World Conquest guide
A guide to World Conquest on OverTime: modes, lobby settings, the map screen, opening plans, reading the table, costly errors and ratings.
How to play World Conquest
- 2 to 6 players
- 6 continents
- 42 territories
Overview
Objective
Conquer territories by defeating opponents in dice-based combat. The last player standing wins.
- Classic mode: Eliminate all opponents to achieve world domination. There is no time limit and no territory threshold.
- Quick mode ends early, by design: the first player holding the host's chosen share of the 42 territories, 60% (25), 70% (29) or 80% (33), wins immediately, so opponents can still hold territory when it does. Each player card shows your running count against that target.
- Quick mode also has a clock (20 minutes by default). If nobody reaches the threshold first, whoever holds the most territories wins, with total armies as the tiebreaker. Leaders tied on both share the win; if every player is tied, the game is a draw.
- Mission mode: Complete your secret objective before anyone else.
- Capital mode: After setup each player designates a capital (visible to all). Control every capital on the board at once to win. Losing your own capital does not eliminate you.
Game Setup
- Draft phase (Classic mode): players take turns claiming unclaimed territories one at a time. Quick, Mission, and Capital modes skip the draft and assign territories randomly.
- Reinforce phase: players place their remaining starting armies on territories they own.
- Capital phase (Capital mode only): each player picks one owned territory as their capital before the game begins.
- Once all armies are placed, the first player begins their turn.
- Fog of War (optional): enemy army counts are hidden except on territories adjacent to yours; hidden counts show as a question mark (?).
Turns
Each turn has three phases played in order:
1. Reinforce
Receive bonus armies based on territories held (territories / 3, minimum 3), plus continent bonuses for controlling an entire continent, plus any card trade-in bonus. Place all armies on your territories before advancing.
2. Attack
Select one of your territories with 2 or more armies, then select an adjacent enemy territory. Attack keeps rolling until the territory falls or you reach the retreat point you set; Roll once fights a single round instead. You may attack as many times as you like, or skip this phase entirely.
3. Fortify
Optionally move armies from one of your territories to another connected friendly territory. You may only fortify once per turn, and you must leave at least 1 army behind.
Combat
Dice Combat
- Attacker rolls 1-3 dice (must have at least 1 more army than dice used).
- Defender automatically rolls 1-2 dice (2 if they have 2+ armies).
- Highest dice are compared pair by pair. Ties go to the defender.
- Each lost comparison removes 1 army from the losing side.
Blitz
The Attack button is a blitz: it auto-rolls combat with maximum dice until the territory is conquered or the attacking territory is down to the retreat point on the slider (1 army by default, which fights to the end). The odds above the buttons are exact and follow that retreat point.
Conquest
When you conquer a territory, you must move armies into it. The minimum is equal to the number of dice you used in the final attack. You cannot leave the attacking territory with fewer than 1 army.
Cards
Earning Cards
You earn 1 card at the end of any turn in which you conquered at least 1 territory. Each card shows a territory and a type: Infantry, Cavalry, or Artillery. Wild cards have no territory.
Trading Cards
Trade a set of 3 cards for bonus armies. Valid sets:
- 3 of the same type (e.g. Infantry, Infantry, Infantry)
- 1 of each type (Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery)
- Any 2 cards + 1 Wild card
Start a turn holding 5 or more cards and you must trade a set before doing anything else. Eliminating a player hands you their cards; if that leaves you on 5 or more, you trade at once, in the middle of the attack. If you control a territory pictured on a traded card, 2 bonus armies are placed straight onto that territory.
Bonuses
Continent Bonuses
Control every territory in a continent to receive bonus armies each reinforcement phase.
| Continent | Territories | Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 9 | +5 |
| South America | 4 | +2 |
| Europe | 7 | +5 |
| Africa | 6 | +3 |
| Asia | 12 | +7 |
| Oceania | 4 | +2 |
Controls
Mouse
Keyboard
Play the whole board without a mouse — the focused territory is announced for screen readers.
Before your first campaign
World Conquest seats two to six players online. There is no local mode, because each player's cards and missions must stay hidden.
The host chooses the mode and the settings. The defaults are a Quick game with a one-minute turn timer, a 20-minute limit and a 70 per cent territory target.
The turn timer runs from 30 seconds to three minutes, or No Timer. Outside Quick games the host also picks how card trades scale, and any game can switch on Fog of War.
The map fills the screen, with player cards, the game log, your cards and the phase controls around it. On a phone, the action panel and phase bar take a full-width row under the log and cards.
Every mouse and keyboard control is listed in the rules dialog, and the whole board can be played from the keyboard.
A sound way to start
Small continents are the easiest to hold. Oceania has four territories and pays two armies a turn, and its only way in is from Siam into Indonesia.
South America also has four territories and pays two, but it can be entered from Central America and from North Africa.
Asia pays seven, the most of any continent. Its twelve territories border Europe, Africa, Oceania and North America, so it is hard to keep early on.
Stack armies where you share a border with an enemy, not across every territory. An interior territory needs only the single army it must always hold.
Quick games start with smaller stacks than Classic. With two players you begin with 26 armies instead of 40, and with six players 10 instead of 20.
Reading the table
The player cards show territories, armies and cards for every seat. A player one territory short of a continent is the one to slow down.
Watch card counts too. Trade values climb as sets are cashed in, so a player holding several cards is close to a large reinforcement.
Under Fog of War you see army counts only on your own territories and those next to them. Every territory you take widens that view.
Read the odds above the attack buttons before each blitz. They are exact for the retreat point you have set, so raise that point when the odds look thin.
Mistakes that cost games
Empires usually fall to their own habits before they fall to dice.
- Letting the turn timer run out. The game then moves for you, piling unplaced armies onto one territory and ending an unfinished attack phase without a fortify.
- Blitzing to the last army. A source territory left with one army is an open door for the next player.
- Leaving an enemy continent whole. Each turn they keep it, they collect its bonus again.
- Spreading thin to chase the Quick target. A wide, shallow empire is easy for others to cut through.
- Neglecting your capital in Capital mode. Losing it does not knock you out, but whoever takes it is one capital closer to winning.
- Skipping a cheap conquest. One captured territory in a turn is all it takes to earn a card.
Results, ratings and achievements
Every finished match ranks the whole table. The winner places first, survivors follow by territories and then armies, and eliminated players rank by how long they lasted.
Outlasting other players therefore lifts your rating even when you do not win. Your World Conquest rating starts at 1500 and is separate from your other games.
If your connection drops, your seat is held for five minutes. In games of three or more, players can vote to skip the turns of someone who stops responding. In those games, a player who forfeits is eliminated and the rest play on.
Six achievements mark milestones. They include World Conqueror for a first win, Total Domination for holding all 42 territories and Throne Seized for a Capital victory.
Where to go next
Pioneer's Isle is another long tabletop game for a group, built on trading and building rather than conquest.
Tile Kingdom has two to five players build a shared medieval landscape tile by tile, scoring the features they claim.