Beginner's Guide
From Conquest Wiki
To do well in battle, the basics of combat must be understood. These are some of the mechanics of Conquest that you should be aware of as you venture onto the field for your first games. If you haven't read the introduction yet you should carefully read through it first to learn how to perform the various tasks available. This guide will go over the basics of movement, judging when you will be victorious in combat, how to put operations to their best use, and some simple battlefield strategies.
Note: When giving details of squads, the notation is troopers/tanks/bombers. So a squad with one of each is 1/1/1, but a squad with just a trooper and a tank is 1/1/0.
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Movement
When a unit moves, it does so without stopping to fight on the way. To move successfully into an engagement with an enemy, you must target their destination. If you move into an enemy's territories just as they move into your territory your positions will simply exchange and no combat will occur. Drop pods are like movements from above, an enemy moving out of the tile will not engage the incoming units. The only exception to units successfully moving to their destination is when they are attacked by a missile, as that destroys all units in a tile before any get to move.
The order in which actions get processed is the following: missiles > movement > drop pods > battles > satellites.
Chaining Movement
For those wanting to move units slightly faster around the battlefield while maintaining cities for production and keeping territories cleared from the fog of war, chaining the moves can be an excellent option. All that's required is to watch for a situation where you have a unit at rest guarding a territory that a new unit can move through on its way elsewhere, and then when you move the new unit in you move the other immediately onward. This leaves the city's production or your view of the area intact, and allows you to have the effect of moving units two territories in one turn.
Squad Movement
To get your units where they need to go, moving in squads is very important. However, you don't want to move them in squads that are too big, as that will result in a missile wiping them out and hurting you badly. The general rule is that squad power should not go over 4 -- troopers are 1, tanks are 2, and bombers are 3. Popular squads for moving forces around are 2/1/0 and 1/0/1. 0/1/1 should be reserved for situations where you believe you will encounter enemy 2/1/0 squads, as it's a power 5 but counters it. For moving around in mountains, you can use squads of 2/0/0 and 3/0/0, because troopers are quite strong in that terrain.
Unit Strengths
If you don't like to keep exact values for who will win in your head, you can get by with just knowing approximations of victory. To do that you should make sure that you at least learn the direct matchups, which can be found at plains and mountains (especially the summaries). Keeping those numbers in mind should help you determine if you're likely to win or not. If you want to go more in depth, you should check out the Expert's Guide and look at the squad counters section. Remember that enemy troops can move into and out of your destination territory when you plan your attack, so prediction of what your opponent will do is very important. Also, keep in mind that you often have enough time to quickly check an open web browser that has those comparisons for you, so keeping the pages open in the background can be very useful.
Satellites
Satellites are the most common operation you will receive, and also have the least direct influence on combat. While they are plentiful, you should still not just waste them. Satellites are best used to check nearby mountains where you have reason to believe an attack is incoming from, scout distant cities to see what forces the enemies may have at them, and to check for landing points for your drop pods. While caution is valuable to not waste your resources, don't be too hesitant to use a satellite if you're worried about a potential attack – the returns if you find a massed assault incoming can be invaluable. The reverse is also true though, if you have a large stack of forces and an enemy uses a satellite on them the results can be devastating to you, so try to keep your units spread out to adjacent tiles even if you need to defend or are launching an assault.
Drop Pod Strategies
Because drop pods add relatively large stacks of units onto one territory, newly dropped units are particularly vulnerable to enemy missiles. Because of this, it's a good idea to try to hide your drops from enemy sight until your units can spread out. If it's a location deep in enemy territory or one you don't have full vision into, check ahead with a satellite and look for empty mountains. Particularly valuable locations are those from which you can spread to claim multiple enemy mega cities. Taking multiple cities provides you with more production and reduces the enemy production equally, as well as moving your core forward so that your reinforcements can enter battle sooner. To defend against incoming drop pods near your mega cities, it can be wise to leave soldiers or use satellites in nearby mountain territories for a short while after a drop pod is received, and save a missile for use in response if you catch it.
Missiles
Missiles are extremely valuable tools, and should not be wasted needlessly. When a missile is used it destroys all enemies in a territory at the start of the movement phase, which allows you to clear a massed enemy force and immediately move into the territory to claim it yourself. Missiles are also extremely useful against newly placed drop pods or other large groups of enemies that may make the mistake of clumping where you can see them. If you use your missiles carefully they can swing the tide of battle for you! In order to guard yourself against missiles, try to not mass your units where the enemies can see them but spread them out to adjacent territories so that they can still support each other for assaults or defenses. As a rule of thumb, try not to nuke less than a power of 5 unless necessary.
Starting Strategies
Getting a good start is very important to doing well for the rest of the game. There are three things that you need to bear in mind when you start: corners, nearest mega cities, and likely enemy start locations. Corners are valuable because you can rely on them staying relatively safe except for enemy drop pods. Initially, that's not a concern because you have six turns before a drop pod becomes available, so send single troopers in to the corner cities and forget about them for now. Nearest mega cities should be your next focus, as they provide double the production when compared to a normal city. You should focus on sending more of your units towards the closest of the mega cities than to devoting them to farther cities, though that doesn't mean you should ignore close cities. Finally, enemy activity needs to be taken into account. It's most likely that you will encounter enemy units before bombers are present, so when assigning units to claim farther cities you should be spearheading with your tanks. This will give you the best chance at a successful initial expansion.
Gameplay Strategies
After you've gotten a good start, following up is very important. Be sure to not neglect fully expanding along whatever edges you find your opponents aren't in – it's a waste of possible resources to let an uncontested city sit empty. Remember all of the strategies for using and defending against the various operations, outlined earlier in this guide. While it's not always wise to do tradeoffs where you attack a unit with one of equal strength, be willing to gamble if it could gain you an early advantage without a large penalty for losing. Also try to pay attention to what your opponents are doing so that you can learn to successfully intercept and destroy their units, while watching that you don't become too predictable yourself. Finally, don't be discouraged by defeat but keep practicing even if you lose frequently, and be willing to ask after the game is over if your opponent noticed anything you could improve on and will tell you what might work better.