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Conquest

Before you begin to settle a territory, you should take some time to consider its defense. In Dawntide, the claim to territory belongs to the faction who settled it, but this claim is not indisuptable – factions can go to war with each other, and when they do, all territory owned by either faction is up for grabs.

War

War is declared in the faction diplomacy screen and requires no acceptance on the part of the attacked. Once a faction is attacked, it is given the option to call in its allies, and the two factions are immediately considered to be at war. Being at war will make all NPCs belonging to either faction react in one of two ways:

  • Guards will immediately attack anyone at war with their parent faction and sound a faction alarm, notifying all faction members of the presence of hostile players in the area.
  • Civilians will not attack unless attacked but will sound a faction alarm. It will be possible to eliminate both guards and civilians using stealth and thus prevent them from warning their faction.

War allows you to freely attack the ships, buildings and members of the faction you are war with, and factions at war can fight even in safe areas, though if there are guards nearby they will still uphold the law and attack or arrest aggressors.

Faction Enemies

It is entirely possible to attack a faction's buildings and ships when not in a state of war, but this will have the consequence of allowing it to brand you an Enemy of that faction. Being branded an Enemy will have several consequences:

  • Members of that faction will be free to attack you with no consequences as though you were at war, and vice versa.
  • If you belong to a faction, the attacked faction is given the diplomatic option of declaring a Justified War on your faction. A Justified War is a declaration of war, but where the faction declared on is considered the aggressor rather than the declarer – which can change the diplomatic situation if for instance the declared-on faction has defensive alliances.

If you belong to a faction that is at war and leave that faction, you will automatically be branded an Enemy of all factions you were at war with – you cannot simply jump into a war and leave it at your leisure. Enemy status can be lifted by the faction that you hold the status with, or will go away on its own after a time depending on the severity of hostilities.

Siege

Territorial control in Dawntide is decided by who holds its military buildings (towers, castles etc) and as such any attempt to seize another faction's territory for your own faction will involve siege warfare. A faction that wishes to take a castle, for instance, must overcome several obstacles:

  • Outlying guard posts in the area, from where guards will patrol the territory and respond to any other guards under attack. These are meant to deter small groups of vandals or bandits rather than hold off a serious attack
  • The castle towers, who will fire on any attackers outside the walls. To breach the walls or gates of a castle you will need siege machinery, which is expensive and slow to build and will most likely need transport by sea to the territory in question unless you have the time to assemble it on the spot.
  • The castle guards and any player defenders inside the walls, who will attempt to stop the attackers from reaching the castle flag.

If the attackers make it past all these obstacles and reach the castle's flag, the flag will be hauled and replaced with the attacking faction's flag, a 24-hour countdown will start and a warning is sounded to the faction owning the castle. If the 24 hours go by without the castle's owners retaking the flag, the castle and all its attached territory, buildings and stored wares and resources immediately switches hands and becomes the property of the attacking faction.

However, if the owning faction manages to retake the castle, the 24-hour clock is stopped and a new 12-hour clock is started for the owning faction. From that point on, each faction's clock only counts down when they hold the castle, and whichever clock reaches zero first determines the new owner of the castle. This means that castle sieges are affairs that can go on for more than a day in real time, and will usually consist of a prolonged series of battles requiring a huge investment of resources on the attacker's part, discouraging the '2am attack' strategy commonly employed in games that feature territorial conquest.