Combat

Combat

Players take it in turns to attack. This can be done by attacking or defending an island, or when fighting the AI during campaigns. It takes energy to attack.

Attacking

A central part of Empires and Allies is attacking other people in order to get more resources. To be able to attack, the recipient of said attack needs to be level 6. You cannot attack an enemy who has a World Embassy running.

Once the attack has been initiated, you will see squares indicated on the map to show where you can move your units to. Once all the squares are full, the action can commence!

When picking units to use in attacks, bear in mind that you should try to keep sufficient numbers to maintain a good variety throughout the combat. If you are left with only units of one type, or even a few, the chances are you will struggle to be able to mount a strong attack against the enemy, as you won't have any units with sufficient strengths to choose from.

Similarly, you should focus your attacks on where your enemy is weakest - if they only have one of a particular unit left, take it out and they will have a gaping hole in their strategy.

Invasion Zone

The Invasion Zone is the area that you are able to pillage, gaining resources once every four hours until the zone is shut down by the defending player's army. The Invasion Zone is also stopped if you join the World Embassy.

In the Invasion Zone, the attacker gets resources from any buildings in the vicinity.

Upon invading you can see the resources of your enemy and pick an area to attack. It depends on your current resource situation as to where you will want to focus your attack, though if there are buildings close together, there should be fewer military units able to defend them.

Defending

When a player has an Invasion Zone in your territory, they are sapping your resources. It also costs more energy to be able to maintain the infrastructure of the area in question while it is in this state.

The best way to avoid being attacked by other players is to establish a World Embassy. This prevents anyone from attacking you, as well as from you attacking them.

Every unit in the game has a defensive radius. For land and air units, this is one square around the unit, while water units are given three squares. This means that if your opponent tries to attack a building that is in the defensive zone, they have to take out your units first.

When positioning defensive units, it makes sense to put the strongers or more numerous around the most important resources. This depends on your current situation, but generally Oil, Wood, Ore and government buildings are the things to protect most ardently.

Allies

When defending, you can request the assistance of one of your allies. This can be another player who is able to assist you by providing powerups for you to use in combat.

Health

Each unit has a limited amount of health. After battling the enemy, you have the opportunity to restore their health, if they have not already been defeated. To do this, you can use Empire Points to buy a power up, use one that you have in your inventory already, or purchase health directly for a unit.

Power ups are used by clicking the central circle at the bottom of the screen. You want to use the Field Repair power ups to get health back, so either select it or buy it with Empire Points.

Power ups affect all of your units in the current combat scenario. Sometimes you may not want to use up a valuable power up if only one of your units is damaged, so in this case you could employ your Empire Points. To do this, click on the health icon for that particular unit and you will have the option to give it maximum health for 2 Empire Points. When giving a unit health back, you are also sacrificing a turn.

Surrender

It is possible to retreat from battles, for example if you know you are not going to be able to win, or if you run out of energy mid-fight.

World Embassy

The key advantages of establishing a World Embassy are that you no longer have to worry about being attacked by opposition forces. Upon its establishment, you can't attack people or suffer the risk of losing the embassy's effects. Also, you have to give back any territory that you have captured throughout the game so far.

Obviously the natural tactic would be to use the World Embassy as a tool whenever you need to get out of a sticky situation. Zynga have combatted this by not allowing you to reactivate the World Embassy for six hours after it has been turned off.

If you suddenly realise that you don't have enough units to defend your empire, activate your WOrld Embassy, and it should keep the enemy from your gates until its efects run out.

Bonuses

After making a Critical Kill you can boost your Bonus Bar by clicking the icons that come out from teh defeated enemy. This increases the amount of rewards you get from such actions.