Archive for the ‘Advanced guides’ Category
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 »