Traps

Bolt Throwers

Heavy bolt throwers sited along the wall-walk, ranged at the archers ranging you.

Entity ID: bolts
Punishes: Archers — and nothing else
Kills per armed trap (tier 0): 3
Kills per armed trap (tier 10): 13
Traps laid per invested tier: 5
Traps laid at tier 10: 50
Disarmed by: Siege only — each siege unit clears 2 of these before the battle proper
Siege needed to disarm a full tier-10 lay: 25 siege units

How Bolt Throwers resolve

Traps bite before the battle proper, and they bite one troop type only. Bolt Throwers punish archers: each trap still armed when the host arrives kills its quota of them, spread across that type's tiers from the lowest up. Siege is the only answer — every siege unit in the attacking host disarms 2 traps of each type before anything is triggered — which is why a smart assault on a trapped keep brings engines, and why a defender who sees siege in an inbound host knows their wall is about to be read correctly.

The tier ladder

Each of the three trap types is raised independently through 10 tiers. A tier both lays more of them and makes each one hit harder — 5 extra traps and one extra kill per trap, per tier — so the investment compounds rather than merely widening.

Bolt Throwers: what each tier lays, what it kills, and what it costs to reach.
Tier	Traps laid	Kills per trap	Kills if all stay armed	Wood	Stone	Iron
0	0	3	0	—	—	—
1	5	4	20	150	150	100
2	10	5	50	225	225	150
3	15	6	90	338	338	225
4	20	7	140	506	506	338
5	25	8	200	759	759	506
6	30	9	270	1,139	1,139	759
7	35	10	350	1,709	1,709	1,139
8	40	11	440	2,563	2,563	1,709
9	45	12	540	3,844	3,844	2,563
10	50	13	650	5,767	5,767	3,844

The free ramparts your Keep already gives you

Before any tier investment, the Keep itself lays traps of all three types — one per Keep level, capped at twelve. Those are free, they are laid whether you think about them or not, and they are what a raider without siege actually runs into.

Free bolt throwers from the Keep alone, and what they kill.
Keep level	Free bolt throwers	Archers killed (no siege present)
1	1	3
5	5	15
10	10	30
12	12	36
20	12	36
30	12	36
45	12	36

What archers are worth killing

Archers hit hardest per unit of the three field types and die fastest when reached. They beat cavalry and lose to infantry. Bolt throwers exist because a besieger's archers never have to come within reach of the wall on their own.

A trap's value is the host it removes before a single blow is struck, and losses are spread across the target type's tiers from the lowest up — so the first thing your bolt throwers eat is the cheapest archers in the column, and the last is the most expensive.

Archers at every tier: what a trap is taking off the field.
Tier	Rank	Attack	Defense	Health	Load	Power
T1	Levy	18	6	18	25	5
T2	Footman	23	8	23	31	6
T3	Man-at-Arms	28	9	28	39	8
T4	Veteran	35	12	35	49	10
T5	Sergeant	44	15	44	61	12
T6	Guardsman	55	18	55	76	15
T7	Knight	69	23	69	95	19
T8	Vanguard	86	29	86	119	24
T9	Champion	107	36	107	149	30
T10	Warlord	134	45	134	186	37
T11	Myrmidon	168	56	168	233	47
T12	Paragon	210	70	210	291	58
T13	Legend	262	87	262	364	73

Power removed by a full tier-10 lay of bolt throwers (50 traps × 13 kills), against archers of each tier.
Tier of the attacker's column	Archers killed	Power removed	Health removed
T1 — Levy	650	3,250	11,700
T4 — Veteran	650	6,500	22,750
T7 — Knight	650	12,350	44,850
T10 — Warlord	650	24,050	87,100
T13 — Legend	650	47,450	170,300

Guides: The Combat Guide · Defending Your Keep. Troop data: Archers · Siege engines. Index: all three traps · the whole database.

The other traps: Scalding Oil (vs infantry) · Wood Spikes (vs cavalry)

Every figure above is generated from the shipped game code — the same constants and formulas the running game uses — and regenerated whenever the balance changes. Nothing on this page is hand-typed.

Bolt Throwers

How Bolt Throwers resolve

The tier ladder

The free ramparts your Keep already gives you

What archers are worth killing

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