Conquest and Loyalty
How a city is taken, how loyalty drops and how to hold what you just conquered.
Conquest is the biggest prize in the game: your rival's city becomes yours, buildings and all. It is also the most expensive and longest operation.
What loyalty is
Every city has a loyalty value between zero and a hundred. A healthy city sits at a hundred. When an expedition carrying conquest units reaches its target and wins the battle, each surviving conquest unit lowers loyalty by a random amount between twenty and thirty.
When loyalty reaches zero the city changes hands. Under its new owner it starts at twenty-five loyalty, switches to the conqueror's civilisation and is not a capital.
Loyalty repairs itself
Loyalty regenerates hourly at a rate set in the world rules, one point per hour by default. That means if you cannot bring loyalty to zero in one go, what you knocked off climbs back while you prepare the next wave. Conquest is not a single big hit but a chain of expeditions planned back to back.
The Temple raises the loyalty and morale of a city, increasing its resistance to conquest. Do not neglect Temple levels in border cities.
What conquest requires
- Conquest must be enabled in the world. Some worlds have it switched off; check the world rules.
- Conquest units. They are expensive and cost population; you need several per wave.
- Enough army to win the battle. A conquest unit that dies in the fight never touches loyalty.
- Siege support. Winning without breaking the wall bonus costs far more.
- Timing. The shorter the gap between waves, the less loyalty comes back.
After the conquest
The new city is yours at low loyalty and usually with no defence at all. In order: send support troops, raise the Wall, invest in the Temple and get the resource buildings running. A freshly conquered city is the easiest city to lose again.
Managing an empire
Once you hold several cities, the Empire screen lists them all in one place. You can sort cities into named groups and issue orders through those groups. Keeping border cities in their own group saves time when an attack lands.