Now we reach the heart of the whole war system, and it is beautifully simple once it clicks. Every battle in CoinRepublik is decided by comparing two totals: the attacker's total attack points against the defender's total defence points. That is it. There are no dice, no luck, no hidden modifiers - just two numbers set side by side, the way two arm-wrestlers are decided by strength alone. Get comfortable with how those two totals are built and you can predict the outcome of any fight before you commit a single soldier.
How a force adds up
A force is not judged one soldier at a time - it fights as a single army, and its power is the sum of its parts. To find an attacking force's power, you multiply the number of each troop by that troop's attack points, and add it all together. Ten Assault troops worth 500 attack each contribute 5000 attack points to the total. Add five Spec Ops worth 1000 each and you add another 5000, for 10000 in all. The force marches and fights as one, so what matters is that grand total, not the individual soldiers inside it.
A defending town works exactly the same way, but with defence points. Every soldier stationed at home contributes its defence points to the town's defence total. Ten defenders worth 500 defence each give the town 5000 defence points. That single number - the summed defence of every troop in the town - is the wall an attacker has to overcome. It is shown to you plainly as your home defence, and it is shown to any attacker sizing you up, so there are no secrets here: both sides can see the wall before the fight.
One force, one number
The most important idea in this lesson: a deployment fights as one combined army, not as separate squads. Whatever mix of troops you send, only the grand total of their attack points collides with the defender's grand total of defence points. This is why you plan a force as a whole - you are building one number big enough to beat another number.
Attack meets defence
So a battle is a collision between the attacker's total attack and the defender's total defence. Whichever is larger wins the field, and the margin decides how bloody it was for the loser - and, crucially, for the winner too. That last part surprises people: winning does not mean walking away unscathed. The defender's wall does real damage on the way down, and a winning attacker still pays for the ground with soldiers' lives. Exactly how those losses are counted is the subject of the very next lesson, and it is where the war system gets genuinely clever.
Before we get to the outcomes, let me plant the single habit that will keep you from ever throwing an army away. Before you attack, look at the defender's defence total, then build a force whose attack total clearly beats it. The game's attack planner adds up your chosen troops for you and shows both numbers side by side, so you never have to do the arithmetic in your head - but you do have to remember to look. An attacker who marches without checking the wall is gambling with soldiers that cost weeks to train. An attacker who checks first is simply doing sums, and sums are something you can win at every time.
Hold on to the two-numbers picture and everything else in this chapter falls into place. Your offence is a total of attack points; your defence is a total of defence points; a battle sets one against the other. Whether you are planning a raid on a distant rival or deciding how many defenders to keep at home, you are really only ever asking one question: is my number bigger than theirs? Next we learn precisely what happens when those two numbers meet - who dies, how many, and who is left standing to hold the ground.