At the beginning of each turn, players receive additional armies if they own every country in a continent. For each continent owned, the player receives:

• Africa: 3 armies
• Asia: 7 armies
• Australia: 2 armies
• Europe: 5 armies
• North America: 5 armies
• South America: 2 armies

You should always work toward conquering whole continents. The more continents you control, the more armies you get, and the easier it is to conquer other continents.

The difficulty of conquering—and defending—the continents is generally proportional to their value. For example, it's easier to conquer Australia and South America because they have only four countries each. It's also easier to defend them, because they have only one and two connections to other countries, respectively.

When you own a continent, concentrate your defensive armies in the countries that border other continents. For example, if you own Australia you should fortify all your armies to Indonesia. Similarly, if you own both North and South America, fortify all your armies to Alaska, Greenland & Nunavut, and Brazil.