Conquest Tokens and protection timers
From the Polandball Go Wiki
Most territory play happens on foot, but two parts of it don't: Conquest Tokens, which let you take land without going there, and the timers that protect new and beaten players. This page sets out those rules, and how territory worked before patch 5.0 changed it on October 15, 2026.
It covers rules only. Territory squares are real places, and nothing here, or anywhere on polbielytics, shows where any player holds land or plays.
1 Conquest Tokens#
A Conquest Token is spent to act on land you aren't standing on. It has two uses:
- Remote claim. One token claims a free square that touches your land, from anywhere. Free land that doesn't touch yours still has to be visited in person.
- Raid. One token attacks another player's square from anywhere. A Raid can't target a settlement's seat, and a win takes only the square you hit.
Compare that with an in-person attack, which can take a whole block. A clean in-person win, losing one ball at most, takes the most ground, and a close win or an Auto-battle win takes one ring less. How far that ground reaches depends on where the square sits: up to 9 squares in a Heartland, 25 in a Frontier and 49 in the Wilds. A Raid trades all of that for convenience: one square, from anywhere.
The 5.0 article doesn't say how Conquest Tokens are earned or how many a player can hold, and neither has been recorded from the game's screens.
When a token is worth spending
- Rounding off your land. A remote claim is the only way to take a free square next to your land without walking to it.
- A square you can't reach. A Raid suits a single square that matters, such as one that would join two parts of your land.
- Not for big gains. Because a Raid takes one square and an in-person win can take dozens, tokens are a poor way to grow fast.
In the game's public capture feed, a Raid is recorded as raid, separately from capture (walking on, claiming remotely or winning in person) and siege. See Territories.
2 Protection timers#
The game's 5.0 article sets out a number of timers that limit when land can be attacked and how fast it can change.
Founding Peace: 72 hours. A new player places their Capital along the Founder's Road, where it starts as a Hamlet on a 9-square plot. For its first 72 hours it can't be besieged. When 5.0 arrived and old territory was converted, every seat started with 72 hours of Founding Peace.
Siege Shield: 12 hours. After a settlement is sacked, all of the defender's seats get a 12-hour Siege Shield.
A sacked settlement: 24 hours. The settlement that was sacked can't be besieged again for 24 hours.
Retry after a loss: 30 minutes. After losing an attack on a square, you can try again in 30 minutes.
Five wins a day. Once you have beaten the same player five times in a day, further wins against them take only the square fought over.
Moving a seat: once every 7 days. A settlement's seat, including the Capital, can move once a week, for a quarter of that tier's cost in Influence. After the 5.0 conversion, each player could move their Capital once for free within 14 days.
Inactive players: 14 and 30 days. A player away for 14 days has their land defended by Militia alone. After 30 days away, all of their land counts as Wilds.
Losing everything. If a player's Capital falls, their highest-tier city becomes the new Capital. A player who loses every settlement can found a new Capital for free.
What the article leaves open: whether Founding Peace also stops ordinary attacks and Raids on the land around a seat, or only sieges, and whether the Siege Shield blocks anything other than sieges. The wording covers sieges only.
3 Territory before 5.0#
Until October 15, 2026, territory was a scatter of single map squares, often called cells, with no Lands, Capitals or settlements.
- Walking onto a free square claimed it.
- A defender could be placed on a square you held: one ball, shown on the square with its CP. A square could also be left with no defender.
- Your land list showed each square's name, which started as "Unnamed Land" and could be renamed, how long you had held it, and its defender or a button to place one. The list also had a Withdraw All button for defenders.
- Balls on squares showed as deployed in the collection. Deployed balls could still be traded; they were recalled from their squares when they went into the Trading Post.
Territory also fed the game's quests and achievements. In October 2026 the daily quests included Conquer Territory, worth 1,000 Clay. Alliance weekly quests had a territory milestone, First Footprints, starting at 50 squares captured. The Territorial Supremacy achievements ran to 10,000 and 25,000 territories, and Globetrotter asked for a territory in each of the four quadrants of the Earth.
The game's leaderboards counted territories per player and per alliance, globally and in four regions: North West, North East, South West and South East.
The conversion
When 5.0 arrived, old territory was converted automatically into one Land per player. Each Capital was placed where its owner's squares were most concentrated, up to City tier, with extra cities at the next densest spots. Balls that had been sitting on squares went back to their owners' collections, and each new garrison was filled from its owner's PvP defense team. Fighting over territory now needs app version 5.0 or later. The new system is described on Lands, Capitals and sieges.
4 On polbielytics#
polbielytics follows territory only as totals by alliance: which alliances are gaining and losing ground, and by which method. It never shows a player's squares, settlements, Capital or where they play, at any level of detail. See the Territory page.
See also Territories and the patch timeline.