Empires and Allies from Zynga:Social Wargaming:How to upgrade Empire and Alllies units

On Zynga’s newest Facebook hosted game, Empire and Allies you get the chance to get your military dreams out without a long term commitment or the chance of dying or being permanently scarred. For a moment let me say I have great respect for those who serve and I mean no disparagement in any way. This is a simple way to enjoy war gaming on a different platform, one nicely created by the designers of Zynga.

Like most of the preceding Zynga games, Empires and Allies has grown rapidly, with several million players just a few week after its release. The reason is the seamless process of creating military units for use in protecting your islands as well as helping to defend your allies and attach The Dark Alliance’s forces. In this treatment I will describe the process of building military units.

For hundreds of years land units were what constituted your armed forces, and the concentration was in having the most of these to ensure victory in battle. Sure, there have always been rafts or another type of floating units to allow for movement of forces or supplies, but the use of weapons with ships is a relatively new tactic compared to the centuries of land units.

The need for land units in Empires and Allies is similar, although you will have a fairly equal need for sufficient units in all three theaters, land, sea and air. In my time playing the game I have moved to the theory that you need at least five of each type of land unit, and by this I mean the upper end of the scale of each type.

When you create the initial barracks that provides the ability to develop land units you will have three main types of weapon. You will have infantry, artillery or tank based weapons. With a level 1 barracks your options will be less expensive (in cost and resources) as well as less powerful weapons. As you grow your empire you will gain the ability to build the higher level barracks which allows you access to more powerful weapons as shown in the screen shot below.

As you can see there is four types of units in this screen. The Sherman tank has attack power of 150, which means it will take more attacks to destroy. The two infantry units in this picture are Bazooka soldiers and Rocket soldiers. The rocket soldier is more effective, but more expensive to build and takes more time to build as well.

If you will notice the five small squares under the Bazooka soldier you can see the first two are colored in as is the first on the Howitzer Artillery. This means the research to utilize this added effectiveness has been completed. To understand this more see Upgrade Research below.

No one group or type of weapons is more important than the other as I said with the army units. As you “island hop” trying to defeat The Dark Alliance you will encounter all unit types. So you need to develop a strategy where you employ a balanced mix of units. As you begin fighting The Raven’s group of bad guys and girls you will understand what I mean. To get an idea of your need preceding the battles you can click on the globe in the bottom right of the screen and it will provide you with information about your next battle. Sometimes you will need to pick an ally, and then you will get a chance to select your units for the battle. If you see you do not have the proper units in your inventory you can abort the action and go back to build what you desire.

I have found the aircraft carriers to be the preferred target in any battle with sea units. You can be battling sea units against other land, air or sea forces, but it seems the aircraft carriers I use never escape a battle intact. I wind up rebuilding at least one if not all after each battle. So, I suppose I would promote the idea of building extra so you will not be waiting for some to build when you are ready to fight.

You have the ability to upgrade your sea units when you grow your empire large enough to gain access to the Navy Research lab. It works just the same as the army Research lab and is described in full in the section below titled Upgrade Research.

You will see the progression to better air units last of the three types. Army upgrades will come first, then sea-based ones and finally air units of more power and cost. In the level 2 hangar you are presented with the Harrier Fighter, B-52 bomber, a Empires and Allies special bi-plane called the Bandit which has a high power rating, a Chinook airship, Mig-17 fighter, Apache Airship and Supersonic Bomber.

As with most items you construct in Empire and Allies each unit has different amounts of resources you need to secure to be able to build. Depending on your main resource you will have a particular collection of weapons you can easily build, while others will require you to collect from others or buy the necessary amounts.

For instance in the screenshot below you will see that the F-35 Lightning and B-52 Bomber require copper to build along with the coins and oil. Since copper is my main resource I can build these at any time provided I have the coins and oil necessary. In the case of the Harrier or Bandit I must accumulate iron, which makes this unit more costly.

From time to time you will be curious what your status of forces is, so you can easily determine this by selecting the inventory icon, which is on the main page and represented by a stack of boxes. Once you select this icon you will see the different sub types of items that are stored in inventory. In the screenshot below I have chosen my Air inventory to show the units I have to select from when needed.

You have two numbers underneath, one under a stack of boxes, meaning the unit is developed, but in inventory. The other shows a plam tree which denoted the unit has been placed somewhere on the island in defense mode. This does not mean you units in inventory are unavailable, you can select them when it comes time for a battle. By adding these numbers you can determine your total force.

Each unit comes with base numbers of power and effectiveness. As your empire grows you will tend to gravitate toward the more powerful weapons, but do not neglect to upgrade each unit’s ability within the upgrade facilities. The Army Research lab is represented in the following screenshots. This particular sequence shows the Howitzer Artillery upgrade sequence.

In the first screenshot you will see the army units available to upgrade. Some will be “greyed out” untilk you reach a certain level, so you will select one that is available. Next you will see two choices that you can select to upgrade, either Increase Damage or Reduce Build Duration. As shown in the next screen shot the choice you make will lead to another round of upgrade.

To completely upgrade your unit so that Damage and Accuracy are higher while Build Duration and cost are less and ultimately strength is increased will take five upgrades. The good news is that collecting special items to do the initial upgrade is necessary only once. After that it is a matter of assembling coins, oil and the proper resource.

To illustrate the value of these upgrades I can tell you that the coins and oil needed after the Reduce Build Cost are dropped by 25% and the amount of resource needed is 20% lower. This is certainly worth the cost and time to cut your overall spending need.

Rest assured your military forces will be tested in this game. Your battles against friends and The Dark Alliance get progressively harder with more powerful units coming along as you grow. It is a great idea to understand the upgrade process so you can get more bang from your buck. You have the option of reporting your upgrades to others or you can keep them to yourself. I choose to keep them secret so my adversaries have to guess what they will face. You can be crafty or brag about your strength!