What to build in your cities
Every city you build obviously needs to have a town hall, that’s the first building you start with. The next building I build in a new city is a warehouse, to be able to fill it up with resources. Then it is usually a tavern, as it’s pretty cheap, quick to build and will get population growing fast even with high corruption. I get the tavern to level 3 or 4 before I start with the governor’s residence. How high I get the governor’s residence before I go on with other buildings depends on how many colonies I have. I usually build trading port, city wall and a level 1 hideout after level 1 governor’s residence, then I go on to upgrade governor’s residence so that I have less than 50% corruption or better. Read the rest of this entry »
Guide to growing and reaching the top
Thinking smart and focusing on the right things you don’t need to play 24/7 to become one of the top players in Ikariam. In this guide I will try to give tips and advice and how to be successful and reach the top of the score board in this strategy game. First thing I’ll do is to look at the score system.
Total Score = Citizen + (Value of cargo ships)/300 + Master builder + Generals + Scientists
Citizen: 1 point for each citizen you have.
Value of cargo ships: The total amount of gold you have spent on cargo ships.
Master builder: 0.01 points for each resource you spend building, so a building costing say 700 wood and 300 stone would give you 10 points.
Generals: Your military score, 0.02 points for each resource you spend building troops. When troops die you loose points here.
Scientists: 0.02 points for each normal research point you spend, this increases if you research future researches.
Intelligence and hideouts
It’s really important to have high levels hideouts in your cities to prevent enemies from getting intelligence on you too easily. Early on the server having a hideout 3-5 levels lower than the town hall of the village should be ok, but later on the server you should strive to have the hideout level higher than the town hall level. Each time you want to upgrade your town hall, upgrade your hideout first. One of your hideouts should also be close to max level, to be able to get intelligence from other players more easily. The higher your hideout is the easier it is to spy on others.
Risk on a spying mission can never be lower than 5% and never higher than 95%. The formula is:
Risk % = MBR + CR + SOD * 5 + THL *2 – TTL * 2 – AHL * 2
MBR: Mission base risk.
CR: Current risk.
SOD: Spies on defense.
THL: Target hideout level.
TTL: Target town hall level.
AHL: Agressor hideout level.
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Counterattacking
Counterattacking can be really useful if you’re being attacked by a huge force but don’t have enough troops to defend yourself. If you counterattack the guy attacking you, you might make him turn back to defend his own village in the middle of the battle instead of plundering your resources. This is just a tip on how to do that.
A easy way to check out how much troops he has at home when he’s attacking you use to look at the number of units he’s attacking you with and his military score. Military score is the number of resources you’ve spend building your army times 0.02. A hoplite takes 70 resources to build so it’s 1.4 points, archer takes 55 resources so it’s 1.1 points, etc. If you’re attacked by say 100 hoplites and 50 archers, that would be 140 + 55 points which equals 195 points. If his total military score is say 220 points, he can only have 220 – 195 = 25 points worth of defense left at home. He can of course have reinforcements from other players, but most often people don’t have that.
Do I need a navy?
I’ve heard several times players claiming that you don’t really need war ships in Ikariam anymore once you get the occupation technology. Then you can occupy other players cities and use these as a base to launch attacks after all. I agree that it’s really usefull to be able to avoid other players fleets now and then, but you can’t depend on this strategy for 100% of your plundering.
For one, on some islands everyone has a tiny navy in their cities and then you are not able to occupy a city there without using war ships. More frequently however, there will be 3-4 small cities on the island you can occupy. Using a small city as a base to attack from is not optimal though, they often have tiny trade ports and few action points. If you have to use a long time to load resources and troops you will give the enemy more time to block your city with his fleet, and then the resources will be lost. Read the rest of this entry »
Pillaging to grow quickly.
Being an active pillager is definitely the fastest way to grow, especially in the beginning. You’ll notice many accounts going inactive, and keep attacking them as often as possible, not more than 6 times every 24 hours though, in case they suddenly log on and report you for bashing.
Usually pillaging active player on your own island is not a good idea, it’s better for you that they grow as long as they donate frequently. An exeption to this would be players who don’t defend themselves and get looted by people from other islands frequently, it’s better that you get the resources than someone on another island does.
It’s important to have high level hideouts so that you can spy many possible targets at the same time, I usually just send one to each target and spy on their resources. If they have a lot I then spy on their military. It’s important to remember to blokade their harbour if they have war ships. Early on I usually don’t bother pillaging people with war ships, later on pretty much everyone does though. In the starting weeks of a new server you can usually just check out their military score and don’t waste spies spying on their military.
Start plundering inactives early
You really have to get some trade ships and start plundering the inactive players around you early on. Many of them will have had those first 30 workers getting them lumber for several days, and when the godly protection runs out you want to be ready with a few spearmen and trade ships to take that lumber. Some of them will have as much as 1,500 lumber which is a lot early in the game. Read the rest of this entry »
Wonders and the new miracles
Just thought I’d take a quick look at the miracles that were implemented with version 3.2 of Ikariam. There have been many complaints in the various forums about them, people saying most of them are pretty useless. The fact that you need a building space for a temple makes quite a few players that already have all of their villages full of high level buildings kind of upset. Also many players set up their cities according to how the old wonders worked, and now want to be allowed to move them. Read the rest of this entry »
Plundering the barbarian village
Plundering the barbarian village is something you should do very early in the game, getting the 500 lumber from the first attack will really speed up things for you early on. If you’ve read my first few steps guide you could consider this short article here as a part 2. What you need to plunder the village is one trade ship and three spearmen. The spearmen only costs 30 wood each and it’s definitely worth training them to get the wood that’s there at this point.
The barbarian city grows each time you attack it, so you can only attack it once with your 3 spearmen. The next time you need 13-15 spearmen to do the job. On the next attack you will get both 500 wood and 500 sulphur however, which can be very usefull if you can manage to trade the sulphur for something else, either with other players or using ambrosia. If you’re ready to use ambrosia I suggest you do this, use the 500 wood from the first attack to train 12 spearmen more. Remember though, always send enough cargo ships, for the 2. attack you’ll need 2! In the third attack 40+ spearmen will work, the more you send the less losses you have, and you’ll also need an extra trade ship now, 3 total. Read the rest of this entry »
Wine and plunder strategy
This strategy is for the players who prefer to go around with huge armies and plunder their neighbors instead of doing it the boring way and produce resources yourself. This is how I play the game usually, and it’s the best way to grow quickly and dominate your area. This works best when you’re on a fairly new server, else you’ll just have some player way larger than you come and crush your army sooner or later.
Anyways, your setup is basically a capital with a huge city wall, trading post, trading port and warehouse. This city doesn’t have to be a wine city, all your other cities however should be built on islands with wine, close together is better for quick resource moving and defense. In your capital you can produce whatever you want, you’ll always have your army here when you go offline, and this will be where you store all the resources when you go offline too. Read the rest of this entry »