Raise your army
Units attack, defend, haul and settle. Every class fields the same roster at the same base stats: research makes yours stronger, and your class changes what they cost and how quickly they train.
The roster
Pick a unit to read its card, exactly as the Barracks shows it. These are base figures, before anyone's research. Apart from the Skirmisher, every unit opens with research: each weight class has its own line of study, where an early level opens one unit of the pair and a deeper level the other.
Loading the roster.
Power, health and counters
A fight runs in rounds. Every unit fires at a random enemy each round: power is what it deals and health is what it can take. Survivors come out of a fight whole.
Units come in light, medium and heavy pairs, one cheap and quick, one dear and durable, with the Legion alone above them. Some types overmatch others: a shooter that hits a type it overmatches may fire again at a new random target, and the higher the number, the likelier. It is a chance to keep firing, never extra damage.
Units that never fight
The Pioneer founds a Colony and is spent doing it. The Baggage Train hauls resources to your other Colonies or an ally's, then rides home. The Marshal breaks a rival Core's Integrity during a siege, one point each, and is spent doing it.
None of them fires a shot or is ever a target. Marshals march with their army, though, and are lost with it if the defence holds. How sieges work
On the march
An army moves at the pace of its slowest unit. Every tile costs that unit's travel time, slowed by rough terrain and by ground that is neither yours nor an ally's. Roadworks research quickens every march.
An army on the march cannot be attacked or spied on until it arrives. What a rival can see is a Watchtower report as it closes in.
Upkeep
Every unit eats food from its home Colony each turn, from the moment it is queued and wherever it stands. Heavier units eat more, and Marshals most of all. Provisioning research trims the whole bill.
Running short never kills a unit. It puts the Colony into food debt, which slows its gold and materials until the Farms catch up.