Cities are the whole game. They make your dots, they set how big your army may grow, and owning all of them wins the battle. So the first skill worth learning is how a city changes hands, and it is simpler than it looks: crowd it, and keep it crowded until its ring is full.
The ring
That is the whole rule. There is no button to press and no timer hidden anywhere: the ring around the city is drawn on the map for everyone, and you can watch it fill. Three things follow from it.
- More dots fill it faster. Sending a crowd is not wasteful. A city that takes a handful of dots a long time falls quickly to a big group, which also means less time standing in the open.
- Defenders push it back. If the owner's dots stand beside the city, the ring empties as fast as yours fill it. Clear them first, or bring enough that your count wins.
- A full ring is the only thing that counts. Walking away at nine tenths leaves the city where it was, and the ring drains again.
Guards come first
A neutral city is not empty. It has guards, and the number under the city tells you how many.
Your dots have to fight those guards down before the ring means anything, and the guards fight back. So a small group sent at a Capital loses dots for nothing, and the same group sent at an Outpost wins it. Read the number under each city before you choose where to go: the cheapest city is often not the nearest one.
Why a city is worth the trouble
A city keeps making dots for its owner, all the time, with nothing to spend:
It also raises the size your army may grow to:
That is why an early city pays you back many times over, and why taking one of your rival's hurts him twice: he loses a factory and some of his room to grow.
Taking cities well
- Send one group, all together. A trickle of dots arrives one at a time and fills nothing. Lasso the group, then tap the city once (see the controls).
- Pick the matchup. Guards and defenders are dots like yours, and some of your dots beat them better than others. The counter chart says which.
- Watch the ground. A city on a hill or in a forest is harder to fight beside, because dots standing there take less damage. The terrain guide has the numbers.
- Don't stop at the ring. Once the city is yours, the land around it can be walled in and flipped. See flipping land by enclosure.
Late in a battle
After a few minutes the battle reaches its siege phase, and cities fall faster: 6:00 on the battle's clock. Read the siege phase for what changes, because a city you could hold before then may not hold after.
Winning
Every capture moves you toward that, so a habit of steady, well-chosen captures wins more battles than one big fight.