General growth and military tips

The information in this post is donated by Permo of the Titan Minotaurs (Moo). It presents a variety of useful information and I highly recommend that each new player read it. I (Rommel) have modified it to apply to players in general.

Be a proud member of your alliance:
Alliances have different playing styles. One goal of most alliances is to present a united front. The word alliance means a group of people who support each other which is the main goal. In order to achieve this there are a number of criteria each member should try to fulfill as soon as they are able to do so. There are also a few rules that MUST be adhered to.

Rules:

• You must have hideouts in ALL towns. Those hideouts should be at least the same level as your town or ideally 2 levels higher and in troubled times, spies should be at home defending
  
• You must have one warship in each port for basic first line defence.
  
• You must build up walls along with the growth of your town.
  

IN CASE OF ATTACK...YOU MUST:

1. Make a copy of the combat report (preferably using mozilla browser and greasemonkey). Please contact home secretary if you need help on how to do this.
   
2. Send the CR to both the diplomat and the general with details of towns attacked, when and by whom.

Steps in becoming the best alliance member
Make a copy of the combat report (preferably using mozilla browser and greasemonkey). Please contact home secretary if you need help on how to do this.
Send the CR to both the diplomat and the general with details of towns attacked, when and by whom.

ONE: just starting out

• Build up your town hall and academy as fast as you can, to get your population and research up.
  
• Get a basic army as soon as you have researched professional army, consisting of Hoplites and slingers and spearmen.
  
• Research for battering rams at the earliest opportunity and create a small offensive unit, which can attack smaller inactives ( or even actives smaller than yourself if you have the heart ). *Catapults & rams are capable of taking out low level walls of up to level 5 but need to be sent with a front line offence.
  
• Make sure to build up a spy hut in EACH town.
  
• Keep at least ONE battle ship in each harbour.
  
• You do not have to have a barracks in each town. If towns are next to each other, it is quick to deploy troops and allows you room for other valuable buildings.
  
• When your capital is at least level 10, you should be looking to make your next town. When choosing a new island, always look at the size of the mines before deciding and choose the one with the biggest mines .The last resource you will need is sulphur, so build on the other isles first.

REMEMBER: you will need the same level Governor’s residence as your palace (number of colonies) so make sure before building your next town to have enough resources saved for that. Until you build a level 1 warehouse the new colony only holds 1,500 of each resource!!! So don’t send more because it will end up floating in the sea. LOL

TWO; growing stronger

• Mining is not the only way to get resources! Pillage is a good source too and you can sell what you steal in your market to buy more trading ships 
  
• A good medium level (between 5K and 20K player) is 1st line hoplites in groups of 40 depending on town size (try to upgrade them in your workshop asap), rear catapults as soon as you have researched them, in groups of 6. Slingers and Spearmen are only useful against army, not only walls.
  
• Don’t waste money spying garrison if a player has 0 generals score (scan him in the highscores first, then send 9cats and 30 spears as these are cheap don’t forget to send trade ships for all the loot)
  
• Work with your neighbours! That’s one of the points of an alliance. Check out who is closest to you to trade goods with or pillage together with. A united pillage is advantageous as you only need to take the wall down once but steal more resources (double the trading ships from 2 players)
  
• Be careful what you choose to build. The workshop should be on your crystal isle and as soon as you research optician, build that on the crystal isle too. You only really need one trading post and one embassy…spread them on different islands. Don’t forget the SPYHUTS !!!
  
• Once you’ve researched experiment, you can speed up your research in this way. Do the experiments on your crystal isle with your optician at the highest level you can build it to…this saves loads of crystal 
  
• Upgrade only the troops you will be keeping. Do not waste crystal upgrading army/fleet you do no have or will not use.

THREE; independent

• From about 50K points, you should be an independent fighter with 4 to 5 towns and a decent army in at least one of them. Your walls should be 1-2 levels higher than your town hall.
  
• If you upgraded your spyhuts to at least 3 levels above your town hall, you should be hard to attack. Therefore, you do not need a large number of troops and ships in each town. Focus on one or two of your towns to keep a well-balanced fleet and army and use those towns to stash your surplus resources.
  
• You are now large enough and strong enough to participate fully in alliance wars. So your army should be available in an emergency. As soon as you are able to make steamgiants, hoplites become superfluous. In large alliance battles only steamgiants and swordsmen (which should not be underestimated in large battles) should be sent in the first line, any hoplites you have should be used ONLY for DEFENCE !!! Below you will find the ideal army make up and number of unit blocks for each.
  
• Anyone partaking in an alliance war MUST follow the instructions of the area leaders and general…Please do not occupy towns without being asked to. In a war, we block harbour, pillage and, when the town is empty of goods, then we occupy 
  
• You are now big enough to be generous. Help your fellow members, those near you, smaller than you. Organize a joint pillage, help them with a few goods, buy from their trading posts. Don’t forget that you were small once !
  
• If you approach making your 6th, 7th , 8th ( tough ) or even 9th( WOW!!!) town, this is much easier to do with 2 warehouses. It’s a good idea to sacrifice one building, in each town one by one to build a second warehouse to upgrade your palace and GRs. For example, take your first town, demolish your carpentry (eg), build a 2nd warehouse and build it up until it’s big enough to hold resources to upgrade your palace or GR by one or two levels. When the palace or GR is the size you want it, demolish the 2nd warehouse, rebuild your carpentry, or something else you’d like and move to the next city to do it all over again.

Protecting your alliance:
It is very important to protect the members of the alliance against attack and retaliate where diplomacy is unable to find a solution. Please make sure you are familiar with the positions of your towns on the Ikariam map, and check who is closest to you in times of need on the game map. You should send a spearman to cities of fellow alliance members in nearby cities so you can tell if they get attacked.

TROOPS

REMEMBER TO SEND COOKS IN WITH YOUR TROOPS IN BIG BATTLES !!!!!

****Please note that town levels are calculated by adding the size of all your towns together.****
Minimum land troops per total town levels
30-50 town levels
400 spearmen
100 carabineers
140 steam giants
40 mortars

60-80 town levels
2 x the above units

90-110 town levels
3 x the above units

120-140 town levels
4 x the above units

150 + town levels
5 x the above units

DEFENCE UNIT COMBINATION
They can hold up to 4 rounds
30 gyros
30 bombs
80 SG
70 carabs
300 spears
10 cooks

Remember in war time to take the number of action points in either your town or the town where you have deployed your troops into account. Mortars are very expensive, so take care of them . In battles involving bombs, mortars will be destroyed, so once the wall is down it can be more advantageous to use battering rams in the 3rd line. Using waves ( every 3 rounds ) can reduce your losses and need for cooks as well as causing more damage to the enemy.
For pillaging inactives without troops with wall up to level 25, 10 spears and 18 mortars is enough.

FLEET
Recommended fleet for a 50K player:
60 flaming boats
25 catapults

Recommended fleet for a 300K player:
150 flaming boats
50 catapults
45 diving boats

For higher players maybe go x2, but try to avoid building huge navy because it is expensive and sometimes you’ll never use it.
Remember that paddle wheels are powerful but very expensive and slower than flames.
Mortar ships are also very expensive and extremely slow so it’s better to use them only for defence
In the current version’s morale, if you don’t use waves in naval battles the battle ends in 5 rounds

P.S. It is policy of most alliances to throw out players who become inactive. If you need to take some time out from Ikariam, please inform the leadership and go into vacation mode.