Hexes without cities are neutral unless occupied. Cities belong to the occupying force, or to their original owner if empty. Thus, a city is never neutral (barring special scenario rules).



An empty city generates gold for its owner, who can use that gold to build new units in the city.

Thanks for the reply.

You say "original owner" does this include cities on your part of the map when there were no forces stationed there? Or do you become the owner after having a block stationed on the city?

The default scenario assumes that each map belongs to one of the players, which is who I meant by 'original owner'. Control of a city reverts to that player whenever the city is not occupied.

Some scenarios have neutral cities that need to be garrisoned to have an owner at all, some use different conditions for ownership. But that is part of the scenario-specific rules.

Hey thanks Niko, so I guess I can safely assume that unless stated otherwise in the Scenario specific rules all cities on your part of the map are owned by you.

Yes, and the standard scenario also requires that you start with at least one block per city on your home map(s).

Further Question after my introductory game last night.

Cities produce gold automatically each turn for their owner to spend in that city but what happens if you have no troops to build and no one in that city to repair. Does the gold just build up and build up?

And we had two maps last night that were split by water in the middle. Two islands, and from our understanding we could only get our ground forces to the other island if we controlled a port on our side of the map and an opposition port(making it friendly) on the opponents side of the map to use sea transport. This made it extremely difficult to get to the other map board. I only had Viking who are aquatic and my wizard. A powerful force but even then not enough to take on the castle that was stationed there. We seemed to be at a bit of a stalemate with it. CAn you advise?

Much appreciated.
Mark