Power is the main mechanic in Epicinium that allows the creating of units and the expanding or upgrading of buildings. The current power of a building tile is shown by the number of buildings on the tile that have their light on. Power in cities or towns in the night phase generates income.
Gaining power[]
Power gains work differently for different kinds of buildings.
- City, town, farm and outpost tiles can gain power if their surrounding tiles contain enough nature.
- Barracks and industry can gain power if the total power of allied cities surrounding them is higher than their current power
- Airfields gain power if there is and allied industry next to them that has power.
Losing power[]
There are multiple ways of losing power, namely producing units, upgrading, expanding or being destroyed in combat.
Although gaining power is dependent on niceness or power in adjacent tiles, a building tile will never lose power if the adjacent niceness or power drops.This allows players to infinitely create new units in barracks, industry or airfield as long as the adjacent city has power, as long as the player does not build anything in the city. The city will not lose power as the surrounding environment gets worse, it only loses the ability to gain power.
Producing units[]
When producing units, all available power will be used and the produced unit will have a number of figures equal to the power spend. The price of the unit is unaffected by the amount of power spend, although indirectly units with more figures cost more either due to power loss in cities, or because of the upgrade cost for barracks and industry.
There are 2 exceptions to this rule:
- Units cannot have more than 3 figures. Currently this only impacts militia created in a city. If a city with more than 3 power creates militia, it loses 3 power and generates a militia unit with 3 figures.
- Settlers units are always 1 figure, so a city, town, outpost or farm that creates a settler only loses 1 power.
Upgrading[]
Upgrading a barracks, industry or town costs 1 power in addition to the monetary cost.
Expanding[]
Creating barracks or industry from cities or creating airfields from industry costs 1 power in the expanding building.
Destruction in combat[]
Buildings that are destroyed also make their tile lose the power if they had power. However, building destruction works differently for gunfire and other effects.
- In gunfire, the building tile counts as one body. If the tile receives enough damage to destroy one or more buildings, buildings that had power are destroyed first.
- In shells, bombardments, trample damage and firestorm each building counts as a separate body. In this case, damage is done to random buildings and as such buildings that do not have power could also be destroyed first.