Castle

Overview
Castles are a strategic resource. When you claim a hex containing a castle, the flag changes color and has your username displayed, which is visible to all players. Castle hexes earn twice the income of a non-castle hex.

Claiming a Castle
In the initial public release, a castle is captured every time a user runs through that hex. The last person to run through the hex, owned the castle until somebody else ran through it.

The developers have now updated this mechanic. The ownership of a castle has been time-limited to 14 day periods. Participants vie to win that castle during each period by earning the greatest number of soldier points for the castle. Soldier points are determined by the number of times a player has run through that hex and the number of soldiers placed at that castle during each run. The number of soldiers placed during each run is determined by the Age of a player's empire. For eg., if a player were in the Information age, each run through a castle hex would earn 20 soldier points. Another player in the Dawn (new players start here) age would earn 10 soldier points for each run thru the hex and would have to complete twice the number of runs through a hex to earn the same number of soldier points.

The victor at the end of each 14-day period is the player with the greatest total of earned soldier points for a given castle. The award is a large total of gold coins, the precise formula that determines the size of the award has not been determined as of this moment.

In case of a tie at the end of each 14 day period, victory goes to the player that placed their soldiers first. So if we continue using the earlier example and a player in the Dawn age visited a castle twice, they earned 20 soldier points. The player from the Information age visited at a later time but visited the same hex once. Both players have the same number of soldier point. If the totals remained that way to the end of the 14 day period, victory would go to the Dawn age player based on the fact that s/he attained ownership for the longer period of time.