Managing occupied towns

Conquering a town is the exciting part. Keeping it is the part nobody explains. I have held a few foreign towns now, and here is what I learned about managing them, because an occupation is not something you win once and then forget. First, where you see them. After you take a town it appears in your Army section under My conquests. There you can see your garrison in each town and roughly how long you can hold it. This is your control panel for everything you occupy, so check it often. The income. This is the whole reason we do it. While your soldiers hold a foreign town, the owner pays you 10% of everything they produce. Gold, resources, whatever they make, you skim a tenth of it automatically. You do nothing, the tax just comes in for as long as you hold. A rich town that mines a lot of gold is therefore worth far more than a poor one. Now the hard truth: occupation is temporary. Your soldiers that garrison the town do not live forever. They live about as many days as the town happiness, minimum one day. So a happy town you can hold longer, an unhappy one frees itself quickly. When your LAST soldier in that town dies, the town is automatically freed and your tax stops. Nobody sends you a big warning, so watch the timer. The way to keep a town is reinforcement. If you send more troops to a town you already hold, they do not fight a battle, they simply join your garrison. So the trick is to send fresh soldiers before the old ones die, and the occupation just continues without a break. Think of it like paying the rent with soldiers. Defending what you hold. Other players can attack a town you occupy. When they do, their army fights YOUR garrison, not the local home defenders. So the defense points of your occupying soldiers is what protects your conquest. If you expect trouble, garrison with high defense units, not only cheap attackers. And remember, the original owner can try to liberate their own town for free, throwing their home army at your garrison with no fee and no travel. If your garrison is thin, they will kick you out. A nice detail: your occupying soldiers do not need houses in the conquered town. Housing only limits your own troops at home. Every soldier that survives the battle stays and holds the town, no matter the local housing. So you can pile a big garrison into a town you conquered without worrying about their rooms. My strategy after some mistakes: I only bother holding towns that actually produce a lot, because the 10% is only worth it if they make real output. I keep an eye on the My conquests timers and reinforce the valuable ones before they expire. The poor towns I just let free themselves, they are not worth the soldiers. And when I take a town from a strong player I bring extra defense, because you can be sure they will try to liberate. Occupation is passive income, but it is income you have to feed with soldiers. Manage it like a business: hold what pays, drop what does not, and never let a profitable garrison die just because you forgot to reinforce.