The point of the game

WAR OF EMPIRES is a free multiplayer online game in which members attack each other towards the goal of world domination. You start building your own medieval empire as a leader of unarmed peasants with only a tent for protection, and you fight your way through the top of the ranks.

Quick Start Guide

The following are the steps you need to follow to become successful in War of Empires:

1. Register

There are 6 different races in the game. Each has their advantages and disadvantages.

 

1. Humans -- Good resource producers but the worst fighters

2. Dwarves -- Good at defending but poor attackers

3. Elves -- Good at attacking and wood production, but poor defenders

4. Orcs -- Best at attacking, but poor resource production

5. Trolls -- Best at siege weapons and strong defender, but poor attacker

6. Gnoll -- Good at many things, but excels in nothing

 

Once you see the bonuses, you can choose a race that suits your style of play! If you're not too sure about your strategy as of now, you can choose humans, which have the simplest set of bonuses and penalties. After registering you will be sent an email with a confirmation code. Click the link in the email, enter your confirmation code and new password, and you are read to play!

2. Train your peasants

Peasants are the essence of this game. They can be trained as workers to produce resources and gold for you. Or they can be trained as warriors to fight for you, siege engineers to use siege weapons, or spies or scouts to spy on your opponents. You are given 10 peasants to start with and receive an additional 1 peasant each new day (the time to the new day appears on the bottom left hand corner of your screen).

Use your peasants wisely. If you train too many troops you won't have enough workers producing food to feed your army or enough ore workers producing metal to arm your troops. If you train too many workers, you won't have enough troops to protect yourself from other people stealing your gold and resources.

For each peasant trained as one of the four worker classes you receive 250 gold plus a number of resources per turn (Every 10 minutes). Though you want to get as much gold as possible to start with, you should still have some troops so that you can defend yourself or so that you can attack others with low troops. Try to ensure that your troops are at least a respectable number of your population! You can increase the number of peasants you recruit every day by doing any combination of the following:

 

1.Building walls to defend your peasants

2.Building production improvements to make their work easier

3.Building peasant housing for them to live

4.Having a large body of troops to protect them

 

Since peasants are the basis of your empire, aim to increase your recruit everyday by at least 1 a day until you reach a recruit of at least 6-7 peasants/day!

3. Arm your Troops

You create your troops by equipping your peasants with weapons and armour on the Troops page. Each time you equip a peasant it costs a certain amount of gold and resources. You can initially produce only a limited type of warriors, but as you upgrade your buildings, you enable the production of various types of warriors (footmen, archers and cavalry) and with an increased level (more attack and defence strength). It is always a good idea to have the strongest troops possible fighting in your army.

One heavy troop is the equivalent of about three light troops when it comes to battle. If you have equipped a warrior as a certain type of troop and later want to equip the warrior differently, use the Disband feature. This feature strips off the armour and weapons from the soldier (you lose any gold or resources that you spent on originally equipping the warrior) and allows you to re-equip the warrior.

Always be aware of the stamina of your troops. If you let their stamina start to lag, they will have weaker attacks and defence. It is a good idea to always let your troops rest when you can. Resting costs turns and food, but will ensure that your army is at their peak fighting strength. If you don't have enough food or turns to rest your army, they will regain stamina at the rate of one stamina point per turn.

Another thing that modifies how effective your troops are is experience. As your troops fight quality battles against skilled opponents, they will gain experience. If you gain enough experience your army will get bonuses in battle. If you spend all your time attacking weaker opponents, your army will lose experience. If your army loses enough experience they will become untrained rabble and will actually have penalties in battle.

Note: Food production (through workers) and food consumption (from your army being on the move) happen at two different times. So while you are away from the game your farmers might produce 500 food. But when your army starts attacking they are using up the stored food. Keep good track of your army's stamina. If stamina is too low you will find that your army will lose most of their battles. Always try to keep your stamina high. Your army loses stamina by fighting in battles. They regain stamina by resting some turns. (This uses up food.)

4. Attack others

Probably the most used link by the players of the game, attacking is how you survive in the game. There are 4 modes of attack:

 

1.Castle attacks - where an attacker's troops storm the walls of a defender and try to steal gold

2.Raids - where an attacker's troops swoop down on a defender's fields, mines, woodlots, etc and try to plunders resources

3.Revenge attacks - where an attacker's troops ignore any rank unfairness or surrendering by the defender and they attempt to kill off the defender's troops because of a past transgression

4.Slave raids - where an attacker tries to steal another user's peasants

 

Each time you attack, you need to target an opponent after clicking the `Attack' link and selecting the number of turns to attack him/her. At the end of it, the battle log is displayed showing how much damage was sustained by each camp, how much stamina loss you and your opposing troops suffered, how many warriors on each side died, and who emerged victorious. If your castle attack was successful, you will win gold. If your raid was successful, you will win resources.

If your revenge attack was successful, the defender will have learned not to attack you again. For castle attacks and raids, you can choose to attack as many times as you want, for as many turns as you want. But keep in mind policies of decency and try not to attack someone for too long.

Also, as you plunder gold/resources, the amount the opponent has on hand drops and so you should consider getting a new target if the gains are too low. Another thing to keep in mind when attacking is that if you have a very large army, and the defender has a very small army, you will get less gold and resources. But if you attack a target that is larger than you, and win, you will get a bonus of gold and resources.

 

NOTES:
For revenge attacks, you can only perform these attacks if someone has attacked you in the previous 16 hours. Once you perform a revenge attack, your army's bloodlust is sated and you can't use a revenge attack again against this opponent. (Unless of course they attack you again.) Also, when you perform a revenge attack, the defender will put up some resistance, even if you had beat them down to nothing before. So if you don't destroy a defender's walls, you might actually lose the revenge attack.

For slave raids, you can only perform these attacks if the target has a population of 40 or more. Slave raids take 20 turns, 10 turns are used to attack the defender's castle, and the remaining 10 turns are used to escort any captured slaves home. The number of slaves that you capture is figured in this manner. If the target has more troops than non-armed population, then you can't capture any slaves.

However, if the target has less troops than non-armed population, then you have a chance of capturing slaves. For attack purposes, any non-armed unit other than spies and engineers can be captured. When you attack a target, and you win the battle, you will only be able to take back slaves if you have more troops than the target.

This is because you need a body of troops to fight off the defender. For every two troops that you have that are more than the defender's troops, you can take one slave. (Example, attacker has 20 troops, defender has 14 troops, 18 workers, 5 spies, 2 engineers, and 2 recruits, and 2 warriors. So the defender has a total population of 43. Of this 43, 14 are armed, 7 are spies, and engineers, and the remaining 22 are unarmed. If the attacker wins, the attacker has 6 more troops than the defender, so the attacker can take 3 slaves.)

Attack Results

The attack results page shows you what happened in the battle. Battles occur in the following order.

1. Siege weapons fire. (If this is not a raid). Because of their nature, siege weapons target all the troops equally. So if you have 20 troops in your army, and 10 are footmen, 4 are cavalry, 4 are archers, and 2 are siege engineers, then your footmen will receive 50% of the damage from the siege weapons, your cavalry will take 20% of the damage, your archers will take the 20%, and your siege engineers will take the remaining 10%.
2. Archers fire. The damage is determined the same way as for siege weapons.

3. Cavalry charge. Because cavalry can be directed better than siege weapons or a volley of arrows, cavalry attack other troops in specific order. They attack opposing troops in the following order:

a) Cavalry
b) Footmen
c) Engineers
d) Archers

In other words, cavalry try to attack from the sides in order to get at the weaker units in the rear of the opposing army.

4. Footmen charge. Since they are the slowest of all units and have the shortest range, footmen attack last. They attack opposing troops in the following order:

a) Footmen
b) Archers
c) Cavalry
d) Engineers

5. Build improvements

Once you are victorious in combat, you can start to build improvements to your empire. There are 3 types of improvements you can build:

a) Defences -- protect you against attacks from others

b) Peasant buildings -- Increase resource production, allows you to store resources so they don't get stolen, and provides housing for new peasants or slaves.

c) Military and Specialty buildings -- Allows new combat units, new siege weapons, research, market sales, gold banking, spy attacks, and scout attacks.

6. Check your Command View

This screen gives you an overview of your empire. The top portion shows how well you have been doing historically in the game. It shows you how many battles you have won and lost, as well as won/lost totals for your resources, gold, etc. The bottom portion of the screen contains your advisors. There are four advisors that guide your through the game:

Defensive -- Tells you the state of your defences and what you should be doing to improve them.

Military -- Tells you the state of your troops and what you should be doing to improve them.

Economic -- Tells you how well your peasants are producing and if you need to improve anything.

Population -- Tells you how well your empire is growing and if there is anything you can do to improve growth.

NOTE: Advisors are merely advisors. Although you should follow most of their advice, it is not necessary to do everything that they say.

Strategies

Here is a list of strategies that might prove very useful for survival in the game:

 

1.Always attack people who have at least about 10-20% less troops than you for success. The chances of winning against people with similar/more troops than you are lower.

2.Since your attack and defensive strength depends on stamina, raid an opponent to lower his/her stamina. Quickly bring your stamina back to maximum and then launch a castle attack against your weakened target.

3.If you really need to attack someone powerful, remember to attack in a clan. And attack with a couple of raids first to lower his stamina and then launch the castle attack. Otherwise, you'll be made to pay for it.

4.Try forming or joining a clan. Clans allow people to act as a team when playing. They can communicate with each other, declare war on other clans, and transfer resources and gold to each other.

5.Buy mercenaries from the Black Market whenever you can. Mercenaries add to your troop totals and in most cases they will die before your regular troops.

6.Siege engineers are good to bring down your opponent walls and for your own defence, but remember that spies can easily destroy offensive and defensive siege weapons. So always keep enough troops around to guard those siege weapons before attempting to get those extra engineers.

7.Consistent spying or attacks on a particular opponents usually can get them annoyed enough to launch a clan attack on you. Try to avoid this as far as possible, and also maintain congenial relations with your clan as far as possible to back you up in times of need.

8.Most importantly, remember it IS a game and the like the main aim of most games, you should never forget to have fun!

 

All this knowledge should stand you in good stead. Please do remember to read up the FAQs for the game for any more doubts that you might have about the game. Also, clicking the Help link on any page will provide help for the page that you are on. If you have any more questions, look in the Forum to see if your question has been posted before, and if it hasn't, post it yourself. (The Forum does not belong to the War of Empires domain so you must create a user account on the forum. Please use the same username that you are using in War of Empires.) Remember, you are no longer a beginner anymore! Happy Hunting!