Forge of Empires Beginner’s Guide

Forge of Empires Beginner’s Guide by HeftySmurf

Welcome to Forge of Empires, this new game is receiving a lot of brilliant and positive feedback from everyone playing and I am now ready to create a guide for all new players so they can play the game to the best experience and enjoy it as much as the rest of us have. This will be a community constructed guide, to provide feedback please post in the comments section below

If you have not got a key and you are wondering how to do so the best way is to check out the Innogames Forge of Empires Facebook Page which will provide keys for a limited amount of users every now and then. Please remember this is an Exclusive Preview, things will change and this guide will try keep up with it.

When you first login to the game you are thrown straight into the tutorial, the tutorial has been found easy and self explanatory to players so I will not go into much detail about it, if anybody wishes I should explain a point please mention this and I will add it. Tutorial

You can use your Town Hall to check Battle History, Edit your profile which involves changing your city name and also your avatar image. You also use it to check how many goods you have and also collect a daily 500 coin bonus.

Once you gain a more free reign of your city and you are able to build properly, you should consider rearranging your city to maximise your current space. This is how mine looks currently to give you an idea: City Layout. As you can see I am utilizing the space i have been provided with to ensure maximum output and efficiency and to start off with a nice active start will give you a great head into the game, if you know you are an active player it is better to have a ton of Huts producing every 5 minutes instead of stilt houses producing every 15 minutes, you gain more.

All building need to be connected by a road or a path to function and all roads have to be linked up to the town hall. The majority of decorations do not require roads to function and therefore you should use space in which you cannot build to maximise the use of these decorations. By using the space you have been provided with efficiently (Check my above layout link) you can maximise space for your buildings. Everything in your city can be moved and relocated however you cannot rotate buildings.

Another key thing to remember is that you are limited to your grid system, and because you cannot rotate the buildings you are limited heavily because some buildings are for as shown in this example picture, designed to make you thing about your layout.

You always need to think carefully about your layout and most likely will have to continually shuffle your village around as you expand as the game goes on.

Also you may be wondering what the green smiley face means on the right.

I recommend you keep your happiness at a 140% level throughout the game, at first the bonus output is minimal but as you advance you will notice how much it benefits your growth by giving you a 120% production bonus.

Another thing for new players is that Supplies will spoil if they are not collected fast enough. A formula has not be found yet for the right amount of time but if you leave it too long they can spoil and waste, gold coins do not spoil so you do not need to worry about them. When Supplies spoil you will see this occurring instead of the normal icon, when you click it you collect nothing and merely clear the building to produce more.

Now you first encounter Diamonds on a side-quest when you are given them as a reward (or you notice them at the start and wonder what they are. Well here is the explanation, Diamonds are the Premium function for this game. To purchase diamonds you simply click on the plus located on the right which brings up a pop-up for you to purchase diamonds, to return to the game simply click at the bottom. Now diamonds can be used in many different ways: Purchasing Forge Points, Research Unlocks, Completing Researches, Negotiating a Province, Recovering and Restoring Troops After Battle and many more! Diamonds are an extremely useful purchase and any that are purchased benefit you and Innogames ensuring the game we all enjoy playing is continually improved for our playing delight.

Forge points, located at the top and explained in the tutorial are used for research. You gain one forge point an hour and currently have a 10 point limit, once you reach that limit the timer stops and you cannot gain anymore points. Using points will then restart the hour/60:00 timer. These do not spoil and can be used whenever and however you wish on research.

As you continue on in the game you are wondering what is most beneficial to research first, well if you followed the tutorial you should look like this now on the research: Research Path

So next what should you research? well if like me you have utilised your space and now you have ran out then the obvious choice to me is to research “The Wheel” this unlocks a land expansion which is extremely beneficial and you will notice it throughout the game that they are.

Congratulations you have now unlocked your first land expansion, you will find this in your inventory which should be glowing and noticeable on your screen, if not of course this is where it is.

It is now of course your decision where to place this, it is locked to a grid on the map like buildings so you cannot make a mistake and you can only place it next to a current piece of unlocked land. It is completely your choice where to place it and i shall leave that decision to you, however think carefully because later on in the game these technologies become harder to unlock so you need to think strategically where you place it.

Now the first province (Dunarsund) is relatively easy and simple to conquer so I shall not give any tips. however when you conquer this first province it unlocks a resource specific to that area. You are able to then utilise this resource and produce Goods, these also do not spoil like gold. It is random what resource each player gets first time, but each player must research the correct goods building in relevance to their resource to produce a mass amount of goods. You can still produce a certain good without the resource but at a substantially lower output.

Oh and to everyone who is like me and prefers the sweet and soulful tunes of Avenged Sevenfold in the background instead of the in-game music this is simply solved with the two mute buttons at the bottom.

Once you have conquered your first province and if you are doing the side quests at a similar pace to myself the side quest will ask you to infiltrate a province. Now if you have scouted Tyr or Fel Dranghyr like me you will be sat there wondering “Why should I infiltrate for a 100 gold when it shows the troops already?” of course you will do it anyway for the side-quest however there is another perk for infiltrating anyway. If you do not notice before you infiltrate this is how it looks before you infiltrate
However once you infiltrate you see this
Each enemy unit takes one damage, now I believe this is worth it for any and all battles just for 100 gold to give you a nice little edge over your enemy

Sometimes when you scout your second province this can happen, Multiple Goods Deposit
This is not a bug but it is a known problem, don’t worry about it because you can just be unlucky its all down to chance.

Right back again to research, by now I am currently up to here and this is just a suggestive path of which to follow but I think is most beneficial. Research Path
As you can see I chose to research Construction, the reason I did this was to research Tools as I believe early land expansion is beneficial to maximise output and production as much as you can. I have also begun to research slingers because until you reach Archers later on in the game you will not find a better unit at dealing damage, especially if you use their range to perfection.

If you are managing to utilise the space following somewhat to my guide your town my look like mine right now
Or it might not, either way I am utilising my space to the best way I can see at this moment in time of the game.

Another thing to do is to continually recruit Spearfighters where you can! you will lose a few taking over the next few provinces and they are your only troop until you reach slingers so if you tend to rush like me they are all you have. Until you reach soldiers there is not really another troop to replace a spearfighter, sure you can try tactics with a warrior or a horseman but in reality there is nothing simpler or easier then just using a spearfighter.

Once you reach Slingers get building them! They are the first ranged unit of the game and are extremely useful if used correctly in battle. Here is an Example of slingers being used correctly, as you can see they took no damage in the battle, this is because I used my spearfighters as a buffer to do all the melee combat and kept the ranged units further back and used their range successfully against my opponents, this is useful when fighting stronger aged units.

I have also been asked to explain the PVP Tower, which you first encounter on the province of Hymir. Basically the PVP Tower shows the competition between players for the specific age of troops that you fight with, now the first tower you encounter is of course for the Bronze age and each subsequent tower you encounter if for each subsequent age. This is what you see once you unlock the tower for your age, it gives a detailed pop-up of your battles so far.
Once you’ve conquered a province with a PvP tower, you get credited the battle-points you’ve collected so far with the respective troops. So if you are fighting with Iron Age troops only your Iron Age pvp tower is credited with points. You see battle-points when you finish a battle, they are shown in your Battle Report.

Now i am going to focus on some research methods and how you should research. More specifically what you should research, if we are talking about Goods then you should of course if possible research for the good you unlock in your first territory. For me that was trees so the obvious one to go for was Woodwork and I also did Stonework as well because the expansion unlock afterwards does not involve Diamonds to unlock.

I skipped Growing until later on but this is a necessary unlock because once you reach the Iron Age you will need 6 Wine to unlock the Militia which are soldiers. Soldiers are better then Spearfighters and the replacement and upgrade for that unit.

I did the Horseback Riding upgrade however that was purely to advance in technologies, they are generally a useless unit and I would not commender building them unless you fancy trying to develop a successful tactic with them.

Another useless (in my eyes, you can think differently) research that is necessary is the Phalanx. Some people may say they are better then the spearfighter however I disagree and find them expensive and slow to build when you can simply go on with the spearfighter.

Again Stone Throwers are also pretty much useless and a rather unneeded unit so once again I recommend to not even bother with them.

Thatched Houses are an upgrade which suites the less active player, if you know you can only check the game over periods of time it is better to have this upgrade so you can gain a larger coin income then simply getting a lesser amount then from the Hut. Now what is necessary to remember when you build new houses is that they provide more population which of course requires more happiness so make sure you can compensate for this. The same can be said for a Chalet for even longer periods of time, this is a perfect example of how the Enthusiastic Population boost comes into effect, the normal output is 80 gold however with the boost is is 96 gold. If you have 10 of these over 4 hours producing that you receive a 960 gold boost every 4 hours which is a nice little boost when you are not as active as you wish you could be.

Paths is an extremely beneficial early game upgrade. Each Path provides you with bonus happiness so it is extremely recommended to replace your trails with paths as soon as you can. As you progress further in the game you get further upgrades which are again extremely beneficial.

Smithery is also an extremely useful research, when you look at the Blacksmith at first you may feel its a small production rate however it is its size which is key and extremely beneficial for us because we have a very limited space to work with.

Now I shall move on, sometimes when you login you will see this pop-up. This is to say you have been attacked by another player, now there is no need to worry at this moment in time of the game your troops do not suffer any casualties however if you attack a player back and lose troops those troops will die.

Now some upgrades require things other then coins and supplies to unlock, I have previously mentioned diamonds but some also require goods. The first upgrade I came across was Architecture which requires 5 stone to unlock. This of course requires the corresponding goods building to unlock this by creating the specific good, the building in this case is of course the Stone Mason and remember you can still produce goods even if you have not got the product yet just at a smaller, slower and more expensive rate. However the amount needed can be produced within two days and you can get 2 extra if you are using the happiness bonus.

To ensure in future you have the right Goods for future researches it is best to maximise goods production where you can. Here is an Example of mine at the moment, the 3 buildings Circled are a Vineyard which is necessary for Soldiers, a Stone Mason which is necessary for Architecture and a Dye Works which I am simply stockpiling goods as shown with my Lumber. It is extremely useful and saves you producing in the future and being stuck on research.