When attacking player villages, your troops fight until one side is defeated. When the attacker is victorious and the attack is a siege attack, they will do siege damage to the village. For conquering only a normal attack is required, but a siege attack will help you hide your plans better.
Siege damage
Siege damage is done when the attacker wins the battle. To set up an attack to do siege damage, you need a Siege Workshop. This requires a Military District, so at least a tier 2 village (Town). A Siege Academy, unlocked through the research tree, increases the siege damage you'll do.
A village is destroyed when it has no buildings remaining.
Siege Workshop
Depending on the level of the Siege Workshop, you can select 0 to 5 targets. A target is unlocked at level 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20.
Siege target selection with a Siege Workshop level 10 and no Siege Academy
For each available target, you also get a roll to damage the defender's Walls. This happens also if you don't select any targets. Each roll has a 76% chance to lower the Walls by 1 level.
If you select a target that doesn't exist in the village, a random building will be selected to receive siege damage.
Siege Academy
The Siege Academy can be built in a village with a Military District after researching Craftsmanship. The Siege Academy increases the damage to your siege attacks every 2 levels.
Without a Siege Academy, attacks damage buildings for 0 to 10 levels. A Siege Academy level 2 makes this 1 to 11 damage, up to 5 to 15 damage at level 10.
Loyalty and conquest
Each village has loyalty to their Kingdom. By attacking with a Noble, you can lower the loyalty of the village to convince it to join your Kingdom instead. When the loyalty of a village hits 0, the attacker conquers it.
Each surviving Noble will lower the loyalty of the village by 30. The more Nobles survive in an attack, the more the loyalty will be lowered.
In order for a Noble to lower the loyalty of a settlement, you must have enough culture to settle a village. It doesn't matter if you attack a village, town or city, the culture requirement is the same as settling a new village. When a settlement is conquered, you will lose 1 Noble to become the new ruler of the settlement.
Screenshot of an attack report where the village is conquered by the attacker
A village starts with 100 loyalty by default. A Town has 200 loyalty and a City 300. If the loyalty is below the maximum, it will increase with 1% of the maximum per hour, so 1 per hour for a village, 2/hr for a town and 3/hr for a city.
Tiering up a village or a town will increase the maximum loyalty, but not the current loyalty. Keep this in mind, as you will be most vulnerable to conquest right after tiering up.
Getting conquered or destroyed
What happens when a village is conquered or destroyed? Obviously, it changes owners or disappears. But what about the army and merchants on the move?
- All merchants and army from the village disappear. These are troops reinforcing other locations, armies on the move, armies returning home, and whatever else. The same goes for all incoming and outgoing merchants.
- Incoming troops and resources from the Aether store disappear. No refunds.
- Incoming armies from other players will bounce off the target, whether it's conquered or disappeared. This does not apply for attacks landing in the same second.
- Incoming merchants bounce of the target and refund the village of origin the resources upon arrival at the target location.
When you lose all your villages, you can select a new spawn location. You keep your aether, research and culture, but will otherwise be reset as if you're a new player. If you have very little culture, you will get a boost up to what a new player would receive.