Culdcept BEGINS how to capture territory comes down to three routes: summon a Creature onto empty land, invade an opponent's land and win the battle, or convert land you already hold with the Shift spells. Each route costs something different, so pick the one that fits the board in front of you.
Culdcept BEGINS How to Capture Territory: The Three Routes
- Summon onto empty land. Stop on an unoccupied territory and summon a Creature onto it. The land becomes your domain, adds to your Total Magic and can be levelled up later. Cheap Creatures that cost 0 to 10 G — Goblin, Wolf, Statue — are the usual early claimers.
- Invade by landing on an opponent's land. Summon onto their territory to start a battle. If you win, the domain becomes yours; if you lose, you pay the Toll in magic. Paying the toll without fighting is a legitimate choice, and the right one when the defending Creature is strong and the land is not worth the fight.
- Convert land you already hold. The Shift Spells — Fire Shift, Water Shift, Earth Shift, Air Shift — change the element of one of your territories, and some Creatures have a Territory Ability that does the same. Changing the element of a land can pull it out of an enemy chain or move it into one of yours.
How to Judge an Invasion
Work through this list before you commit an Item to a fight:
- Compare the AT and HP of both creatures, then add the land effect, the creature abilities and the Items either side may use.
- Both players can play Items in combat, and an opponent's Item can turn a 50/50 into a loser.
- Check that your creature can actually equip the Item you intend to use, because some creatures carry an Item Limit.
- The defending creature surviving is enough to stop you taking its territory, and a failed invasion can still leave you paying the toll, so the true cost of an invasion is the fight plus the toll.
- You can look at an opponent's entire hand at any time, so use that to decide how aggressive or defensive you need to be before committing.
- Read abilities before statistics. First strike, penetration, regeneration, elemental immunity and conditional triggers decide fights that the numbers would not.
- Spells ignore land effects (Scroll Attacks), and an Item such as Gremlin Amulet destroys the opponent's equipped item at the start of the battle, which is often a cheaper win than any amount of AT.
After You Own the Land
The territory-development phase is where you grow what you took. Level the land up to raise its value and toll, and issue territory commands — move a creature, exchange creatures, or change a land's element.
Read the Defending Creature First
What stands on the land decides the fight more often than the numbers do, so it is worth knowing which cards are worth losing a battle to. The card tier list ranks them by effect rather than by stat line.
Breaking a Chain Without a Fight
Sometimes the land in front of you is not worth a battle, and the better move is to take one land out of a chain instead. Card combos covers the spells that collapse a chain without a fight.