City Conquest

This section is in need of revision. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. The reason given is: This page is just quickly thrown together. Needs a minor rewrite and clarification about loyalty.

One empire controls each city. The empire who controls the flag at the town square controls the city. To gain control of a city, you must replace the flag at the town square with the flag of your empire.

Each avatar and troop present influences a flag according to their empire's stance toward the holder of the flag. Enemy flags are lowered to the bottom of the pole then changed to your empire's flag. This is symbolic and does not require you to have a flag in your possession. Friendly flags are raised to the top of the pole.

Military flags increase the difficulty of capture a city. You cannot raise or lower the flag at the town square unless all of the military flags of the city are controlled by empires that are friendly or neutral toward your empire.

When no avatar or troop is standing near a defense base flag, it slowly returns to the owner of the town square flag. To hold a defense military flag, at least one avatar or troop must remain at the defense base until the town square flag is changed.

Loyalty and Occupation

Citizens of a city are loyal to their empire. Loyalty is reported as a percentage on the city status report. This is the percentage of the citizens who are loyal towards the empire who controls their city.

When citizens move into a city, they are not immediately loyal to the controlling empire. Their loyalty is gained slowly, at about one person per city report cycle. It is typical for the loyalty percentage to change a lot when the population of a small city grows quickly.

When a city is conquered, citizens remain loyal to their previous empire. This is reported as disloyalty to the occupier in their city status reports. The disloyalty of citizens drops slowly, at about one person per city report cycle. When the disloyalty level reaches zero, the citizens change their allegiance to the empire who controls the city; then loyalty toward their new empire begins to rise.

A city that is disloyal toward the controlling empire is an occupied city.

Occupied cities may send city occupation reports to their previous empire at the same time that they send city status reports to the controlling empire. The likelihood of a city occupation report at each city report cycle decreases as loyalty toward the previous empire decreases.

While a city is occupied, the controlling empire cannot construct or demolish any buildings or roads. Construction must wait until the citizens change their allegiance.

Disloyalty towards an occupier affects the productivity of the citizens. Citizens become more productive as disloyalty decreases. While disloyalty is high, construction and manufacture by citizens is slowed.

Occupation affects the morale of citizens. Citizens incur a morale penalty that decreases as disloyalty decreases.

Occupation prevents drafting of local citizens. While a city is occupied, troops cannot be drafted from the populace by defense bases. The only way to increase the number of troops at a defense base in an occupied city is to bring them to the base from elsewhere.

Pillaging

When a city is captured, the local banks are pillaged of all funds from the government and citizen accounts. The loot is split equally between the conquering avatars present in the city. All avatars in the city get an equal share, whose empire is an enemy toward the losing empire at the time the city is captured.

Quotes from patch notes

Related patch notes

Update 2015-08-06: Flag Capture Rule Change After some discussion on the forum with battle hardened players, a significant change to the city capture rules was implemented. City flags now return to the empire of allegiance of the citizens when they are not occupied by enemy units. Previously, flags returned to the empire who owned the town square flag. This change requires that a captured city be physically occupied until the allegiance changes. This change is intended to slow the marauding squads of players who used to be able to capture most of an empire in an hour. If the political stance is neutral, of the citizens' empire of allegiance toward the owner of the flag, the citizens do not influence the flag, up or down. Update 2015-09-22: Troops Leave Their Post Troops placed at a flag abandon their posts and the flag goes back down. First some notes on how flag and city capture work. After a flag is captured, the empire that captured the flag differs from the Empire of Allegiance of the local citizens. Captured flags return to the EoA when not actively guarded. The EoA changes slowly toward the owner of the town square flag. This is reported as the loyalty of the citizens. After the EoA changes to match the flag, the flag is no longer captured. Rather it is now in its new normal state, awaiting capture by some other empire. Several factors contributed to the problem reported. When not in any scene, all but one of the troops at a flag are returned to the garrison. Troops leave flags unguarded to go to work in a weapon or shield base. After a troop is moved to a weapon or shield base, a replacement emerges from the garrison to guard the flag and to be ready for assignment to a base. In an occupied city there is usually no troop in the garrison to replace them. The garrison is not filled from the local populace in occupied cities. Here is the solution implemented in this update. Troops at captured flags no longer return to the garrison when not in any scene. The last troop at a captured flag will not be reassigned to a base.