Empires and Allies - Social War Gaming - Zynga's new Facebook Game

From the game development company that brought Facebook users such games as Farmville and Cityville comes a war game sure to thrill those wanting a more conflict oriented experience. Empires and Allies is Zynga’s latest offering for Social gaming, in which you can either join your friends, called allies in the game in battling “The Raven” or to battle each other. “The Raven” is the leader of the Dark Alliance, the organization you will have to defeat to be successful in Empire and Allies.

In a first class job of Facebook marketing you will see banners promoting Empire and Allies at the top of every Farmville, Cityville, Frontierville, mafia Wars and every other Zynga created game. Why not, it is a proven strategy to involve players in another game and provide Zynga with a continuing stream of revenue. Okay, I will climb off the soap box to stay on task, which is describing Empire and Allies.

The overriding theme in all Zynga created games is that energy is key. Thankfully E & A escapes the limitations of the other games a bit in that as you grow the energy capacity increases and at level 32, which I am on at the writing of this hub the maximum amount is 50, which allows a great amount of actions. This allows you to harvest farms, which provide the cash to run your empire.

Farms drive Farmville of course, providing cash to expand your agriculture empire. On Cityville farms supply your businesses with goods, but on Empire and Allies the cash received for harvesting your crops is what allows you to purchase government and military buildings, homes for your citizens, and industrial complexes. You would do well to maximize your farms early on to generate the never ending flow of cash necessary to excel at Empire and Allies.

You will also need to capitalize on the production of wood, oil and whatever ore resource your particular empire produces. What I mean by this is that there are five key resources that not every empire can produce, thus you will have to develop relationships with neighbors who have the resources you desire. Otherwise you will either have to purchase the resource, or rely on visiting neighbors or collecting during battles, which is less dependable.

The five resources are: gold, uranium, aluminum, iron and copper. No one resource will allow you to do everything, so it is wise to find a way to use your resources to either trade or sell to generate cash to purchase the others you need. Every player needs every resource at one time or another, so you can be sure the need will be there for your resource at some time or another.

You will begin seeing tasks to build housing from the beginning of your foray into Empires and Allies. To build housing you enter the build menu and select the housing tab. Here you will be presented with a menu full of housing options. To see the particulars on each house you can mouse over the house and see how many citizens it will add as well as the amount of time for it to reach a payout. Your pay out of coins will be more the larger the house, as expected.

Resources come into play here as different houses require different resources. You will see the resource as well as the amount of coins and wood necessary. Wood is needed in every structure, so you should remember the earlier advice and go about developing your wood production early on.

In the early stages of the game you will find that you are limited to low cost and low occupancy houses, which will immediately begin to fill up your available space. Don’t stress about this as you can switch out these low earners as you grow and accumulate more cash. You simply bull doze/sell you undesired structure and build the better alternative.

I read about the theory on and Empires and Allies tip blog that your energy will become too valuable to waste on housing as your empire grows and I am beginning to realize that wisdom. It will be there if you need the cash in between farm harvests, but for the most part you will not finance many wars from your residential neighborhoods.

You have land based, sea based and air units. Therefore you will conduct battles in these three theaters. Each unit you can build will have a corresponding unit it is best suited to attack. You can attack any unit with any other, but the effectiveness will be less than the one designated for that unit. I know this seems confusing, so check out the picture I provided showing a Sherman tank and the preferred units in each theater it can attack.

You will see the three icons relating to each theater: a soldier for land, submarine class for sea and fighter class for air. Again this tank will fire on any unit, but the number of attacks to prevail will be more which allow your opponent more chances to destroy you. Your best bet is to attack only the targets associated with each unit.

The units require a broad range of each special resource, yet another reason to develop great trading cycles or begin filling your vault with cash for purchase options. Again in attacks you will earn small amounts of these units that over time can accumulate to fill small needs.

Every empire needs to expand not only to survive but to thrive and yours is no exception. You can grow in only one way, by accumulating something called a Liberty Bond. This is something you can get a couple of ways, either by winning battles or by a gift from one of your allies (neighbors). Oh and lest I forget the other needed resource you must have cash. Each succeeding expansion costs more, but you will gain more ground to develop resources, so you should be able to manage this need.

Each expansion requires 10 Liberty bonds along with the appropriate amount of cash. You can determine this by accessing the Build menu and clicking the Expansion tab. You will see the cash amount on the left and amount of Liberty Bonds necessary on the right. If either is colored red you are lacking enough to proceed. Once they are both colored black you will be allowed to place your expansion on your map and asked if you are sure you want to proceed. If not simply move the expansion to another spot or hit the cancel choice.

I have been playing for nearly a month now (July 7) and find this game very entertaining. I am challenged to manage my resources so that I am not waiting for cash to build what I want or my military needs. It is also a great way to increase the camaraderie with your friends as they are key to your success. Try this game to get some of your rushed life frustrations out in a harmless arena!