The Black Tide

In some worlds a hidden sea power known as the Black Tide may take root on the map. It does not bargain, trade, or appear in the common rolls of Governors, but once roused it gathers ships and answers provocation with force.

Combat

Battle rules, attack restrictions, and the measures used against hostile fleets.

Chart & Navigation

How islands are marked on the chart and what can be read from a selected shore.

Reports & Dispatches

Where Black Tide assaults, repulses, and sightings are recorded once fleets move.

What Governors Can See

The Black Tide is hidden from ordinary society, but it is not invisible on the water. Its islands are shown as Black Tide holdings when selected, and the owner name is presented plainly as The Black Tide. In region view, those holdings bear a black ring rather than the usual rival mark. Their shores are also shown in the fully blighted, forsaken state, as though the settlement had been left to rot even while the Tide still uses it. Those holdings do not open a normal Governor profile, nor does the Black Tide appear in rankings, contacts, or player search.

If the Black Tide has not been seeded into a world, it does nothing at all. Governors need not expect it in every archipelago.

Envoy Vale: Diplomatic read

Treat the Black Tide as a hostile force of the sea, not as a rival court. One cannot flatter it, petition it, or bargain for calm water.

When It Acts

The Black Tide does not bargain, but neither does it always wait for a duel at its own harbour. Every world decides how aggressive the Tide is meant to be. In a cautious world it retaliates only against marked offenders. In a harsher one it may also strike governors whose shores lie within range of a Black Tide harbour.

• It must hold at least one island before it can act.
• In restrained worlds it retaliates only against Governors marked for attacking it.
• In more aggressive worlds it may also strike nearby governors, but still respects alliance protection and new-governor sanctuary.
• A minor offense may draw a single reprisal. Repeated attacks keep a Governor marked for harsher returns.
• Reprisals come in waves with pauses between them, not an unbroken stream. The Tide may spread strikes across different islands before revisiting the same one.
• Marked governors may be struck across their chain of holdings. Nearby aggression is limited to shores within sailing reach of a Tide harbour.
• At higher provocation, it may commit multiple harbours against one fortified target or split waves unevenly across several shores.
• It sends full, boarded warship waves rather than lone hulls or half-crewed decks.
• It does not attack unclaimed islands.

How It Grows

The Black Tide grows crudely and directly. It favors only those works that help it gather raw materials and launch fleets: the Main House, raw-material camps, the Barracks, and the Harbour.

Civic buildings, churches, housing, stores, walls, and towers, are ignored entirely. Resources are spent on military production as quickly as they come in. The Tide now bootstraps its raw-material camps and then leans on world-level production advantages rather than endlessly deepening every mine before it sails.

Small Warship

The Tide's principal warship: cheap enough to mass and swift enough to keep pressure on marked shores.

Stone Thrower

The common fighting body carried by those fleets. The Tide prefers numbers over refinement, filling decks with crude levies rather than disciplined specialists.

Catapult

The Tide may lace each sortie with a small siege train, no more than a handful of engines per wave, tucked behind its boarding crews. They are too few to flatten a shore on their own, but returning waves keep the walls crumbling.

What It Ignores

• Happiness, food, and population limits do not affect it.
• It does not trade, spy, or pursue research.
• It does not raise merchant ships, spy ships, or guard hounds.
• It does not build walls, watch towers, or other defensive works.

How To Read A Black Tide Holding

A newly claimed Black Tide island may inherit buildings from its previous ruler or begin nearly bare. Either way, treat every holding as a future harbour of reprisal. Given time, the Tide turns raw material into swarming fleets. A quiet harbour is not a harmless one.

How To Clear One

A Black Tide holding is removed by force, not by treaty. If a Governor wins a normal attack against the Tide and leaves no real defending units alive, the holding is broken and the island is released back to the world.

• A cleared starter island returns to the starter pool.
• A cleared non-starter island returns as an unowned colonisable shore.
• Plunder is taken in the usual manner before the harbour is abandoned.

Marshal Voss: Field order

If you mean to clear a Tide harbour, strike hard enough to leave no garrison standing. A half-measure wins you plunder; a clean victory wins back the shore.

What the Black Tide Does Not Do

• It does not spread across unclaimed shores or colonise.
• It does not reclaim abandoned islands.
• It does not prey on distant unmarked Governors with no harbour nearby.
• It does not appear in rankings, contacts, or social ledgers.

Council Advice

Governors who leave the Black Tide alone may never see it act. Those who mean to provoke it should do so with full knowledge of its nearest harbours, its likely muster strength, and the state of their own shores. For the broader rules of battle and interception, see Combat and Reports & Dispatches.

Reference

Common questions