Conquering villages

Dominance

• Every village has a Dominance from 0 to 100 — how firmly its owner holds it. You see your own in the village overview, a foreign one in the report of an attack with an envoy.
• Every envoy (a Prelate, a Priest or a Druid) that survives the battle takes 20 points off it. The drops add up — envoys can go all at once or over several attacks.
• Only a won full assault counts. Neither a raid nor a lost battle lowers Dominance.
• Left alone, Dominance heals by 1 per hour back towards 100 — unfinished work fades over time.

When a village falls

When Dominance reaches zero, the village changes hands only if all of this holds:

• The Town Hall is razed to level 0. Only catapults bring it down (Trebuchets, Fire Throwers, Mammoths). The defender may rebuild it in the meantime, so the last step is a race.
• You have a free slot for another village — the same prestige cap as for founding.
• It is not a capital — a capital can only be razed.
• It is not its owner's last village. No account loses that one, NPCs and barbarians included.
• The owner has no beginner protection — until its original period runs out, only raids may be sent at them.

After the conquest

• One of the surviving envoys is used up running the new village.
• The rest of the army, hero included, stays in the conquered village as reinforcements of the village it set out from. Recall it home whenever you like, whole or in part; meanwhile it eats in the new village.
• The village gets a level 1 Town Hall straight away, so you can build there.
• Research and Armory upgrades are reset — the buildings stay, the technologies are researched there again.

When you lose a village

• The village's troops that were out at the time — attacks, returns, reinforcements elsewhere — disband. They have nowhere to return to.
• Building, training, research and Armory queues and open market offers are lost without refund.
• Caravans and reinforcements on their way to the village turn back home.
• Your hero belongs to you, not the village: your biggest village becomes their home at once and they set out for it from wherever they are. A relic they carry is laid down on arrival.
• A system message sums up everything that fell.

A razed village

• When catapults bring a village's last building down to zero, the village ceases to exist after the battle and the tile is free to settle again.
• An account's last village does not vanish — it stays standing empty and gets a level 1 Town Hall as soon as the account gains another village — and neither does a monument site.
• For the owner it works out like losing a village above; if it was the capital, their biggest remaining village becomes the capital. Attacks already on their way arrive at empty coordinates without a fight and return.
• A relic lying there is carried off by the attacker's surviving hero, otherwise it returns to the world.