Total Conquest Opening Strategies

The opening of a Total Conquest match is a city draft that nobody calls a draft. Your spawn, the nearest urban tiles, and whether friends queued with you decide the first sends. This page ranks those plans. The parent tier list hub ranks habits that last the whole map. Read getting started if you still need HUD basics.

S-tier opening: city rush with a home guard

Take or hold the nearest city, leave a garrison, collect, then look for a second urban tile. This is the default for solo queue. It follows the official line — capture cities to boost production — without requiring a premade.

Do this when: you can see at least one city from spawn and nobody is already stacked on it.

Fail state: you send 100% of spawn troops and a third player walks in. Use the troop-split planner even in minute one.

A-tier opening: pocket turtle

If you spawn in a corner with one city and limited entrances, hold, collect twice, then expand. You will look small on the map. You will not look small on the production chart. Pocket turtle is how you survive a 50-player brawl that started on the other side of the board.

Do this when: two or more neighbors are already fighting each other, or your spawn city has a chokepoint.

Fail state: you turtle past the point where all remaining cities are taken. Turtle is a pause, not a personality. After two collects, take the next city. How to capture cities is the exit ramp.

A-tier opening: friend city split

Premades assign cities before the first send. Player A holds spawn city. Player B walks the next urban tile. Player C saves a command or missile for whoever contests. This only works if you can talk. Voice chat is not supported in the listing, so use an external call.

Do this when: you queued with people you actually listen to.

Fail state: two friends siege the same city and crash stacks. Call the tile name. How to win has the mid-game version of this discipline.

B-tier opening: countryside wrap

Take every empty region around spawn, then sit on a ring. It feels safe. It produces slowly. Use it only to connect two cities or to cut a rival off a chokepoint. As a primary plan it is a pretty loss.

C-tier opening: missile first

Opening the shop and bombing a random region is content-creator bait. Missiles are A-tier later when they shrink a city you will enter. At minute one you do not know the production picture yet. Redeem com instead — codes — and hold the roll.

D-tier opening: capital hunt

Sprinting across the map to kill whoever looks loud donates your spawn. You might pick up a clip. You will not pick up cities. If you want fights, take the city next to the loud player so the fight happens on a collector.

First-minute script (solo)

1. Match starts. Gift button. Redeem com if you have not.
2. Count visible cities.
3. Send a 70/30 split toward the nearest city if you do not already sit on one.
4. Collect. Garrison. Do not chase countryside.
5. Read your command card. Hold it unless a city is flipping now. Card rules are on commands.
6. Recheck neighbors. If two players are ruining each other, pocket turtle for one collect cycle, then take the leftover urban tile.

Spawn reading

You will not get a Hearts of Iron national focus tree. You get a tile. If that tile is urban, you already won the draft — do not leave it. If it is countryside, you are on the clock. Path toward cities even when an empty neighbor is one click closer. How to play is the loop after this draft.

After the opening

Once you own two cities, stop thinking in openings. Switch to overflow mop and pile-on defense on how to win. Openings that keep going after minute five become the countryside wrap, which this page already ranked B at best.

Beta will shuffle spawns. If a patch changes how cities spawn, this list will move rows. Until then, city rush with a home guard is the pick you can defend in chat.