When a city is conquered during the war it, along with all attached territories, get ‘occupied’ status. The idea here is to enable ‘occupying’ a single territory by adding a button similar to ‘ransack’ button. ‘Occupy’ button is active only against enemy side in ongoing war and allows unit to occupy an outpost or administrative center in one turn. Consequences could be something like:


Targeted enemies’ administrative center gets detached from the city and becomes an occupiers’ outpost with resource control and unit supply. Similar happens with enemies’ outpost. The new outpost gets status ‘occupied’ and the territory is covered with (occupying) stripes on the map. ‘Occupied’ outpost cannot be attached to any city. ‘Occupied’ outpost can be ransacked in similar fashion as any other outpost. If reoccupied by the original owner status ‘occupied’ is removed. At the end of the war status ‘occupied’ is removed and the outpost is returned to its pre war owner to become subject to peace negotiations.


Motivation: Defending (important) territories along with cities rather than cities alone would further emphasize importance of strategic positioning of armies. The war would be more interesting and dynamic (even single and/or weak unit can occupy territory), with frontline moving back and forth, with resources changing hands from turn to turn, with stealth activities behind the frontline...etc. Moreover, fragmentation of cities significantly affects their economy and releases more outposts for the third party to grab.