Port Occupation

What holding a harbour is

When you send a fleet with the purpose “Take the harbour”, the fleet that wins the battle off the harbour does not sail home: it stays there and holds the water. While it holds, that harbour's water is yours.

Holding is not taking. The city stays its owner's and its streets are not entered. A land occupation and a port occupation are two different things and both can stand at one city at the same time: one holds the streets, the other the water.

What it gives and what it does not

How it starts

In the target harbour's window press Attack the harbour and choose the purpose “Take the harbour”. The fleet fights whatever defends the harbour when it arrives; if it wins, the harbour comes under your control and the fleet stays there.

If the harbour is undefended there is no battle: the fleet takes the water, both sides are told, and the control begins.

A strike does not do this. A strike fights and comes home, and winning it holds nothing. Holding is a purpose chosen at the outset.

A hostile fleet closes the coast

If a hostile fleet holds a harbour, no army of yours can come ashore there from overseas. The navy has to be beaten first: this is what a sea battle is for.

It is not an ambush at sea. Nothing is stopped in open water, no transport is sunk and none is taken. The only place the sea says no is at the harbour the army was sent to.

An army that arrives and cannot land never sets foot ashore: it turns round with every soldier and every hull it came with. The way back takes as long as the way out and nothing is lost.

When you give the order, the server refuses only a blockade anybody can see. How many warships wait inside a harbour is private, and a refusal never gives that away: if the coast is closed when the army arrives, it is turned round there.

Who may land where

Reinforcing

To send more ships to a harbour you hold, choose the purpose “Reinforce a harbour” on the Fleet tab of the order window on the army screen. They join the fleet lying there when they arrive.

A reinforcement belongs to the control it was sent to. If that control has ended by the time it arrives, the harbour is not closed again: the ships come home. An occupation somebody else establishes afterwards does not inherit your reinforcements.

Sending part of it home

Under Harbours you hold on the army screen you can send part of the ships in a harbour you hold home; the rest stay and the control carries on.

The last warship cannot leave that way: letting the harbour go is its own order, and it says what will happen before it asks. While a battle is being fought off the harbour both orders are closed — the way out of a battle is the white flag.

How a port occupation ends

A city whose harbour is blockaded

The city is yours and stays yours: production, building and training carry on, the stores are yours and your garrison is where it was. One thing is cut off: no merchant ship can enter a blockaded harbour, and if one lay at anchor when the blockade began, nothing is traded with it while the blockade lasts. The city map shows it too: red-flagged enemy warships lie across the mouth of your harbour and in the bays in front of the city, and they sail off when the blockade ends. Everybody sees it on the island map as well: three of the enemy's ships lie in front of your city, with the name of whoever is blockading your harbour above it, and every other player with a city on the island is told. The number of ships says nothing about how big the fleet really is. You, though, see the ships of the fleet holding your harbour one by one on the Blockading fleet tab on the Sea side of the army screen.

What it costs you is this: no army sails overseas from this city, and warships of yours that surrendered stay bound until the blockade ends. Your marches on your own island are untouched.

Nor do the warships in your harbour put to sea by order: nobody slips quietly past the fleet holding the water. The way out is to fight.

Breaking the blockade

If a free warship lies in your harbour, open the blockade notice on your city's page and press Break the Blockade to attack the blockading fleet. If you win, the blockade is broken and your harbour is open.

The War Harbour works under a blockade too: every warship finished takes its place in the line at the next round. A blockade cannot stand forever over a city that keeps building ships.

Winning this battle establishes no occupation in its place: the harbour simply comes free.

Your forces abroad can still come home

While an enemy fleet holds your harbour, your army and your fleet abroad can still come home. A blockade stops what leaves, not what returns: a returning army comes ashore and returning ships take their place in your harbour again.

Coming home does not end the blockade and does not free your bound ships. Once home, those warships cannot put to sea by order either; the way out is still to break the blockade. If a battle is being fought off the harbour, they join the line at the next round like the city's own.

A reinforcement, a transfer or an enemy landing is not a homecoming: those are the landings the blockade turns back. An operation's destination cannot be changed on the way, so no shipment can pass itself off as a homecoming.

Freeing somebody else's harbour

Sending a fleet to a blockaded harbour asks for exactly the entitlement a land liberation asks for: who may come to whose help does not change. You send the relief fleet with Send a fleet in the window of the city you are freeing.

When a liberation is won the harbour comes free; the liberator does not take the holder's place. Freeing a city leaves it owing nothing to the one who freed it.

Civilian transport

A city whose harbour is held uses the same guaranteed transport allowance as a city under land occupation: your resources come and go, but only within that allowance.

Even when the streets and the harbour are held separately there is one allowance, and cargo is charged once, when it is dispatched. When one occupation ends the allowance stays while the other lasts. Gifts from other players to this city are refused before they sail.

What it costs

A fleet holding a harbour is paid for like an army occupying a city, and a fleet under way like an army on campaign. Both rates are in the table in Army Upkeep.

If that bill goes unpaid the fleet deserts and the harbour comes free by itself. An unpaid navy cannot hold a harbour forever.

A harbour you hold is a base

You can send operations out of a harbour you hold: part of the fleet lying there goes to strike another harbour, to take one, or to free a blockaded one. The order is given on the map: press Fleet from a harbour you hold in the target harbour's window.

The ships that sail do not forget whose they are: the city that built them still pays their upkeep and is still where they go home to. A base is where ships are, not whose they are.

You cannot empty the water to do it: at least one warship of yours must stay in the harbour after the operation leaves. A transport and a bound hull hold nothing. While a battle is being fought off the harbour, nothing sails out by an order.

What an operation from a base depends on

Coming back

An operation comes back to the harbour it left and rejoins the fleet lying there. But a base is not a city, it is an occupation: if that occupation has ended by the time the fleet arrives — you let it go, you were beaten, or no ship was left — the harbour is not your base any more.

The fleet then neither waits nor disappears: it sails on to the city that pays for it, by a real voyage measured from there. An occupation somebody else establishes in the same city is not your base.

If an operation takes a second harbour it stays there: the ships are still yours, their own city still pays for them, and when you let that harbour go they sail straight to that city.