Capturing territory

One of the most useful things you can do once you've joined an alliance is to start capturing territory. Territory can be in one of three states:

Neutral Tiles have no color.
Your Tiles & Alliance Tiles are blue.
Enemy Tiles are red.

To capture a tile, tap on neutral tile and tap Capture. You will need a Dropship available to transport troops to the location. The amount of time it takes to capture a tile depends on your troops, abilities, and any other bonuses you may have available at the time.

Once captured, tiles are owned by your alliance and provide several benefits:

Exclusive resources
Resources that spawn on captured tiles can ONLY be harvested by you and members of your alliance.

It's all yours

Players not in your alliance can not teleport their base or build an outpost on territory you own.

Beware of aliens!

Aliens can and inevitably will land on territory you've captured and you will lose it. WARNING: Once you defeat an alien, the tile will stay neutral! This means that anyone could teleport their base to that spot so be sure to recapture the tile quickly!

Important note: Once you're part of an alliance, all tiles you capture or have captured in the past become alliance-owned tiles.  This means that if you ever leave the alliance those tiles stay with the alliance and do not come with you.