Everything you have learned so far has been about building a peaceful, productive town. This chapter adds a sharper edge: the army. In CoinRepublik you can raise soldiers, march them across the world, and take another player's town by force, holding it under occupation so its owner pays a tax to you. It is entirely optional - a great many players never fire a shot and grow rich purely by trade - but the war system is real, it is player-against-player, and if you would rather be the one holding towns than the one paying tribute, this is where you learn how.
Let me set your expectations honestly before we begin, because war here is unforgiving in one particular way. Soldiers you send to attack are gone the moment they leave - there is no recall, no retreat, no bringing them home if you change your mind. Every campaign is a one-way commitment paid for in troops you spent real materials and time to train. That is not meant to scare you off; it is meant to make you plan. A thoughtful attacker who counts the cost beats a hasty one every single time, and by the end of this chapter you will know exactly how to count that cost.
Soldiers are a product you train
Here is the reassuring part: raising an army uses machinery you already understand. Soldiers are not a mysterious new system - they are simply a kind of product, trained at a military academy the same way a workshop turns out goods. You build the academy on cleared land like any other building, staff it with a worker, feed it materials and time, and out come trained troops that live in your town. If you can run a farm, you can run an army. The academy is just another producer, and its product happens to carry a sword.
Because troops are trained rather than bought from a shop, an army is something you grow patiently, exactly like the rest of your town. You will not stand up a mighty force overnight. You train a batch, then another, and your standing army slowly climbs. This is why war rewards the prepared: the player who has quietly trained soldiers for weeks can strike when they choose, while the player who only thinks about defence when trouble arrives is already too late.
Troops need houses, just like citizens
A soldier is a resident of your town and takes up a room in your houses, exactly as an ordinary citizen does. Your population cap counts your troops too. If your houses are full, you have nowhere to put new soldiers - so an army is something you must build housing for. Plan rooms for your troops the same way you plan rooms for your workers, or your academy will train soldiers that have nowhere to live.
Where your army lives in the menus
The whole war system gathers under one section, and it is worth knowing the three pages before we go deeper, so you always know where to look. My army is your standing garrison - the troops trained and stationed in your own town, with their attack, defence and speed laid out, plus anything currently marching on a target. My towns lists the foreign towns you currently occupy and the garrison you left holding each one. And My town shows your own town from a war standpoint: your home defence, and - if an enemy is holding you - who they are and the panel to fight them off. Three pages: your army, the towns you hold, and the state of your own ground.
So the shape of this chapter is simple. First we meet the soldiers themselves and the numbers that make one troop different from another. Then we learn how a battle is decided, because the maths is the heart of everything. Then we march: distance, speed, cost and the point of no return. And finally we learn the whole life of an occupation - taking a town, taxing it, housing your troops abroad, and what to do when the boot is on the other foot and it is your town under the enemy's heel. Take it slowly. War is the one part of the game where a careless click cannot be undone, so understanding comes first.