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== Starting Out ==

=== First Steps ===

''When you first start playing, be prepared to spend an hour or 2 online (as build times are quite short and you want things to whip along.)''


* You start the game with nothing but a '''Town Hall'''. The first thing you will want to do is assign people to work at the '''Saw Mill'''. You should assign the maximum amount of citizens to work as you can, without causing the town's income to become negative.

 - Click on ''show island'' then click on the ''wood pile''

* Your next step (as soon as you have enough building material) is to build an '''Academy'''. The academy basically allows you to increase your knowledge and ability to build new buildings/units/etc. For instance, you may notice you are unable to produce luxury resources until you develop the upgrade to do so. In order for research to be developed quickly, you should assign the max people you can without making your town income negative.

 - Click on ''show island'' then click on an empty patch of land (indicated by the flags) to see a building list.

* What you research depends on your playing style. But it is recommended that you concentrate on '''Well Digging''' first, then move towards '''Wealth'''. This will allow you to produce the luxury resource available on your island.

* At this point, you should probably be logging in to check on your town regularly, assigning any new population to the woodpile or research.

* Once your city has a solid income, it is entirely up to you how to play the game!

=== Other Starting Tips ===

* A '''Trading Port''' will allow you to send and receive ships with trading goods. It allows you to obtain resources you aren't able to produce yourself yet. (There are no formal agreements with the trading port, so you will need to contact players to make your own agreements).

* If things are hostile, you might consider building a '''Barracks''' to train troops or a '''Wall''' for static defense. A '''Warehouse''' comes in handy as well, as it allows you to expand the amount of resources you can store, as well as prevents some of it from being pillaged.

* You should regularly check up on the rate at which your population is growing. (This can be seen when you click on your '''Town Hall'''. At the start your population will grow at the rate of 3 an hour, so you need to keep your town hall upgraded enough to support your population growth.

== Resource Production/Trading ==

When you first start playing, the only resource which can be obtained is '''Building Material''' (Wood). You may notice, however, that you have another resource available on your island (Wine, Marble, Sulphur or Crystal Glass). These resources will be very important later on in the game, but cannot be produced until you research '''Wealth''' from your Academy. (However, you are still able to receive these goods from friends/neighbours/trading partners).

Generally it is a good idea to maximise resource output rather than having your citizens not working (and earning gold instead). This is because each citizen earns '''4 gold''' per hour. However, resources can fetch around '''25 gold''' per unit when you sell them at your '''Trading Post''' (building).

*'''Note:''' One thing you should note though is if at any point you run out of gold stocks, your Scientists and Military units will desert. (So it is always a good idea to maximise resource output but keep gold income positive)

== Increasing Population Growth Rate ==

Your population growth is dependent on the satisfaction of your citizens. You have the following options to keep your citizens in good spirits:

* You can start by building a '''Tavern''', to build this, you must have researched '''Wine Press'''.

The tavern gives you the ability to serve wine. Each upgrade to the tavern increases the amount of wine that can be served. The served wine is deducted hourly from the town´s resources.

If you do not have wine on your island, you will have to trade/buy it off someone that does.

* The other building you can use is a '''Museum'''.

You can exhibit cultural goods from other players in museums. To be able to do this you must first enter into a cultural goods treaty with another player. As soon as the treaty is signed you can determine how many cultural goods should be exhibited. Each museum upgrade allows you to exhibit one more exhibit, and with that a higher bonus on the satisfaction level in the town.

You can also research Holiday (Under Economy) to increase the population growth rate.

*'''Tip:''' If your satisfaction level falls into the negative, frustrated citizens will start to leave your town to try their luck in the unknown!

== Colonies and Expansion ==

New colonies are absolutely vital to grow your empire.  They should be placed on an island nearby (so you are able to transport resources quickly between your colony and capital), with a resource which you need (often marble if you didn't start on a marble island). Obviously you are still able to expand on the same island, but the benefits are minimal (as only one luxury resource is available, you will be dependant on others for growth).

=== (New) Colony Requirements ===

* Research: Expansion (Seafaring)

* Building: Palace (635 Wood for Level 1)

* Resources:
# Citizens: 40
# Gold: 12000
# Building Material (Wood): 1250
# 5 Trading Ships

''' ''Notes:'' '''
Although each new colony costs the same, the palace must be upgraded in order to support a colony, and these upgrades become quite expensive. (e.g. A level 2 palace can support 2 colonies, a level 3 palace supports 3 colonies etc.).Additionally, currently it is not possible to upgrade your palace past level 3, because you cannot store enough resources in the warehouse to perform another upgrade.

== Pillaging ==

The easiest form of pillaging is to send 1-swordsman attacks against inactive players with 0 defence.

To work out approximately how much defence someone has, search the Generals highscore list. First find a town you're interested in, and the name of the owner. Then go to highscores, and select "generals" from the dropdown tab, and hit "submit". If you don't do this first then it doesn't work.

Now type the name of the owner into the "player name" box and hit "search". This appears to be a subsearch of whatever you have in the main box.  Zero means zero defence, and one swordsman will break.  If they only have a couple of hundred points then around 10 swordsmen should break.

For the larger attacks (i.e. not against 0-defence inactives) scope out one particular island with a neede resource, searching for each town's owner in the Generals highscore list. Choose 2-3 fat targets, based on size and military strength. Also if you see any level 3-5 inactives then check if they have any military and farm away.

After your spies are in place, wait a bit until the chance of detection falls to 5%.

Then in your Hideout, click the name of each town you sent a spy to. This gives you a view of the town.

Check out the level of the trading port and the warehouse, as these are what determine how much stuff you can pillage. A level 2 warehosue lets you pillage 600 goods/attack, level 3 is around 1100/attack and lvl 4 is around 1800/attack. It's not really worth attacking people with a level 1 warehouse, which only allows 200/attack, unless they are 0-defence inactives. While you are here also check out the level of barracks and shipyard and town walls.

Then go back to the hideout page, and send each spy on a mission to "spy warehouse". This lets you know how much stuff they have in total. Remember that they'll have a warehouse which will protect some of their goods.

Then decide which one (or two) are the best targets, and approximately how many times you can attack them to clean them out (assuming you are multi-tapping people.  This isn't a very nice thing to do). 

One limiting factor is your number of trade ships. If you raid successfully but have no available ships, you get nothing.

I've been sending out around 15 swords/5 phalanxes/3 rams against 1000-general points towns and winning them all. I lost one where I only sent 10 swords. It may be worth spying military levels for anyone with more defence than that. Also as everyone develops their colonies the Generals points will become less indicative of how much they have at any one town.

Also remember that if they have ships your attack force won't be able to get through. Where you suspect they might have ships, send out a fleet of war ships to blockade at the same time as your attack. If your attacks gets turned back then you have ships on the way, and just resend your attack once they arrive. If your attack gets through then cancel the blockade.