Expeditions

Expeditions are a special kind of mission. In an expedition, you send a number of troops to your target; the mission takes a number of hours, and if it is successful, your troops will return with special rewards. Unlike a normal mission, the troops are not (necessarily) consumed when they are used for an expedition (although they will be unavailable while they are away from your base), making expeditions a great opportunity to try out special troops.

There are a total of 10 expeditions available on the world map, although there is a minimum level required. See the table below for a full description of the different expeditions available normally.

There are also clan expeditions, which are done by teams of clan members. These work entirely differently from regular expeditions; see the clans page for more information.

Troop selection
To start an expedition, click on the icon on the world map. This will bring up a dialog box where you can select the troops to bring on the expedition. Each expedition has a different number of infantry, stormtroopers, heavies, specials, and vehicles that you can bring (but never supports).

Each troop you bring along increases the chance of success by a certain percentage, which will be shown on the portrait. Generally, better troops have a higher percentage, but the best troops (such as a Silent sentry) actually have a lower percentage, possibly to compensate for the fact that they are extremely powerful.

Each expedition requires a certain amount of fuel, which is greater for higher-level expeditions.

Ambushes
As the troops travel to their destination, it is likely that they will be ambushed at least once. Ambushes are entirely random; it is possible (although rare) that you will make it safely without being ambushed at all, while (especially on longer expeditions) it is possible to go through several ambushes before you reach your destination.

The types and level of the enemy troops you face in an ambush depend on the expedition, and may include Dominion troops, Old Reich troops, or marauders.

An ambush works like a regular fight. For each ambush, you select the troops that you are bringing into the fight from among the troops that are on the expedition, and then fight normally. You do not have a hero in an ambush fight.

If you win, then your troops continue on their way towards the target. If you lose, then you have to keep fighting until you win or give up. Winning an ambush will also give you a few items.

Wounded soldiers


The rules for keeping a unit after an ambush differ slightly from normal battles:
 * If you do not deploy a unit at all, you keep the unit, just like in a regular battle.
 * If you deploy a unit in battle but none of the members of that unit are killed in battle, then you also keep the unit without any penalty.
 * If you deploy a unit and some or all of that unit is killed in battle, then the unit becomes "wounded". A wounded unit has the symbol shown above, and it no longer contributes to the success chance of the expedition. However, a wounded unit can be healed using first-aid kits. The number of first-aid kits required usually depends on the quality of the unit (higher quality units require more), but not always. If a wounded unit is not healed, then it is lost.

Note that you can only heal units before reaching the result of the expedition; if you don't, then they are lost. If you lose an ambush battle, then all of the units in the battle are wounded, regardless of whether you deployed them or not.

Recalling
At any time during the expedition, you may give up by using the "Recall" button. The troops will return to your base, although they will still take some time to do so, and you will keep any items you've gotten so far. Any wounded troops, and the fuel cost, will be lost.

If you are stuck on an ambush, you can use the "Abort" button to abort the expedition. However, in this case you lose all the troops on the expedition as well as any items you may have gained. This should therefore only be used as a last resort when it's completely hopeless for the troops on your expedition and you just want to start over with a new set of troops.

In both cases, this will not count as a try used -- a try is counted only when you actually reach the end of the expedition (successfully or not).

Rewards
Once your troops reach the destination, you can click the "Result" button to collect the rewards. This checks your overall success chance to see if you get the final rewards for the expedition. If you succeed, then these rewards are added to the rewards you have already collected from any ambush battles. If you fail, then you do not collect the final rewards, but you do keep any loot you got from ambushes along the way.

After obtaining the result, the troops will then begin their return journey back to your base. Nothing will happen during the return journey, but you won't actually get the rewards and your troops back until it is finished.

Always make sure to heal any troops you want to keep before collecting the reward, since you can't do so afterwards!

Cooldown
After one or two times doing an expedition, it will become unavailable for a certain amount of time, so you can't continuously do it. After the cooldown is over, the number of tries resets to zero and you can do the expedition again.

Strategy
Because you can't permanently lose a unit (unless you run out of first aid kits) in an expedition, they are a great chance to try out some powerful units that you wouldn't want to waste otherwise. Silent sentries are an extremely popular choice, since they are powerful enough to deal with basically anything without getting hurt, and they have a long enough range to cover a large portion of the map (although make sure to bring along at least a couple of units, just in case the enemy drops behind you). But really any other top-tier unit (e.g. Judicators) should have no problem.

Once you have your powerful units, just add enough other units to make sure that your total percentage is at least 100%, so you can be sure the expedition will succeed. This is a great chance to use some of the units that are normally not very useful in battle (snow troopers, black knights, etc.), since they still have a higher percentage than regular infantry and stormtroopers.

Special expedition events
There was also one event, Knowledge Day, which featured a special expedition. This expedition worked somewhat differently from regular expeditions. The most important difference was that every troop you deploy in battle becomes wounded, even if no one was killed in battle. Also, the ambushes are not random; rather, there is one ambush every 2.5 hours during the expedition, for a total of six. There was no cooldown on the expedition. The event ran from Sep. 7-14, 2019.

Healing data
This table shows the number of first aid kits necessary to heal troops.