Archive for the ‘raiding’ tag
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.
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 »
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 »