Damage

After being part of a melee battle or defending against a ranged attack, a unit is sure to have taken some damage. Damage reduces a unit’s health, and when all of a unit’s health is gone the unit will die.

Damage and health
Each unit has a health bar, which can be seen on the panel at the bottom of the screen above each unit’s portrait, as well as at the top of each unit’s icon on the map. Depending on the unit’s Squad Size, this bar may be divided into one or more parts.

The health bar for a unit starts out fully green, representing a unit at full strength. After taking some damage, part of this bar will turn red, and the unit is considered to be ‘wounded’. The unit’s health is reduced when wounded (only the green part of the bar counts towards health), but these losses can be recovered by allowing a unit to Rest for a turn. The next turn, all formerly red parts of the bar will be green again. If the green part of the unit’s health bar is reduced to zero, the unit will be destroyed – wounded segments are simply recoverable losses, and do not contribute to unit health. 31

If a unit is attacked while Resting, the Rest action will be interrupted, and the unit will not benefit from Resting that turn. If a unit takes a lot of damage, wounded parts of the unit may instead be Killed. These losses will cause the unit’s Squad Size to decrease as dead members of the

squad cannot fight, making weapons less effective. Killed parts of units are shown on the health bar in black, and cannot be recovered by Resting. However, if a partially-dead unit is on a settlement, war camp or castle, it can use the Restore Squad action, which costs gold but brings the unit back up to full health and at their current XP value. Alternatively, some artefacts allow a unit to regain health and units will always be restored at the end of a scenario in the campaign, but their XP will be reduced through the new recruits joining.

Experience
Units gather experience during combat for defeated enemy units in a 3 hex area! Whenever they receive a level, their combat performance improves. Heroes additionally gain a skill-point they can spend in their skill-tree. Remember that dead individuals lower the unit experience at the end of the battle, as fresh recruits replace the dead veterans, often resulting in a level loss.