Ranked Duel
The offline build already supports bot play. Public online play is not live yet; the planned first queue is a server-authoritative 1v1 Ranked Duel. The signed queue and session API exist, while the public match-host transport is still being completed.
Integrity
The client is never the authority
The 10 Hz deterministic simulation is an advantage for competitive play, but only because the server runs the copy that counts.
The host owns the match
An allocated match process advances the canonical ticks, owns the RNG, validates every command, and broadcasts accepted command frames with periodic state hashes. Your client predicts locally and reconciles to the host.
Clients never report results
The terminal result comes only from the host and is signed. A client may upload diagnostics; it can never assert an outcome that grants ladder points or currency.
Replays are verified before rewards
Deterministic receipts are reproduced against the exact archived simulation revision before asynchronous competitive rewards are granted.
Reconnect is a first-class case
Dropping does not end your match. Reconnecting gets you a signed snapshot plus the command tail, and picks up where the host already is.
Scoring
A living army is battlefield control
Ranked normally ends when one Stronghold is left standing. If more than one is still alive at 11:00, the authoritative host applies a hard-resolution score: one point of Stronghold health is worth 1 and one point of surviving army health is worth 7.
That weighting is deliberate. Turtling on a full-health Stronghold with no army left is not winning, and the score says so.
Not for sale, ever
- Combat stats in Ranked
- Matchmaking advantage
- Ladder points or rank protection
- An exclusive counter-pick
- Full Auto (disabled in Ranked entirely)
What is for sale is identity: armor sets, Stronghold themes, victory effects, banners and titles.