Combat

This page explains how combat resolves when opposing troops meet, and when attacking is worth it.

The attrition rule

Combat in Europa Neo is attrition — no dice, no bonuses, no counters. When opposing troops end up in the same cell, arithmetic decides:

Each side loses troops equal to the smaller force.
The larger side survives with the difference.

In other words, both sides subtract the smaller number from both stacks. Whatever remains belongs to the larger side.

Worked examples:

Your troops	Enemy troops	Result
20 20	20 20	Both destroyed — mutual annihilation
25 25	10 10	Enemy wiped out; you keep 15
10 10	25 25	You are wiped out; enemy keeps 15

Equal forces annihilate each other completely. Because combat resolves every tick, a 21-vs-20 fight leaves 1 troop standing — then decay or the next wave settles it.

What this means for attacking

Attack with more troops than the defender, always. Attacking at parity trades your whole stack for their whole stack — sometimes worth it, usually not.
The winner keeps only the difference: a 30-vs-5 attack nets you 25 troops. Every casualty on either side is permanent; there is no healing.
Feed your attacks: a stream of 1-troop-per-tick reinforcements arriving through pipes can tip an otherwise even fight over several ticks.

Capturing cities through combat

A defended city is captured by winning the engagement in its cell — survivors occupy the city and it transfers on the spot (see Cities and troops). An undefended city needs just one troop to walk in.

Stalemates

Attrition makes even fights self-canceling. Mutual feeding (see Pipes) makes fronts unkillable by decay, and reserves pin a defensive core in place that no supply cut can rot away (see Reserves). The result is the classic Europa stalemate: two mutually-fed lines glaring across no-man’s-land, where every attack at parity is pure waste.

Breaking a stalemate means changing the arithmetic:

Paratroopers land behind the line and sever the pipes that feed it (see Special weapons).
Guns shave fixed damage off a cell every shot, softening a defender before your next push.
Patience works too: out-produce, accumulate, and attack with overwhelming numbers.

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