How to Play Imperia Online–In Short!
Where am I?You are located on a huge continent that has room for 10,000 Empires. Every Empire has a total of 25 wild provinces, how many you choose to colonize is up to you - as long as you have made the necessary investments in Centralization. No player can control foreign lands. Buildings and research cannot be destroyed or taken away. Fortresses can be damaged and need repairs after a siege defeat.
What is the goal of the game?The goal is it to make the most point and to dominate the world alone or with an alliance. There are many ways to do this, whether you chose war or peace is up to you. The points are made by evaluating all you property – buildings, research and army.
What to do in the beginning?The first couple of days you have to make sure your villagers multiply without any timeouts. To do this you must build farms. Your first buildings must be 5-6 levels of lumber mills. Put all of your workers on wood in the beginning. Building some granaries is also good idea – the first 4-5 levels are cheap and will increase your villager growth by about 8 an hour. After you build your 4th level farm build the first level of Fortress. That will open the University – research one level university and 1 level Architecture. The next research must be Trade. That will open your access to the market where you can sell resources for gold until you build up an army big enough to take on you neighbors…. After that gold will not be a problem.. Remember the University decreases the price of all research and the Architecture decreases the price of all buildings.
What then?Until you gain some experience playing might be better to develop economically. That way even if something goes wrong you can recover. Best thing to do in your first week is to start colonizing provinces. To do that you need to develop Centralization and build 500 archers or spearman – they are your first settlers in the new province.
What about the army?Remember: the army costs gold to upkeep. The only way to save the upkeep is to put your army in a fortress as garrison. If left on the field the army spends your gold. If you send your army in attack, it spends x3 the normal amount gold while traveling. If you run out of gold your army will start pilling a deficit. While you have negative gold you cannot move your army or build anything regardless if costs gold or not.
And one more thing - it doesn't matter if a player is building 1 soldier or 1000 - they are all going to get ready for the same ammount of time (it doesn't matter if you are training 1 or 1000 archers - they all need the same ammount of time to learn to shoot), so never order 1 soldier at a time - order as many as necessary and/or resources are available.
What about the Field battles?If you are not going to fight a fortress (you are going on a pillage mission) or if you have enough swordsmen to take it, do not take your siege weapons. They will slow your army down and therefore the trip will get more expensive. Furthermore if you lose the battle you will lose all of you siege weapons.
Also never take units you don’t need. If you fight an enemy with large body of archers and no horses, don’t take you spearmen, and etc.
What about the Siege battles?Do not try to take fortresses with spearmen or cavalry unless you have siege weapons with them. Spearmen are very weak against fortresses, and cavalry cannot attack them at all. Swordsmen and siege weapons is your best bet.
Structure of the army.Never ever take one type of units in attack or leave them on the field. Every unit in Imperia Online has its anti unit. If you take only cavalry you might get annihilated by spears and so on. The battle system of the game is very complicated taking in account morale of the army its structure, flank attacks, archery range attacks and etc. Download the battle calculator and check every battle at least couple of times. Battles between even armies can finish as victory for either side.
What about the morale?The morale of the army is of extreme importance. Always check the battle with the battle calculator to see how the morale of the army will change. If you are losing more soldiers than the enemy during the battle your army morale will drop faster. It is completely possible to lose a battle from smaller army if yours loses its morale and runs away.
How are the units faring against each other?In Imperia Online all units follow a logical balance:
Cavalry beats totally archers (it is 4 times more cost effective)
Cavalry beats normally swordsmen (it is 2 times more cost effective)
Archers beat totally spearmen (they are 4 times more cost effective)
Spearmen beat totally cavalry (they are 4 times more cost effective)
Swordsmen beat normally archers and spearmen (they are 2 times more cost effective)
By cost effective we mean that with cavalry you can annihilate 4 times more expensive army of archers without great loss.
More info?Check the detailed game Manual.
