Ikariam
Ikariam is a browser-based game about building an empire on a bunch of islands. The site is made by Germans and consequently frequently features amusingly dubious English, as well as bizarre artwork with the most conspicuous spies in all of existence and people showing the sort of smile generally reserved for someone in the process of having fellatio performed on them by at least three people.
Some fa/tg/uys have started a "suptg" alliance on the "Zeta" world on the ikariam.com site, and are actively recruiting more fa/tg/uys to expand their alliance to ridiculous proportions and conquer the world Zerg-style. They can be often be found chatting in #tg-ikariam on Rizon.net. The following is a guide to how to get started and join the suptg alliance.
Starting up
First, go to ikariam.com. That is .COM, and not .ORG. This is a frequently made mistake, since the .org site is the first one to show up when you google ikariam.
Then select server zeta, and sign up an account as normal. You can change your in-game name later if you wish.
Quick Guide Summary
If you hate tl;dr and would rather figure things out yourself, just do this checklist:
- Build an academy
- Start harvesting wood
- Assign scientists to finished academy.
- Research Well Digging. When finished, research seafaring techs.
- Upgrade academy to level 4
- Upgrade town hall to level 3
- Build a Trading Port
- Buy 4 cargo ships.
- Get 9000 gold.
- Research Foreign Cultures.
- Build a palace.
- Get 1800 wood.
- Ask where to build your colony
- Build your colony
- ????
- Profit!
In Depth Tutorial
All of the fa/tg/uys in ikariam are all gathered together in a single place so that we can assist each other and quickly send our excess resource to those who need them. However, when you start your initial location is assigned randomly, and you will probably begin very far away from us. The first thing you want to do is to get to us so that the fa/tg/uy’s can help you out. This process will take about 3 to 5 days IRL, though you will only need to log on occasionally for a few minutes each day.
Day 1
After you log on, click on Show Town at the top of the screen. Then click on an empty space with a red flag in it. Build an academy. While waiting, click on Show Island (next to Show Town). Then click on the pile of wood and assign all your workers to harvesting wood, and press confirm (even if you move the slider, they won’t do anything unless you press confirm. A common mistake is to move the slider to maximum, then change screen without confirming, thus doing nothing without realising). Go back to your town, and wait for your academy to finish. When your academy has finished, the build time will show as ‘-‘ or as the building itself. Click on your academy, and assign as many scientists as possible, and press confirm. Then choose to change your research area to science. In order to build a city and move towards us you want to research seafaring, however you should start by getting Well Digging (a science technology) first because it will significantly speed up the process. After doing this, go back to the island view and select the woodpile again. Decrease the number of men harvesting wood until your net income (in terms of gold) is positive. You can now log off, and come back later in the day or tomorrow. If you want to do more, keep upgrading your academy as soon as you receive enough wood. Once you finish researching Well Digging, go to the academy and change the research to seafaring.
Day 2-3
So now you’ve come back to your city the next day. You should have a nice bunch of wood stockpiled, Well Digging should have finished researching, and you will have more people in your town to do your bidding. First, go to your academy and switch to researching Seafaring technology. Then go to your forest, and assign your new peons to work in the lumber mill, keeping your net income of gold positive. Next, keep upgrading your academy until it is level 4 if you haven’t already. Each time it levels up, click on the academy and assign more scientists, and decrease the number of woodcutters to make up for the extra cost this incurs. Next, upgrade your town hall to level 3. Upgrading your town hall increases your maximum population limit. The last thing you need to build is a trading port (you will need to research a low level seafaring tech to build this, you will probably have it by now). If you run out of wood while going through this process, log off and come back later when your peons have gotten more wood.
Day 4-5
In order to expand, you will need:
- 4 cargo ships
- 9000 gold
- 1750-2000 wood. (you need 1250 to expand, but you want to take extra with you)
- Foreign Cultures (a seafaring technology)
- A Palace (you cannot build this until you have Foreign Cultures)
To get foreign cultures, just keep researching the seafaring tech tree. Some technologies cannot be researched until other technologies from a different area of research are complete, so if you tell them to research seafaring, this is why they researching an economy or military technology instead.
To get more wood, just assign more peons to the woodpile on the island view.
To get more gold, reduce the number of peons cutting wood. If you remove your scientists from your academy you will make a lot more gold, which I recommend after you have researched Foreign Cultures.
To build cargo ships, you can buy them from the Trading Port for a cost in gold.
Once you have all of these things, you are ready to build your colony. Get on IRC (Rizon, #tg-ikariam) and ask where a good location to put your first colony is. If this fails, or you don’t know how (I strongly recommend learning), go to diplomacy and send a message to Gorkamorka asking where you should go. The majority of fa/tg/uys are based around the bunch of islands at the co-ordinates 93:38 (go to Show World, and put those numbers into the boxes on the left). Your first town should be on an island with wine as its resource, and the first thing you should build is a Governor’s residence. After that, it’s up to whatever you want to do. If you go on IRC, some of the higher level fa/tg/uys may be willing to give you extra resources to help quick start you.
Once you send out your colony, you should assign all of your peons to making gold (i.e. do nothing) or as scientists for more tech. You will eventually be destroying your starting city, so there is little point in upgrading it further. Technology and gold are both global and will not be lost when you abandon your city, so you want to focus on these. You could harvest more wood, and then send it to your new colony after it is built, however the distance will mean it will take a very long time (up to a day to arrive). Additionally, fa/tg/uys will probably give you a lot more wood very quickly when you arrive (or give you methods of acquiring it) which will make whatever you produce in your starting town redundant.
Combat Guide
Ground Troops
When you attack someone, you load your ground troops onto your cargo ships and head toward their city. Sending your troops out will increase upkeep while they are out and cost gold. First, the troops will have to be loaded onto the ships, however this time is normally very short, and can be reduced by upgrading the trading port. If an enemy is blockading your port, all your troops on board will automatically die when they try to leave. Your cargo ships will live in this instance. You can check whether an enemy is blocking your port by checking the military advisor. Almost all of the time there won’t be unless you really pissed someone off.
Then, assuming there is no enemy in port, your cargo ships will travel to the target city. You can check the estimated arrival time by checking your military advisor. Once they arrive, if the enemy has any warships idle at the city, all of your troops will automatically die, and your cargo ships will live and then return to their point of origin. Assuming the enemy has no warships, or you destroyed them before hand, you will engage in an instant battle. The defender’s town hall will contribute to the defence, as will any ground units that are idle in the city. The city’s wall, if any, will add a percentage increase to the defender’s troops. If you have spies in their city before hand, you have a chance to reduce this percentage. More spies will have further chance of reduces the wall’s bonus further (but not to negatives). If another allied army from another city or player arrives within 5 minutes, your surviving troops will assist them (we think, we aren’t sure about this).
If you lose the battle, any survivors will return on your cargo ships back to the point of origin with no loot. If you win, a pillaging time of 20ish minutes will occur. During this time, your troops are loaded onto your ships, and the rest of the cargo space that is free on your ships will be filled with cargo taken from the enemy city’s stock pile. The type of resources taken will be proportional to the ratio of different materials stockpiled in the city. As an example, if he has 2000 wood and 500 marble, and you have 1000 cargo space, you will probably take 750 wood and 250 marble. This is difficult to exactly figure out because a number of variables are involved, but it will be reliable enough.
Once the pillaging ends your troops and ships will attempt to return to the point of origin with their loot. If enemy ships have arrived to defend the port while your troops were in it, your troops will (probably) get automatically killed and you will lose your resources. If the enemy is blockading your port at the time your troops return, your troops are automatically killed, your loot is lost, and (I think) your cargo ships survive and return as normal. Otherwise, the second you return, your troops return to defence, and your cargo is unloaded instantly.
While this may seem a very difficult task, it is usually very easy because a very large number of players do not bother building troops or warships at all, and it is extremely easy to find out if they have any.
War Fleets
YOUR GROUND TROOPS IN TRANSPORTS WILL MOVE FASTER THAN YOUR WARSHIPS. IF YOU SEND THEM AT THE SAME TIME, YOUR TROOPS WILL ARRIVE FIRST AND GET INSTANTLY KILLED BY ANY DEFENDING BOATS, AND THEN YOUR WARSHIPS WILL ARRIVE TO FIGHT AFTER YOUR GROUND TROOPS ARE ALREADY DEAD. DO NOT DO THIS.
Defending with Ships
As long as your ships are doing nothing, they are defending their city. Any ground troops (even one million troops) that attempt to enter a city with one lowest level war ship guarding it, will all die instantly with no loss to the war ship. Because of this, you always want to have at least one ship in the harbour of all your cities. In order to build ships, you need a shipyard, and very importantly war ships cannot guard or be in a city without a shipyard. As an example, lets say city one has 10 ships guarding it, and city two has no ships and no shipyard. You cannot send a ship to guard city 2 until a shipyard is built. However, a friendly alliance member can send ships to defend city 2 even if it does not have a harbour. This is not a valid long term option because it will be costly for the alliance member, but can be a nice short term solution until you can build a shipyard and send warships to properly defend it.
Blockades
Warships cannot loot towns, however they can stop anyone entering or leaving it by blockading, thus making it a great way to cripple an enemy player. Each town / island only has access to one of the main four resources, so if no ships can get out or into the town, that town will be crippled in 3 out of 4 main areas. Do this to all of a players towns and there is effectively nothing he can do. You can tell a blockade to last for 24 hours, so it requires very little effort on the part of the player to keep this up constantly. However, having ships out at sea is expensive, and while it can be afforded constantly, it is generally unprofitable in the long term. As a result this isn’t really done unless you really, really hate the guy and want him to suffer.
Clearing Enemy Defensive Ships
If your ground troops arrive at an enemy city with warships in it, they die instantly. So to counter this, you want to send your warships to destroy the enemy’s ships so your ground troops can pillage his city. To do this, choose the town you want the ships to attack from, then select the enemy city and select blockade for one hour. Your ships will go out, and they will move and approximately half the speed of transports with ground troops in them. As a result, check the time it will take for the war fleet to arrive by selecting the number and type of ships you want to blockade with. It will tell you how long they will take to arrive. Do the same with your ground troops, and see how long they will take to arrive. Then launch your war fleet and wait. You want to time it so that your ground troops arrive 5 to 10 minutes after your war fleet reaches the enemy city. This way, if your war ships lose the battle, you still have time to tell your grounds troops to turn back to prevent them getting killed. Assuming your war ships win, or there are no defenders, your ground forces will then land, and pillage normally. Once your ground forces are returning home, tell your war ships to return as well. This ensures that your ground forces will live to fight on the ground, while keeping your war ships at sea for as little time as possible, reducing the high upkeep costs. When you send out your warships, remember to keep at least one back for defence.
Defence
There is nothing you can do to stop a high level player beating the snot out of you. A lot of games prevent high level characters being able to kill low level players just because the high level players they feel like it. There are no such safeties in Ikariam, it is a harsh world. As an example, after a week or two of playing, you might have a military power of 100. The highest level military power in the game is 17,000. There is nothing to stop him attacking you whatsoever. While you can’t stop him kicking your ass, you can make yourself a very unprofitable target to the point where is simply isn’t worth the effort, especially since there are lots of easy to kill players with stacks of huge resources.
First, never have a military score of zero. Your military score will not be zero as long as you have one ground troop or warship or any kind. You can check military score by clicking on high score at the top of the screen. As long as you a little bit of military score, it means that you might have a warship. Therefore, in order to not waste their ground forces, they must send warships to clear out any you might have. Warships travel at about half the speed of transports, so if he sends his ships, it will take twice as long to raid you. In that time, he could pillage two other players that had a military score of zero (and thus he already knew for a fact they had no warships, so would not have to bother sending any). In addition, he would have to send the warships, wait an hour, and then send the troops. Since attacks will normally take about 3-5 hours, most people prefer to send a raid, and then go to work, or go to sleep, or do whatever. Having to wait an hour before you can send your troops after your warships means they can’t just press a button and leave it for half a day, which is annoying. Also, sending out warships costs gold, and that is to clear enemy warships that might not even exist.
Second, always have a shipyard, and at least one warship in all your cities. Even if you have a military score of 2, people might decide to attack you with just ground forces anyway assuming you are not smart enough to have built warships yet. I once sunk 79 attacking enemy ground units with three warships, because he didn’t bother to send any warships.
Third, avoid storing huge stacks of resources. The second you have resources, spend them immediately on anything you need to. If you have an excess, give it to another fa/tg/uy who wants it. People will send spies to see if you have lots of resources, and if you have a very big stack, they may think that sending warships and breaking through your defences is worth the effort. If you have no resources to pillage, the enemy has nothing to gain by attacking you.
Fourth, but not critical, is spy defence. If you have very little resources in your city, then you have nothing to hide and don’t really need to bother. The enemy will look into your town, see there is nothing to take, and move on. If you do have huge stacks and can’t get rid of them, start levelling your hideout and keeping all the spies in that city on defence. If you want to look for targets, use spies from cities that don’t have pile of resources in them.
Fifth, if you see an enemy is attacking you (you can see enemy fleets and troops that are heading towards your city via the military advisor), and you can’t beat him, pack all your resources onto your cargo ships and send them to a city he is not attacking. Lets say you have 6000 sulphur in your city, 4 action points and 14 cargo ships. Since he is sending a huge navy, make your warships go to another city. This way you won’t lose your warships when they would get utterly crushed (and he wasted time and effort sending warships to go and do nothing). Next, put 3000 sulphur in 6 cargo ships. Twice. Doing this will load the cargo twice as fast as trying to put 6000 on twelve ships. However, doing it twice costs you two action points instead of one (so you can do less troop movements etc.). Then, put your ground troops into your last two transport and send them to another city. As and end result, your opponent will enter your harbour with his warships, and kill nothing. His ground troops will arrive, and kill nothing. There are no resources to pillage, so they take nothing, and the entire fleet returns home empty handed. This would be the perfect scenario for you, and would discourage that player from attacking you again. Often you won’t have the time or resources to evacuate everything from your city. So just take whatever is the most valuable and leave him with as little as possible. You can only do this if you see the attack coming, but is a last resort and further discourage against other players attacking you.
If you do the above 5 things constantly, no one will attack you because its not worth the effort, especially when there are nub cities with 20,000 wood with a military score of zero, just asking to be pillaged.
Attacking
Finding a Target
First, you need to find a good target. Go to the world map, and look for a nearby island with the resource you want that is near you and has players on it. If you want wood, any island will do. Double click to zoom onto the island view for that island. Select a city. First check their guild / alliance (if any) by clicking on it. If it is a guild that has more than one player, or is very high up in the rankings, move on to the next city. If its an alliance with only one member, or they have no alliance, select and copy their name. At the top of the screen click on high scores. Select military score, and paste their name into the name box. If they have a military score of more than zero, move on to the next city. If the city is very big, and has a very low military score for its size, make a note to investigate it if you can’t find any better targets. If they have a military score of zero, you have found an easy target. Send a spy to that city. If you click on the hideout in the city that the spy came from, it will tell you how long it will take, and what mission he can do once he has arrived. Look for other targets while waiting, and send more spies as required. Once the spy arrives, select the mission to investigate the warehouse. If he succeeds it will tell you how much stuff he has. Now you are ready to attack.
Pillaging a good target
First, you will need to know how many troops you need to take a city. The basic formula I use is the target town hall (or city level) and adding one (this is for a city with no troops in it). This gives you the minimum number of slingers needed. So if you are attacking a level 8 town, you should send a minimum of 9 slingers. Where possible, it is better to send an excess of troops, because if you win by a bigger margin, you will take less casualties, and so will not need to rebuild troops which cost precious peons. If you send too many however, you will pay a big upkeep cost for mobilising so many troops. I would normally recommend sending 50% more than this or double to reduce casualties.
Next is the amount of cargo ships you need. If you go to the hideout, and then select the city you are attacking from the menu, you can see inside the target’s city and what buildings he has. If you hover your mouse over a building, it will tell you what level it is. Find out what level his warehouse is, and use wikariam to figure out how many of his resources it will protect. Then, go back to your hideout and view the resource report again. Each cargo ship will take 500 resources, but one will be carrying some of your troops. If he has 3000 worth of materials, and you know about 500 will be safe guarded by his warehouse, then you need 5 ships to carry the 2500 loot. However, the player may harvest resources while your ships are en route, and you have to take into account that your troops will take some space up as well, so send the amount you need to take all his available resources +1. So in the example above, 6 ships are needed. Then you send your troops out to lay waste to the poor defenceless sod, and withdraw your spy so he can help defend your newfound wealth from prying eyes, and to keep him in reserve in case you want more (which you always do).