they are built, and its economy refills them; a blockade slows that. Running low makes your troops recover more slowly and fight a little worse. The figure is on your country's ⚔ Military card.

The panel

From top to bottom:

• Your generals. Each commands a body of your troops: how many formations at what strength, what they are doing and near where, and how many are cut off. Point at a general to light his troops on the map; Pick picks them out. His orders are listed under him in amber.
• Weather ahead. The weather of the next two weeks on this battlefield, a tile a day, then the spells and what each does to an army. It is the weather that will come, not a guess: time an offensive by it.
• Planned movements. Every movement your side means to make, drawn on the map as an arrow: your routes, your generals' orders, operations on your Projects board that send troops at a place here, and your diversions. A route or order has Pick its troops and Call it off. A Board operation can be redrawn (Redraw, Suggested way), held back (Hold it back, Let it go ahead), or sent again once it is over (Send it again). Under them, Rehearse the next week fights the next seven days ahead of time with your orders as they stand: the map shades what you would take in green and lose in red, and the panel lists the towns taken and lost, troops cut off, and each side's strength before and after. Nothing is written, and the next turn's story can still change it.
• Under way. Movements time has already passed over. Their arrows are off the map; point at one to see what is left of it.
• Allies. Each country fighting beside you commands its own troops here. Talk strategy with its leader shuts the War Room and opens a conversation with them.
• Transporters. Yours, with where each is bound and how it is going (Call it off before it sets out), and theirs on the way, with Go after it to send your forces to intercept it.
• Fleets and Fortified lines, as they stand.
• What is known of theirs. What the difficulty gives them here, who leads them, and what your spies and aircraft have found. An agent inside one of their countries sends their staff's plan and their planned movements; your aircraft over the front see where their troops are heading.

At the foot, talk to your generals. Tell them what you want done in your own words; they answer from the real battlefield, may push back, and carry out an order they accept when time next passes. Each message is one AI request.

Orders from outside the War Room

You do not have to open it. An order you type as an action, such as "the northern army digs in and the south pushes for the city", reaches your troops in the same time skip: the skip fights the period again with your order before writing its story, which costs one more request only in a turn where your actions command troops. The story also gives orders to the sides nobody plays, can call up more troops through drafts and reinforcements, and can send troops by sea, rail or air.

A side nobody plays has a commander of its own. It looks several plans ahead on a copy of the battle and picks the best, weighing ground, towns, capitals, its strength, its supply and troops nearly cut off; a deep thrust into its land is answered with a counter-offensive. A front a scenario began with keeps the stance its author gave it.

Difficulty

The difficulty weighs a battlefield only when a person fights on one side of it, and only the side facing that person; a war between countries nobody plays, or between players, is fought on even terms. The War Room says what it gives them.

A side short of supplies, under a blockade that has stood for months, or past half war-weary is weighed down on top of that. See starting a game for what else the levels change.

Reading a battlefield

On the map a battlefield is three things. The ground each side has taken is painted in its colour over the regions, which keep their shapes. Each troop is a counter: a red rim means it is cut off, a yellow rim that it is advancing, a dark ring with a pale rim that it is dug in, and a worn troop fades. Behind the troops are arrows along the way they came, merged into a few broad ones from far off. A turn's fighting is played back as it went; after that the front skirmishes back and forth without anything changing hands until time passes again.

On the main map the counters show only from close in. The War Room shows every troop from far off, and so does the map while the Events panel is open, so you can see where what you are reading happened. When an event tells of a missile strike or a bombing, the map plays it, with interceptions; it is a picture of what the event did and changes nothing by itself.

When a war ends

When a battlefield you fought on closes, an after-action report opens once: how long it was fought, each side's formations over time, what each side took, and the turning points, such as offensives, counter-offensives, towns and capitals taken, pockets that surrendered, sieges, fortified lines broken through and landings. It stays to be read again under War reports in the 🤝 Diplomacy tab of your country panel (open it from your flag). How wars end on terms is on relations, treaties and war.

For scenario designers

The scenario editor's Fronts tab sets how a scenario's wars are fought: Warfare (fronts or swarms, or by the date), the men a counter stands for, the mustering curve and which mechanics are on. It also holds the fronts a scenario begins with (at war from the first day, or a fortified border at peace, each side with its stance, its formations, its generals and whether it is Deployed as a front or swarms), Scripted outcomes for a war meant to end one way (that side is led by a plainer commander, and good play can still turn it), and Rate every country for the countries' military figures. See the scenario editor.

Next

• Military and combat — formations, posture and travel.
• War at sea — fleets, sea battles and blockades.
• Relations, treaties and war — the war ledger, alliances and peace.
• Territory — what a battlefield moves.

Open Historia is under active development on two channels, and this wiki is written by hand — a page can fall behind a release. Last checked against the game on 2026-10-25 · main 6e6239c4 · beta d7e8fa85. If something here does not match what you see in the game, trust the game and say so on Discord.