Assault

An assault is an overt attempt to take over a Village, Town or City by force. If successful, you will not only gain absolute control over the location's import and export licenses, but will also be able to upgrade the location in whatever way you please at no cost. However, such shows of force will attract hostile attention from the other Shards, making it necessary for you to commit precious resources to defending these locations.

Paths
Attacking units are split into one or more paths: Depending on the location being attacked, the exact layout of the battlefield will change. As a general rule, however, all will have a length of Killing Fields that Wall and Gate units must charge across before reaching the Walls or Gates, during which they will be pelted with ranged attacks from defenders.
 * Wall: will charge across the killing fields and attempt to scale the walls
 * Gates: will charge across the killing fields and attempt to break down the gates
 * Siege: will defend siege engines from incoming enemies
 * Stealth: will attempt to sneak past the defences and into the city
 * Reserve: will be held back in reserve and join either the Wall, Gates or Siege path on a given signal