A field manual for FrontWars
The ratio bar, 20% to 100%
One slider decides how much of your army a click commits. It starts at 20%, moves in ten-point steps and stops at 100%. The Instructions screen adds a cap that changes what those numbers mean.
- TESTEDthe slider from 20% to 100% and the panel readout, 2026-11-03
- IN-GAMEthe 2:1 cap and the 25% retreat cost, quoted
- OFFICIAL ONLYno store page states either rule
- NEEDS CHECKhow troops split across two borders attacked at once
What the number is
The bar is a percentage of the troops you have at that moment. The bracket next to it is the conversion: at 11.2K troops, 20% reads (2.3K). Raise the ratio and the bracket follows; grow your army and the bracket follows that too, without touching the bar.
| Troops | Ratio | Panel shows |
|---|---|---|
| 11.2K | 20% | 20% (2.3K) |
| 11.9K | 100% | 100% (11.9K) |
Steps and keys
T decreases and Y increases, by 10% a press, and Shift with the mouse wheel does the same without leaving the cursor on the map. We pressed Y eight times from a fresh spawn and arrived at 100%; a ninth press did nothing, so 100% is the stop, not a rounding artefact.
The default is 20%. That default is also why a new player's first attack looks free and does almost nothing: a fifth of the army leaves, a fifth of what is needed arrives.
The 2:1 cap
The Instructions screen states that the attack ratio's effect does not go beyond a ratio of 2:1. Read literally: once the attack is twice the defence, more troops buy no more progress. In practice it means raising the bar from 60% to 100% against a weak border is spending troops you do not get back — the line moves the same.
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the game, and it is printed in the client rather than on any store page.
What an attack costs you whatever happens
- Retreating kills 25% of the troops you attacked with. The Instructions screen says so in the defence section, and it applies whether or not you were winning.
- A nuclear strike cannot be recalled at all — the same page says so about warheads specifically.
- Boats behave differently from ground attacks when they pull back: they return to a port instead of staying put.
Setting a ratio you can live with
Two rules of thumb from our sessions, stated as rules of thumb rather than game facts: keep 20% for probing a border you expect to reinforce, and go to 50–100% only when the border is already thin and you intend to hold what you take. The ratio is not a difficulty setting; it is how much army you are willing to lose on a click.
Last checked against the client: 2026-11-03 · client v42.5