Tournament Square and the 20-field rule

The Tournament Square speeds up an army only beyond the first 20 fields. That one detail decides whether it is your best building or a waste of resources.

Updated 13 September 2026

The Tournament Square is the building most often mis-modelled by hand, and by a fair few calculators. The bonus is real and large, but it does not apply to the whole journey.

The rule

Each level adds 20% to an army's speed - but only for the distance past the first 20 fields. The first 20 always run at base speed, whatever has been built.

v = unitSpeed × serverSpeed

hours = fields ≤ 20
      ? fields ÷ v
      : 20 ÷ v  +  (fields − 20) ÷ (v × (1 + 0.2 × tsLevel))

Two consequences fall straight out of that.

Under 20 fields it does nothing

A level 20 Tournament Square makes no difference at all to a 15-field raid:

Distance	TS 0	TS 20
15 fields	2h 30m	2h 30m
21 fields	3h 30m	3h 22m

At 21 fields the bonus applies to exactly one field, so it saves eight minutes. If your targets are your immediate neighbours, this building is not for you.

Past 20 fields it compounds hard

A Legionnaire, at 6 fields per hour on a 1× server:

Distance	TS 0	TS 20	Saved
20 fields	3h 20m	3h 20m	0%
25 fields	4h 10m	3h 30m	16%
50 fields	8h 20m	4h 20m	48%
100 fields	16h 40m	6h 00m	64%
200 fields	33h 20m	9h 20m	72%

The saving is not a fixed percentage - it grows with distance, because the fixed 20-field portion becomes a smaller share of the trip. The Tournament Square is a building for people who hit things far away. For a long-range offensive account it is close to essential; for a defensive account that mostly reinforces nearby friends, it is near the bottom of the build order.

Levels have diminishing returns

The multiplier is 1 + 0.2 × level, which is linear in speed but not in time saved. On that 100-field trip:

TS level	Multiplier	Travel time
0	×1	14h 17m
5	×2	8h 34m
10	×3	6h 40m
15	×4	5h 42m
20	×5	5h 08m

Levels 1–5 halve the trip. Levels 15–20 save 34 minutes. The first few levels are where nearly all the value is.

The slowest unit sets the pace

An army moves at the speed of its slowest member. One ram in an otherwise cavalry attack drags the whole force down to the ram's speed, and no Tournament Square level changes that - the bonus multiplies whatever the slowest unit's speed is.

Hero boots work the same way

Speed boots for the hero also only count after the first 20 fields, while spurs add a flat number of fields per hour to the whole march. Both are covered in the unit comparison's travel section.