Dot Conquest was designed for a phone first, and its controls fit on one hand: the lasso decides who, the tap decides where. There is no menu of orders, no slider for how many dots to send, no button to hold. This guide explains the three gestures and the reasons behind them.
The browser version is played with a mouse and keyboard for now (see mouse and keyboard controls); the phone version, which is coming, uses the touch controls below. The two map onto each other one for one.
The lasso: who goes
Press and hold on the map, then draw around the dots you want. Those exact dots become your group, and they stay your group until you draw a new lasso. Dots that walk into the area later are not added; dots that leave it are not dropped.
Why a lasso and not a tap on each dot? A dot is small, and a battle has hundreds of them. Drawing around a crowd is faster and more forgiving than picking dots one by one, and it is easy to see what you chose.
The tap: where they go
Once you have a group, a single tap anywhere sends all of it there. Tap a neutral or enemy city to attack it; tap your own land to move there; tap an empty field to stand. Then tap somewhere else and the same group goes there instead. You do not have to lasso again until you want a different group.
The whole group goes, every time. There is no "send half". If you want to split an army, lasso part of it. It sounds limiting, but it keeps a battle readable: every group on the board is one you chose, doing the one thing you said.
Fall back: home
A double tap on one of your own cities pulls the group back to it. Use it when a fight turns: dots that run home live to fight again, and a city with your dots beside it is hard to take, because defenders beside a city push its capture ring back (see capturing cities).
Falling back is the only retreat in the game. Dots never run away by themselves: there is no morale and no automatic retreat. The one thing a dot does on its own is a Heavy's charge at a nearby enemy, and that is shown as it happens.
Looking around
- Drag on empty ground to move the view.
- Pinch to zoom in and out.
Nothing is hidden by fog, so moving the view is only about seeing better, never about finding the enemy.
A tap that lands on a message
If a message (a toast) is on screen and your tap lands on it, the tap belongs to the message: it does not send your group. That stops an accidental order when a message pops up under your finger.
Practising
The game's Tutorial has twelve short drills, each a small battle that teaches a rule or two, and the lasso, the tap and falling back are among them. A drill is done when you have done the thing it teaches, so they are quick.
Where to go next
- On a computer: mouse and keyboard controls.
- Why touch changes real-time strategy: how touch screens change RTS.
- What to do with your groups: your first ten battles.