How to Animate Territory Conquest on a Map
A highlighted country tells viewers where something is. A conquest shows it happening: one territory grows piece by piece, with a front line sweeping across each region as it is taken. This guide builds one from regions you add with the Region tool, then covers the tools around it: merging regions so the borders between them disappear, cutting one region out of another, hatched fills, border glow, and border effects.
7 min read · Updated October 2, 2026
What you'll learn
- Add the regions you need and give each one its own colour
- Turn one region into a conquest and set the capture order, pace, and front line
- Add hatching and a border glow to the territory
- Merge regions so their borders dissolve, or cut one region out of another
Step-by-step guide
- 1
Add the regions with the Region tool
Click Region in the Quick-Add toolbar to open Highlight Region. Type a name in the search box (1), then click the country in the list (2). Continents and country groups such as the European Union are in the same list. Above the search box are Click on the map, Draw an area, and Upload GeoJSON, a Pro feature. Every region you add is its own element, so add the starting territory and every region you want to capture. Give each one a different fill colour in the region's settings so you can tell them apart later.
- 2
Turn the starting region into a conquest
Select the region that should start the conquest, open the Timing tab of its settings, and find Conquest. Tick the other regions in the order they should be captured (1); the number on each tick is its place in the sequence. Then click Create conquest (2), which reads Create conquest (4 steps) when you have ticked three regions, because the starting region counts as the first step. The ticked regions are taken into the starting region and their outlines join it as one shape with no inner borders.
- 3
Set the order, pace, and front line
After you create the conquest, the Conquest section lists its steps (1). The arrows move a step earlier or later and the X removes it. Seconds per capture (2) sets how long each capture takes, from 0.3 to 5, and shows the total next to it. Front line (3) sets the colour of the line that sweeps across each region and switches it on or off. The line moves away from the land you already hold. Captures begin once the region's intro animation ends, and the editor shows the finished territory, so press Play Preview to watch it grow. To add more captures later, tick more regions and click the Add button that replaces Create conquest.
- 4
Add hatching to the fill
Open Texture: the Hatch row (1) draws stripes or dots over the fill. Choose one of two diagonal directions, horizontal, vertical, crosshatch, or dots. When a hatch is on, its own Hatch Colour, Hatch Opacity, Spacing, and Line Width controls appear underneath. On a conquest the hatch covers only the land held at that moment, so it grows with the territory.
- 5
Add a border glow
In Border, the Steady Glow slider (1) adds a soft glow around the border. It starts at 0%; once it is above 0 a Glow Colour row appears under it. Where two countries were joined, thin seams can show along the old border. Lowering the border Opacity and letting the glow carry the outline hides them.
- 6
Merge regions to dissolve their borders
To make one shape from several regions, select one of them and open Merge & Cut. Tick the regions to add and click Merge 1 into this region. The border between them disappears, the merged region keeps the style of the region you selected, and its label becomes both names joined by a plus sign (1). The ticked regions are removed, and Undo brings them back. The same section offers Dissolve inner borders on a group such as the European Union, which is made of separate countries. A conquest region does not show Merge & Cut.
- 7
Cut one region out of another
Cut removes one region's area from another and keeps the region you cut with. Select the region to cut from, tick the regions to remove (1), and click Cut 1 out of this region (2). Here the European Union has Germany cut out of it. Germany stays as its own region, so you can restyle it or delete it; its fill is turned down to 0 here to show the gap. Cuts suit occupied territory, or a group with one member taken out.
- 8
Pick a border effect
On the Timing tab, open Animation. Effect (1) sets how a region comes in: Fade, Draw, Glow, or Spread. Draw has four styles (Outline, From a point, Comet, and Marching dashes) and Glow has two (Breathing and Pulse). A line under the tabs describes the selected effect. Duration and Delay set the timing of the intro, and a conquest starts when the intro ends. Draw, in any style, outlines the finished territory from the first frame, so on a conquest region use Fade to keep the outline in step with the captures. Spotlight, on the Style tab, dims the rest of the map around the region.
Interactive walkthrough coming soon
A visual step-by-step guide with annotated screenshots will be available here. In the meantime, follow the written steps above or watch the video tutorials.
Watch video tutorials →Pro tips
- Give each region a different colour before you create the conquest. The capture list shows each region's colour, which makes the order easy to check.
- Keep the intro Duration short and make the slide at least as long as the intro plus the total shown next to Seconds per capture, so the last capture finishes before the slide ends.
- Tick the regions in the order you want them taken. The front line sweeps from the land you already hold toward the next region.
- A merge or a cut can be undone with Undo in the top bar, so try one and step back if the result is not what you wanted.