How do I take another city?

Whilst you start the game with a single town, eventually you will wish to expand your empire by increasing the number of towns you own. You have two methods available to do this; either you build your new town from scratch (colonising), or you take that of others (takeover).

There are two methods of doing a city takeover: 1.Conquest by Siege and 2.Conquest by Revolt. Some worlds use conquest and others use revolt; the method is used depends upon the Settings of the world that you play. This page is intended to provide a quick introduction to taking over towns in general.

Prerequisites
Before you can take over someone else's town, there are some basic requirements which must be met first. They are: Buildings, Units, and Culture.

Buildings

Building	Minimum Level	Purpose
Academy	Level 28	Required to research Colony Ship (Academy level 13), and Conquest Academy level 28)
Harbor	Level 10	Required to build Colony Ships

Units
To take over a city you require a Colony Ship (also referred to as a CS). This unit is built in the Harbor, and becomes available once it has been researched.

Unit	Name	Cost
	Colony Ship	10.000 10.000 10.000 170

You will also need sufficient amount of troops escorting your CS to secure your victory both by land and sea.

Culture
The final requirement is that you must have sufficient culture points or CP to take on a new city. When you begin the game you have room for two cities; one of the slots is filled by your first city. So a second town will not require additional CPs, but any further cities will.

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1. Conquest by Siege
This type of conquest applies to siege worlds as well as ghost towns on Hyperborea worlds (where it is not possible to conquer active players). On revolt worlds you "conquer through revolt" (see next chapter).

You can divide the take over into two parts. In the first section you attack the target town and ensure your CS lands safely. In the second part, during the siege you occupy the town and prevent the previous owner from reclaiming it.

Attack
Picking a target
In this phase you need to pick a target and guide your CS safely to it. The maximum travel time of a CS is 48 hours, so the target must be within this distance. Some Island Quests contain rewards that increase the distance units can travel by allowing them to travel faster for a certain period of time. This will allow the time of the CS journey to be extended depending on the unit speed of the world and the length of time the effect is active for.
Sending the attack
Click on the target town to bring up the military tab as you would with a normal attack. You must include:

• CS (this will change the normal attack automatically to a takeover attack)
• Land units (land victory is compulsory)
• Naval units (naval victory is compulsory)

The most important unit in your attack force is the colony ship. It should not get destroyed under any circumstances, otherwise the conquest will be aborted and the surviving troops will retreat. Hence it might be good tactics to send in one or more waves of attacks to eliminate the opponent’s defenses, before the actual conquest is carried out.

Sending along defensive units, or rearguard armies
In the final attack for conquest it is also very important to send along defensive units. These include Biremes and Trireme to fend off naval units, and enough units with strong defensive values to hold off the enemy’s land units. Of course you can also support the conquest from other cities. What is important here is that any rearguard armies are sent in the "support" mode, so when they arrive they can help the troops that are already involved in heavy fighting with the capture of the city.

A town can only be supported by divine units if the god of the town is the same as the god of the divine units. This is true for towns under siege too. So if you want units from different gods supporting the town, you must send them alongside the CS. If not, you must match the god of the town under siege.

Siege
Once you land your CS safely despite having smashed the core of the city’s military defense by destroying all land and naval units there, the inhabitants are not particularly well-disposed towards a new ruler. Your conquering army needs a certain time to convince the citizens that you are the better ruler and to defect to your side.


The duration of the siege differs from world to world. On most worlds it depends on the speed factor, but it can also be set independently. By researching democracy the siege duration can be extended by 10%.

During the siege period the defender has no control over the city. But your troops can get attacked nevertheless, just as they can also be supported. You can see incoming attacks and supports if you go to the city from which the colony ship was sent, and click on the icon displaying the conquest under "Troop movements“.
Important: During siege attacks will work toward lifting the siege, and supports will work toward success of siege. So in attack phase attacks help you, in siege phase supports help you.

Success of Siege
If the conquering troops survive the siege period without being crushed, the city changes hands. All buildings and technologies that have been researched remain undamaged, unless you have specifically attacked them with a divine power or with catapults. Your CS cannot be used again, it disappears. Troops escorting the CS remain in your new town as support units until you withdraw them.

Failure of Siege
A colony ship is destroyed if someone attacking the besieged town wins the land or the sea fight, meaning he has defeated either all land units or all naval units and he has not lost all his troops himself in the process. In this case the siege is lifted; your CS has been sunk.

Ghost Towns
If you send attacking troops to a target town before CS lands and these attack troops arrive after CS lands they behave differently in towns with owners and those towns which are deserted. If a town has an owner, these troops have coffee and return home without lifting the siege. If the town is deserted and is a ghost town, they attack your siege troops and have a chance of lifting the siege.

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2. Conquest by Revolt
This type of conquest applies to Revolt worlds. On all other worlds you "Conquer by Siege".

In this system there are two parts to takeover: first you must convince people that their current ruler is not suitable to rule (attack to initiate revolt), then you must land your own CS to show you are the suitable ruler (during Red Revolt, land CS).

Attack
Once the prerequisites are met, you need to send an attack in revolt mode (by picking the proper icon in attack overview) and then eliminate at least all land units in the targeted city. The residents there start to ask themselves if they are in fact governed by the right ruler. It takes a while before the rumors and grumblings of the citizens have spread within the town and the dissatisfaction escalates. Hence, it will be 12 hours after a successful attack, before the revolt in the polis erupts (this time is fixed; it does not depend on world speed).
Several revolts can be instigated in one city at the same time. But only players who have started a revolt can conquer the city, meaning no-one can capitalise on a revolt that was sparked by another player.
A player cannot start a new revolt in a city when he has already instigated one within the last 24 hours. Extending the revolt time is therefore not possible.

Revolt
During the revolt, the population of a city is willing to accept you as their new ruler. After all, you have demonstrated with your successful attack that you are a more competent commander than the current ruler of the city. Therefore, if you execute another successful (normal) attack incl. a colony ship during this period, you can take over the city immediately. Note: Depending on the world configuration, the revolt time may differ. Check the world settings on the game forum for exact details. 

There are two things you should know:

• Even if the population revolts against its present ruler, he still has full access to the polis, he can command and recruit troops and call in support units, which you should of course dispatch before or when your colony ship arrives.
• And, in this case (unlike with a revolt attack), both the land and sea battles must be won!

Prerequisites
To conquer a city using this method you need to have the following things:

• Conquest researched
• A Colony ship and all it entails
• At least one land unit
• At least one transport boat(regular or fast)
• At least one Bireme, Trireme, or Light Ship
• Sufficient culture points to have another city

Although this is the minimum perquisites required it is strongly recommended that you have a substantial land and naval army in order to defeat any defensive forces in the city you are attempted to take.

Choosing a City

• City Points: The points of a city indicates how developed it is; a 175 point city will have only the basic building structures while in the largest 17,786 city all the buildings will be built to their full extent. Therefore it is important when choosing a target to aim for a city which is the right size; if you conquer one which is less than 2000 points then it will likely stunt your growth.
• Opposing Player’s Points: Don’t bite off more than you can chew, if you target a player’s city who is much larger than you he will likely have enough defense to destroy your attacking forces. Ghost towns are good targets as they can’t offer resistance.
• Opposing Player’s Alliance: If your opposing player’s alliance is strong and well-organized then it would be dangerous to take them on without a powerful alliance behind yourself.
• Location: Think about the location of your second city with care; conquering a city on the same island as your first or upon an island with no farms will limit your growth. Also consider how you can send support between cities, a 48 hour trip by colony ship would not help you if you came under attack.
• Alliance Claims: If you are in an alliance then make sure the city has not been reserved by an alliance mates.

Basically, you want a city that will not cause too great of consequences, but is large enough for it to have been worth it to conquer. Remember, there is no way to abandon a city, so once you have a city, you are stuck with it until it is conquered by someone else.

Preparations to conquer
There are a number of preparations which you will need to take before the actual process of conquest begins.

• Reserving a city: Remember to use the new Reservation Tool to ensure that you don't step on anyone's toes!
• Clearing a city: Before conquering a city, you will need to clear it or kill all of the troops occupying the city. In order to do this, you should go about this process:

1. 1. Spy on the city to find out how much resistance you will meet
   2. Attack the city with appropriate forces to destroy all of the troops in the city

• Building a Colony Ship: You must build a colony ship to conquer a city, this might take some time because you need to collect up to 10'000 of each resource and then wait around 12 hours to build it, so make sure you have built it before continuing onward.

The conquering process

• Send an attack that is specified as a revolt attack.
• 12 hours after the revolt attack lands, a 12-hour period starts in which your Colony Ship can land.
• Sometime between 12 to 24 hours from when the revolt attack lands, your colony ship lands
• The instant the colony ship successfully lands, the city is yours.
  
  

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Additional Information 

Timing attacks
You want to keep your attacks as close together and decisive as possible.

The Revolt attack
When sending the revolt attack itself, you should actually send 3-4 waves of nukes (many, many troops designed to completely overwhelm a city's defenses) and all of the attacks should be designated as revolt attacks, so that even if only one gets through, the revolt is still started. 

Keeping the city cleared
Because the defender has control over his or her city even while the revolt is occurring, you will need to send periodical clearing waves to keep the city free of defending troops

The Colony Ship
You want to land your CS as soon after your last clearing attack as is possible. It is also good to try and land it as soon as the second 12 hours* starts as it gives the defender less time to get support from allies.
Because of the slow speed of the Colony Ship, you might need to start sending it even before the revolt attacks sometimes, so remember to keep track of this, otherwise you might not actually get the city.
In addition, you will want to make sure that there was no last minute support for the defender, so you should time a clearing wave to arrive a few minutes before the colony ship in order to make sure that your colony ship does not get killed.
And just remember, as soon as your Colony ship is ten minutes out of the harbor, you have reached your point of no return and you must continue with the conquest, or else you will loose a quite valuable colony ship for nothing

After you have conquered
Once you have conquered, there will be a multitude of things to do to settle in

Researches
Sometimes the city you conquered will have researched some things that you consider worthless. In order to fix this, however, you must use up a culture point so be very careful about resetting research. Note that demolishing the academy of your new city will NOT reset research.

God
If the conquered city has a temple and it was worshiping a god, then it will keep this god. You should try to use a different god in the new city then you are using elsewhere, you do this in order to make sure you have as many god powers available as possible

Neighbors
Try to get to know your neighbors and your island of your new city, it may be useful in the future


Ghost Towns
You can of course also conquer ghost towns on worlds with the revolt system. But since there is no leader to revolt against, an attack to spark a revolt is not needed. All you have to do is to send a colony ship (accompanied by escorting troops for protection) to capture this city and incorporate it into your empire. If the ship survives its arrival, the city will be yours immediately, provided that you fulfill the necessary cultural requirements for owning another city. In the city, from which the colony ship sets sail, you don’t necessarily have to have researched "Conquest" for this maneuver.

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