Manual · Strongholds
Occupation and Securing
A taken castle pays nothing until it is secured: presence across owning turns earns control, absence resets it, and the benefits resume only after.
How it works
Taking a castle
Move onto an undefended castle and it is yours at once; a defended one must be won in battle first. Either way, the flag changing is the beginning of the story, not the end: a captured castle begins unsecured.
Unsecured means dormant. No income, no reserve recovery, no musters, no paid development — the walls stand and the domain waits to see who will actually hold it.
Earning control
Securing is presence, counted at your owning-turn starts: any friendly company standing at the castle earns a control point, and with the required points the castle becomes secured. An owning turn that begins with nobody there resets the progress to zero — the countryside has watched armies pass before.
Garrison duty does not accelerate the count; a visiting company secures exactly as fast as an assigned garrison. What a garrison adds is that someone is guaranteed to be there — and supply, and the defence of the place once it is yours.
What securing unlocks
A secured castle pays its income, recovers its reserves, runs its musters and its paid development — all resuming from the owning turn after the securing one. The war economy and the recruitment map both run on secured ground only.
A secured castle stays stable without a garrison, however far your armies march — until it is taken. What tips a holding into unrest is falling to no company at all: a castle abandoned by its captors before the country settles goes back to waiting, dormant as the day it fell.
The rhythm of conquest
This is the tempo of the war: take, stand, secure, spend. An army that outruns its securing leaves a trail of dormant stone that pays nothing and can be retaken by any rival who pauses to stand there; an army that stops to secure everything arrives nowhere.
The craft is choosing which conquests deserve the owning turns. Rich domains and specialist terrain deserve them; a poor crossroads castle on your supply line deserves presence for other reasons entirely.
Rules, exactly
Exact values from the current build — not advice, not flavour.
- Control to secure
- 2 points — any friendly company present at each owning-turn start earns one; garrison duty does not accelerate the count
- Absence
- resets progress to zero — an owning turn begun with no friendly company present
- Benefits resume
- the owning turn after securing — income, reserve recovery, musters, and paid development