There are three types of occupation possible in Avalon: CITY, TOWN and VILLAGE.
The fall of a great CITY is an epic event of potentially world-changing proportions. The CITY means one of the four great capitals, populated and governed by player with all their homes and buildings and possessions and history: a priceless heritage that is the birthright of all its citizens from founders decades hence to new graduates today. The fall of a great city tends to lead to surrender and armistice and settlement. It has not always been resolved thus and the destruction of Springdale created a thousand exiles overnight in a traumatic but relentless razing without interest in armistice. The CITY conquest and consequences is documented in HELP INVASION and HELP SURRENDER, HELP SURRENDER and HELP DESTRUCTION.
Occupation and conquest of TOWN and VILLAGE has similar requirements, the main difference being the TOWN is larger, requires more flags of occupation to be raised and tends to pose a greater defensive obstacle.
Syntax: OCCUPATION [<town or village>].
This command should be issued from the town or village unless your military intelligence is up to date (see HELP RECORDS for details of this). Either way the OCCUPATION command lists all "key" locations in a town or village together with its current condition: no flag, claim underway, raising flag of occupation, passive or active occupation (depending on legion presence nearby). This command also gives you a summary of the town or village size and current state: free, occupied, conquered vassal.
Syntax: DECLARE OCCUPATION.
This is the command you need to type to assert the occupation of a location once it has been successfully claimed by your legions (see HELP CLAIM). You cannot occupy or extend sphere of influence unless you have adjacent SOI locations on which to evolve your homeland's territory. DECLARE OCCUPATION raises the great standard of your city and places the location on the list of those occupied.
Syntax: DECLARE CONQUEST.
The final stage in an expansion of sphere of influence into occupation and conquest is this declaration - the DECLARE CONQUEST command - which must be issued when all 'key' locations of a town or village have been claimed and placed under the standards of your homeland. This declaration turns the town or village into a vassal state, part of your tributes (automatically diverting resources, gold and manpowers to the conquering city).
Conquest of a town or village can be broken by foreign military force. This process is described in HELP LIBERATION. Many an conquererer place large legions in their town or village vassal's key locations, both as defender of the territory and to exact the maximum possible tribute benefit (see HELP TRIBUTES for the material gain from occupation/conquest).
NOTE: if you have occupied a TOWN then any remaining legions will be a possible threat since they will be open to being commanded by players they trust or hope may help them shake off the oppressor's yoke. Trust is given to player-commanders who are not enemies of the town, have stature above junior, are citizens of friendly foreign cities and of course NOT citizens of the conquerer.
Related content in HELP FLAGGING, HELP CLAIM, HELP SPHERE, HELP TRIBUTES and HELP ENLISTING for sphere of influence and town and village territory; then HELP INVASION, HELP CONQUEST, HELP SURRENDER and HELP VICEROY and HELP DESTRUCTION covering the city-invasion possibilites.
