Renown 5
Unlocks the Rousing Speech option on the world map, improves the quality of battalions produced by Recruit Soldiers, and raises how many battalions can be deployed at once.
Gambits and Battalions
Theodora\u0027s route talent from end to end: recruiting, who may carry one, why the command vanishes, and what Renown buys.
A system with two separate gates
Gambits and battalions are Theodora's route talent rather than a universal mechanic, and they are gated twice. The first gate is who may hold one at all: infantry only, with mounted units, whether on a horse, an Ornius or a flying mount, permanently excluded. The second gate is Authority, which caps the rank of battalion a unit can equip. Both gates are on the unit side, because battalions do not carry an authority value of their own.
The third thing that surprises players is not a gate but an ordering rule: a battalion has to be assigned in the inventory menu before the Gambit command appears on that unit. A battalion sitting unassigned in the bag does nothing at all, which is why so many players report the command being missing rather than the battalion being weak.
Once equipped, a gambit still has to earn its turn. Each one carries a fixed spatial requirement relative to its target, and the condition has to be met exactly before the option appears. Gambits also cannot be used during the turn-based Clashes fought inside dungeons, which makes them a battlefield tool specifically rather than a universal answer.
Charm is the stat that decides how hard a gambit hits rather than whether it can be used, and it is confirmed by two independent publications: 1 of the 12 rows below carry that confirmation, and the rest rest on a single community write-up that marks its own figures unverified.
Every recorded mechanic
| Mechanic | What it does | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| availability | Gambits and battalions are Theodora's route talent: the command and the units belong to her and her allies, and the other three Flame Lords get their own systems instead. | Community reported |
| recruit | Battalions are recruited from settlement nodes on the world map with her Recruit Soldiers action, and the recruits arrive after some time rather than instantly. | Community reported |
| equip | A battalion has to be assigned in the inventory menu before the Gambit command appears on that unit at all, and a unit holds one battalion at a time. | Community reported |
| eligibility | Only infantry can hold a battalion. Mounted units, whether on a horse, an Ornius or a flying mount, can never use one. | Community reported |
| authority | A unit can only equip battalions at or below its own Authority skill level. Battalions do not display an authority value of their own, so the gate is entirely on the unit side. | Community reported |
| gambitCondition | Each battalion's gambit carries a fixed spatial requirement relative to its target, and the condition has to be met exactly before the option appears in the action list. | Community reported |
| clashExcluded | Gambits cannot be used during the turn-based Clashes fought inside dungeons. | Community reported |
| charm | Charm raises how effective a gambit is, which makes Theodora and Bonaventure the natural picks for a gambit-driven build.Two independent publications describe the Charm interaction. | Confirmed by two sources |
| deployment | Battalions can also be stationed at Search nodes on the world map or in dungeons, where they gather materials unattended. Cleric-type battalions favour resource nodes and mage-type battalions favour ore. | Community reported |
| rousingSpeech | From Renown 5, a Rousing Speech can optionally follow Recruit Soldiers at the same settlement to bias the remaining pool towards higher-rank battalions. Success clears most or all of the low-rank pool; failure still removes a few of them temporarily. | Community reported |
| recruitingDrive | When a Recruiting Drive appears in place of Recruit Soldiers, it combines the recruitment and the speech into a single action. | Community reported |
| surplus | Surplus battalions handed to the Transport Chief convert into troop points, more per higher rank, and 100 troop points buy one Tactics Manual. The Transport Chief unlocks in Theodora's Part I at Chapter 7. | Community reported |
The Renown perks at 5, 7 and 9
Renown does three things for this system, and it does them at the same three levels that gate so much else. The community write-up marks all three as unverified, so they are recorded here as reported rather than as settled numbers.
Renown 7
Improves Recruit Soldiers quality again and raises the simultaneous deployment count again.
Renown 9
The same two improvements a third time.
The surplus path is worth knowing early: spare battalions convert into troop points at the Transport Chief, who unlocks in Theodora's Part I at Chapter 7, and 100 troop points buy a Tactics Manual. Hoarding battalions you will never field is therefore a waste rather than caution.
What no source has recorded yet
The names and effects of the first battalions recorded on this site come from the captioned route guide above, so this is a starting roster rather than an empty list: they are one creator's Theodora run, not the complete set the game ships with. A full table would need a second route guide and a second account of the same rows, and until that exists the list below is labelled as one creator's observations.
- No battalion roster: the sources state that no individual battalion has been documented anywhere yet.
- No gambit list: only the positional rule is described, never a named gambit or its numbers.
- No deployment caps: the Renown perks promise more simultaneous deployments without stating a figure.
- No costs or per-settlement rosters: neither the gold cost of recruitment nor the fixed pool of a specific town is recorded.
- No troop point conversion: how many points each battalion rank is worth is not recorded.
The practical workaround in the meantime is to read the two gates rather than a tier list: pick battalions at or below your unit's Authority, keep them on infantry, and deploy the cleric-type ones to resource nodes and the mage-type ones to ore when they are not in use.
Verified Video Intel · Audio Transcript
The First Named Battalions
Coverage by Jay Dunna · Verified English Captions · w9SoSWIcysg
This route-build guide is where the tables above stop being abstract, because the battalions it names are the clearest record of what a gambit actually does. Everything below is taken from the captions of one Theodora playthrough: the effects are the useful part, and the labels he uses for them are quoted rather than asserted, since a caption rendering of a menu name is not a verified string. His placements are his own choices for one team, not requirements.
01 · Shape of Attack
A battalion that strikes diagonally
The most interesting one he fields is a caster battalion whose attack lands in an X pattern, which is worth more than it sounds: it gives a unit whose own attacks run in straight lines the ability to cover the diagonals around it. He puts it on Theodora precisely because her own ranged attacks are line-based, so the battalion closes the gaps her weapon cannot.
02 · Control
A battalion that stops a target acting
The second named effect immobilizes the target, which he reads as a survivability tool rather than a damage tool and assigns to the squishiest unit on the team: if a fragile caster is caught in melee she does not survive the retaliation, so removing the target's turn is worth more than adding damage to it. That is a genuinely different use of a gambit from hitting harder.
03 · Damage and Rank
A heavy physical gambit and the entry tier
The rest of his loadout covers the two ends of the ladder. One is described as a strong physical attack that he puts on a unit who meets its Authority requirement rather than on the unit who would hit hardest, and the others are the entry-level soldier and trainee-cleric battalions that come first and carry simple effects, the latter granting a form of healing.
04 · Upkeep
Re-check the assign menu as Authority rises
His standing instruction is to keep opening the assign menu and upgrading battalions as each character's Authority skill climbs, because a battalion that was the best available at Authority one is usually outclassed a tier later. That is the same gate the FAQ above describes, seen from the maintenance side rather than the eligibility side.
Worth separating from battalions in the same video: his Theodora build leans on a class ability acquired by auto-levelling the class at the inn rather than by fielding her in it, which keeps her stat growth untouched while still banking the ability. The full battalion list and its gambit table are still waiting on a second independent route guide before any of the labels above are promoted to cross-checked.
Frequently asked questions
- Who can use gambits and battalions?
- Theodora. Gambits and battalions are her route talent, so the command and the units belong to her and her allies while the other three Flame Lords get different systems. She recruits them from settlement nodes on the world map with her Recruit Soldiers action.
- Why can my unit not equip a battalion?
- Three reasons cover almost every case. Only infantry can hold a battalion, so mounted units never can. A unit can only equip battalions at or below its own Authority skill level. And the battalion has to be assigned in the inventory menu first, because the Gambit command does not appear until it is.
- Why is the Gambit command missing in battle?
- Each battalion gambit carries a fixed spatial requirement relative to its target, and the condition has to be met exactly before the option shows up. Gambits also cannot be used at all during the turn-based Clashes inside dungeons, which is the other reason the command disappears.
- Does Charm matter for gambits?
- Yes. Charm raises how effective a gambit is, which is why Theodora and Bonaventure suit a gambit-driven build. Authority is the separate stat that gates what a unit can equip, and the two are easy to confuse.
Route talents differ per Flame Lord, so Theodora's battalions are worth reading next to the systems page, which covers what the other paths get instead.