More Ikariam tips - combat
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm by Bob Weber (Games, Tech)
I’ve learned a few more interesting things about Ikariam. Some of the most valuable are concerning attacking other cities, and being attacked.
- When attacking another city don’t leave your own undefended. Sure, you would think this was common sense, but peace and leads to a false sense of security. I recently thought I would try my hand at attacking a neighboring city. I sent all of my ships to attack a harbor, and while they were gone guess what happened. That’s right, somebody else attacked me and got away with a bunch of loot. Easy for them since my harbor was undefended.
- When attacked, move goods out of that city. The individual that attacked me the first time thought it was so lucrative, he launched another attack the next day. Fortunately I was watching the game and saw him coming, so I was able to make him pay. I quickly moved all of my valuable goods to a neighboring colony. He spent a lot of ships and troops to come away with a handful of gold, and no other loot. I’m sure the expedition was a costly one. Serves him right.
- Be sure you have enough wine when under siege. The biggest cost to me on both attacks was a lack of wine. My wine ran out and my citizens got angry and started jumping ship. Kind of irritating. Of course I couldn’t resupply quickly enough, and that’s cost me a lot of gold, which leads to my final tip for this session.
- Build big museums. Museums are nice because they allow you to keep your people happy with limited daily cost. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to maintain a large enough museum to keep a large city happy without wine, but it definitely softens the blow, and everyone is pretty happy to do a cultural exchange with you.
A couple interesting notes to make about the randomness of the game play. The combat reports of my recent hammering is no longer in my military section. I’m not sure why this is, if my opponent stopped playing the game. I don’t know if his attacks were so costly he was then overrun by someone else, or if there is some other reason why the history disappeared. This is unfortunate, I liked having that for reference. Another annoyance is the cost of maintaining an army altogether. The cost of maintaining, defending and attacking other players is astronomical. It’s difficult to come out of the deal and show a profit. You almost have to spy out the place before hand and then get lucky in order to generate a profit, and it’s really easy for your spies to get caught. Guess that’s a correlation with real life, intelligence gathering is difficult, and war can be extremely costly, but it would be nice if it was a little more economical to invade your neighbors.
Popularity: 17%
