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Declaring War

Wars need a real reason

Wars aren't meant to be declared for no reason - "I just want to PvP" isn't good enough on its own. Every war is admin-gated: when you declare, you'll be asked for your reasoning, and an admin has final say on whether it's allowed to go ahead. See step 3 below.

War is how territory changes hands. It's a deliberate, scheduled event tied to a fixed weekly session - not an instant free-for-all.

1. Declare - any time

/nation war declare <nation>

Requires the Manage Diplomacy permission. You contest one territory - one connected cluster of the enemy's claims. If they have several separate territories, you'll be asked to pick which one to contest (by number).

You can't declare war if:

  • Your nation is already in an unresolved war (win, lose, or resolve it first).
  • The target nation is already in an unresolved war.
  • You have an active treaty or a recent alliance-break cooldown with them - see Diplomacy.

You can declare at any time - there's no need to wait for a specific day. Your war is automatically slotted into the next available weekly session.

2. The weekly war session

All battles happen at a fixed weekly slot: Friday, 20:00–02:00 (UK time). Only one war can be scheduled per session, and at most two upcoming sessions can be booked at once. When you declare:

  • If the next Friday's slot is free, your war is proposed for it.
  • If it's already taken, you're bumped to the Friday after.
  • If both upcoming Fridays are already booked, your declaration is rejected outright with a message to wait or contact an admin - it isn't queued indefinitely.

Any time this wiki (or Discord) mentions a battle time, it's shown as a dynamic timestamp that displays correctly in your own timezone.

3. Admin review

A declared war doesn't go live immediately - it's marked pending until an admin reviews it (via an in-game command or a Discord button). This is announced in the server's #nations-admin Discord channel. You'll see your war listed as pending admin approval until then.

As part of that review, an admin will ask you for your reasoning for the war - "I want to PvP" isn't a valid reason on its own. Come with a real motive (a border dispute, retaliation, a political grievance, etc.) - the admin has final say on whether the war is allowed to proceed.

  • If approved, your war is confirmed for its session slot, and it's publicly announced in the #nations-news Discord channel with a countdown timestamp. That post is kept up to date through the whole war - it updates when the battle begins, when it's won (naming the winner), and if it's cancelled. Online members of both nations also get an in-game chat message right away; anyone offline at that moment gets the same message the next time they log in (as long as the battle hasn't already happened by then).
  • If denied, the war is cancelled before it ever goes public, and your reserved slot frees up for someone else.

4. Changed your mind? Cancel it

/nation war cancel <nation>

Only the attacker can call off a war, any time before the battle starts, and it requires Manage Diplomacy. If the war had already been publicly announced, cancelling it updates the #nations-news post to a cancellation notice, so nobody shows up to a battle that isn't happening.

5. Reminders before the battle

As the battle approaches, both nations' online members get in-game reminders at 4, 2, and 1 hours before it starts (configurable), and a final "battle begun" announcement the moment it kicks off. Anyone offline when a reminder fires is caught up the next time they log in. The first reminder is also when allies can answer the call to arms.

6. Ready up

The battle doesn't start the instant the session slot arrives. Once it does, each nation's leader gets a 30-minute ready-up window to confirm with:

/nation war ready

If both leaders ready up, the battle starts immediately - no need to wait out the clock. If the window runs out first, the battle starts automatically regardless of who's readied up.

7. The battle

Once the battle actually starts (either because both sides readied up, or the window ran out), everyone online on both sides is teleported to a battlefield around the contested territory:

  • Attackers spawn just outside the territory; defenders spawn at its centre.
  • You can't leave the battlefield - reaching the edge bounces you back rather than teleporting you away.
  • PvP is on between the two sides.
  • Elimination decides it. When a player dies (or logs out) they're out, and become a free-flying spectator (still confined to the battlefield). A side wins when the entire enemy roster is eliminated.
  • A nation whose land is at stake can concede with /nation war surrender <nation> (or /nation surrender <nation>).

Watching a battle you're not fighting in

Anyone - not just the two nations involved - can watch an ongoing battle:

/nation spectate

Run it once to be dropped in above the battlefield in spectator mode (you can't be seen or hit, and can't affect anything); run it again to return to exactly where - and how - you were before. Like a real participant, you can't leave the battlefield while spectating, so it's watch-until-you're- done rather than a quick peek. You can't spectate a war your own nation is actively fighting in - you're either a combatant or an onlooker, not both.

Building and breaking during a battle

The battlefield has two zones, and they play differently:

  • Outside the territory (the ring where attackers spawn): a free-for-all. Build, break, and place whatever you like - it's open ground. This is where you'd set up siege positions.
  • Inside the contested territory: it's the defenders' land, so the two sides play by different rules. Defenders can build and break their own base freely - dig in, reroute, wall off, do whatever it takes to hold. Attackers can only break the pre-existing base by hand while they're actively in combat - tagged in a fight, not just standing on the land. Outside of combat, blocks that were already there when the battle started - walls, floors, the ground itself - are locked to them, so there's no quietly tunnelling under a castle to pop up in the throne room while nobody's looking; the moment a fight actually breaks out at the wall, though, it can be fought through by hand, not just from range. Both sides can freely place blocks (bridge a wall, pillar up, box up for cover), and any block placed after the battle began can be broken again by either side, combat or not.

So how does an attacker actually get in? You go through the wall, not under it: explosions still tear through everything inside the battlefield, so TNT (and siege equipment) will blast open pre-built defences that hand-mining can't touch. Solid walls are worth building - they force attackers to spend explosives instead of quietly digging in.

If you're building defences ahead of a war, note that obsidian isn't TNT-proof here - it holds up to repeated blasts rather than blocking them outright.

The war cannon

For heavier siege work, attackers can build a war cannon - a deployable structure that lobs primed TNT over a wall.

Craft it in a crafting table. Reading left-to-right, top-to-bottom:

Gunpowder   Iron Block   Gunpowder
Iron Block     TNT       Iron Block
Gunpowder   Iron Block   Gunpowder

That gives you a War Cannon item. Then, during a battle:

  1. Deploy - hold the cannon and right-click the ground where you want it. The cannon rises in front of you, its barrel pointing the way you're facing. You can only place cannons as an attacker, in the buffer zone outside the contested territory - not inside the enemy's claim - and a battle is limited to 5 active cannons at once.
  2. Load - right-click the breech (the solid block at the back, under the trigger) to open it, and drop in TNT. It only accepts TNT.
  3. Fire - hit the trigger button on the back of the cannon. It launches a primed TNT charge down-range, then needs about 10 seconds to prime before it can fire again.

A cannon is only as good as its barrel: if the barrel or the trigger gets broken (or blown up), the cannon is wrecked and becomes an inert pile of blocks - you'll need a fresh one.

8. The spoils (reparations)

If the attacker wins, they:

  • Capture the contested territory - those chunks become the attacker's claims.
  • Seize reparations (default 50%) - that percentage of the defender's nation bank, plus the same percentage of every losing member's personal balance (online or offline), transfers to the winner's bank.

If the defender wins, they keep their land, and also seize reparations from the attacker (default 25%) - that percentage of the attacker's nation bank, plus the same percentage of every losing member's personal balance (online or offline), transfers to the defender's bank. No claims change hands either way when the defender wins - only value.

Things that end a war early

  • Surrender - the opponent wins outright.
  • No-show - if a side has nobody online when the battle starts, the war is cancelled.
  • Admin action or a disband - the battle is torn down.
  • Server restart mid-battle - the battle is cancelled; battle state isn't saved across restarts.

Check your current war any time with /nation war list, or details with /nation war info <nation> - both show the war's ID number, which you'll need for the command below.

Adjusting the battle time

Session slot doesn't actually work for you? Either side can nudge a still-pending or scheduled war's time with:

/nation war adjust <id> <hours>

Positive hours push the battle later, negative pulls it earlier - e.g. /nation war adjust 42 -2 moves war #42 two hours earlier. A couple of limits:

  • You can't pull it more than 3 hours earlier than its original scheduled time, total - not 3 hours per use, 3 hours ever, no matter how many times you adjust it.
  • You can't push it later than the end of the coming Thursday.

Both nations get notified in-game, and the change is announced in #nations-news right away, same as the original declaration. Works exactly the same whether you're on Java or Bedrock - it's a plain command, not a menu.