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Villages, Cities & Expansion
Your empire is a set of villages. This article covers founding villages, the capital, upgrading villages to cities, loyalty and conquering, and the Tasks system. Growth is gated by Culture Points and expansion slots.
Founding new villages (settling)
To found (settle) a new village you need three things:
- Three Settlers — trained in a Residence or Palace.
- A free expansion slot in the settling village (see below).
- A free Culture Point slot (account-wide).
Settler cost depends on your tribe (Verdant settlers are cheaper). You can see costs on the Train tab once you have a Residence/Palace.
- Settlers already sent are independent of the Residence. Demolishing your Residence does not cancel settlement and does not lose the new village. A village is lost only when it reaches 0 population or is conquered.
- You can settle far away, but it’s generally not advised unless you dislike your starting location.
- Non-capital villages can claim Wilder Sites.
Residence & Palace
- A village can have either a Residence or a Palace, not both. You can have only one Palace on your whole account.
- Expansion slots (per village, tied to that building’s level):
- Residence: at level 10 and 20.
- Palace: at level 10, 15, and 20 (one more than a Residence).
- Only in a Palace can you switch your capital.
- The Residence/Palace shows your Culture Point production and how long until your next CP slot unlocks.
Population
Population = the total food upkeep of the buildings and fields you have built/upgraded in a village. It is one metric of a village’s development but not a direct measure of military strength (a 100-population village could be all resource fields or a troop producer). Troop upkeep is tracked separately. See Resources → population.
Capital
Your capital is your central, protected village.
- Capital resource fields can go higher than non-capital fields (players reached field levels 14–15 in capitals on the 3rd world).
- You can only switch capital in a Palace. When you switch, buildings that require a capital vs a non-capital are removed accordingly (e.g. a Stonemason’s Lodge is capital-only; a Great Barracks is non-capital-only — switching can demolish both).
- If a capital is destroyed, the capital now moves to the player’s largest remaining village; if the player has no other village, the capital cannot be destroyed (update 09/08).
Cities
Any village can be upgraded into a City (via the Town Hall).
- Cost: one Culture Point slot (not an expansion slot) plus resources. Upgrade time: 24h on 1×/2× worlds, 12h on 3× and faster.
- City benefits:
- Watch Tower Guards — hireable defensive units, adding up to +20% defense.
- 3 extra building plots.
- Higher resource-field cap — level 13 (was briefly 14; base non-city cap is 10).
- +200 loyalty on upgrade and +200 Culture Points/day.
- A 25% passive CP bonus from all buildings and fields (added 24/07).
- City buildings (Town Hall, Warehouse, Granary, Barracks, Stable, Workshop) can be upgraded to level 22.
- Special villages cannot become cities: Ancient Stronghold/Wonder/Monument villages (see Endgame).
- Trade-off: a City’s plots and CP-slot cost mean it competes with using a village as a pure “hammer” (offensive) village (which wants a Great Barracks/Stable plus leaders). Cities are usually a mid/late-game investment; a fresh village is often a better early return.
Loyalty & conquering
Villages have loyalty. To conquer a player’s village you reduce its loyalty to 0 using leaders (“chiefs”) and then take it.
- A normal village and a City differ: a City has 200 loyalty (near capital-level, so harder to conquer). To reduce a City’s loyalty you need 1 free CP slot; to actually conquer it you need 2 free CP slots (update 24/07).
- Conquering is easier here than in Travian (player-reported): there is no residence-cut, no main-building instant-build, and no “tablets”, and no hero.
- Reliable conquest usually needs same-second wave landing (see Combat → Wave Builder); a 15-second gap can cause a failed conquest.
- To build a leader/chief you need Residence/Palace and Academy at level 20, the relevant research, plus a free expansion slot and CP slots.
- Friendly attacks: a defender can enable “allow friendly attacks in this village” so alliance/pact members can attack them (no raids/scouts, no loot). This is used to chief an ally’s villages (e.g. redistributing villages when a member leaves/deletes) or as an alternate way to move artefacts. Chiefing an ally’s village is no different from a normal conquest: its Residence/Palace must be removed (the ally can just manually demolish it instantly) and its loyalty must be reduced to 0 with leaders as usual.
Tasks
A Tasks list (target icon) gives resources — and, since update 25/07, some Research Points — for completing early goals. It exists to speed up the early economy when you have few resource fields.
- Village tasks are per-village (claim in that village); account tasks are claimed in your currently active village.
- Reaching 500 population grants 2250 of each resource.
- Task rewards do NOT scale with world speed — the reward is roughly proportional to what the task cost (e.g. ~600 res reward for a ~400 res task). On a faster world you simply complete tasks sooner.