Enemy armies in 9 Kings grow on a schedule, and the schedule is the same every run. Knowing it tells you how long you have to get an engine running. The Enemy Wave Calculator on this site has every difficulty and year; this guide explains the shape.
Stats grow by a fixed step each year
Every enemy unit has its base stats multiplied by a number that rises by the same amount every year. The size of the step is set by the difficulty. It is a straight line, not a curve, so nothing about years 1 to 33 compounds on the enemy's side.
HP grows far faster than anything else. On King difficulty an enemy unit in year 33 has about 47 times its base HP but only about 3.4 times its base attack. On King IX IX that is about 163 times the HP and 12.5 times the attack. Enemies get hard to kill long before they get hard to survive.
That sets the priority for any plan: damage that scales by a percentage every year keeps up with a line, and flat damage does not.
Attack speed and movement speed rise too, more gently. On King difficulty enemies attack about twice as fast in year 33 as their base rate, and on King IX IX close to nine times as fast. That is why a front line that held comfortably in the teens can be overrun in the twenties without the enemy looking any bigger.
| Enemy HP multiplier | Year 1 | Year 7 | Year 13 | Year 21 | Year 33 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peasant | 0.69 | 1.7 | 2.3 | 3.1 | 4.3 |
| Knight | 0.88 | 3.8 | 6.2 | 9.4 | 14.2 |
| King | 1.5 | 10.8 | 19.2 | 30.4 | 47.2 |
| King IX IX | 3.69 | 35.3 | 64.7 | 103.9 | 162.7 |
The soft first six years
For the first six years every enemy stat is cut. In year 1 it is divided by 1.6, and the cut shrinks evenly until it is gone in year 7. This is why the opening feels gentle on any difficulty and why the Peasant multiplier in the table starts below 1.
It is also why year 7 is the first real test. The softening ends, the yearly step keeps coming, and on King difficulty enemy HP goes from about 8.5 times base in year 6 to 10.8 in year 7. Have your main plot at level 3 with its buildings beside it before then. Year 7 is a merchant year too, so gold saved for it is worth holding.
Army size has its own budget
Each year the attacking king gets a budget of troop points and spends it on units from its own deck. The budget is 13 points in year 1 on every difficulty. By year 33 it is 1,197 on Peasant and 1,709 on King IX IX, and no army can pass 699 units.
Cheap troops mean big armies. Greed's Mercenaries cost 10 points each, so a Greed army at year 33 on Peasant is about 160 units. Progress pays 2 points for a Lab Rat and 3 for a Defender and fields about 440 with the same budget. Area damage matters most against the kings in the bottom half of the table.
The mix matters as much as the count. Stone and Time carry the most expensive troops, Ballistas and Warpers at 11 points each, and every one of those bought is several cheap units that army does not field.
King of Blood is missing from the table on purpose: its army size has not been confirmed in the game yet.
| Attacking king | Units, year 33 Peasant | Units, year 33 King IX IX |
|---|---|---|
| Greed | about 160 | about 230 |
| Nomads | about 275 | about 390 |
| Spells | about 310 | about 440 |
| Nothing | about 310 | about 445 |
| Nature | about 320 | about 460 |
| Time | about 400 | about 575 |
| Stone | about 400 | about 575 |
| Progress | about 440 | about 630 |
The calendar between battles
The events between fights never move, so a run can be planned around them. Spend the early years building toward the first decree, because it is the earliest point where a plan can change shape.
Keep gold for merchant years if your build buys anything, and expect the Rainbow army in years 17 and 27 to be a different fight from the king you have been facing.
The four decree years are the ones to plan hardest around. A build that needs one decree has four chances at it, and the first comes while enemies are still softened. Decide before year 5 which decree you are hoping for and what you take if it is not offered.
| Year | What happens |
|---|---|
| 3 | Blessing |
| 5, 13, 21, 29 | Decree pick |
| 7, 19, 31 | Merchant |
| 9 | War diplomat |
| 11 | Cataclysm |
| 15, 25 | Construction pit |
| 17, 27 | Rainbow army |
| 23 | Peace diplomat |
| 33 | Victory |
Lives and the long fight
A solo run has 3 lives and a multiplayer run has 5. Losing a battle costs one. Some perks pay out on a lost life, such as Impervious with its 2 Wallmaker cards, so a planned loss in the soft early years can be a trade worth making. It should never be an accident in year 20.
A battle that passes 300 seconds, or 180 in multiplayer, enters a stalemate and starts dealing damage every second. A kingdom that only defends cannot wait the enemy out. Bring something that kills.
After year 33
Endless changes the rule. Past year 33 the enemy stops growing in a straight line and starts compounding, with HP pulling ahead of attack as before, and the pace steps up again every 11 years. The calendar repeats on that 11 year cycle as well.
A build that only just cleared year 33 will not last long. If endless is the goal, pick an engine with no ceiling, such as troops under Futurism or a base under Transcendence, rather than one that is strong at level 3 and stops there. Stats also have a hard limit of their own, covered in the damage and caps guide.
