Introduction

This documentation is also avalible as a downloadable, printer-friendly PDF file. It is avalible as a A4 version as well as a Letter version.

Welcome to Fantasy Empire, a massive multiplayer online strategy medieval warfare game with strong influents from fantasy rpg´s. Before you are the rules introduction page that will shed some light on what this game is and how to play it. It will take some time to read and fully understand all the aspects of the game, but without the help section you will surely be lost in the wealth of game information that needs to be understood in order to fully enjoy Fantasy Empire.

The gameplay of Fantasy Empire is divided into different sections: Realms, Empires and Provinces. You act the leader of an Empire, hence the name "Fantasy Empire". You can only control one Empire at the time in Fantasy Empire, but don´t worry; it´s more than enough to hold in mind as it is already. Each Empire consists of one or more provinces, situated in one of the many realms throughout the game. When you create your account and login for the first time your Empire will only consist of one Province in one random Realm that didn´t already consist of 20 or more Provinces at the time you created your account for this round. Each realm has a unique identification number, called realm number.

So what good does all these realms and provinces and stuff do then?
The goal of choice to achieve is being the strongest Empire in either having the highest population, the strongest army, the most land or being the wealthiest Empire of some sort, see "Resources and the Market". To be able to achieve these goals you need to explore more land, so that your first province in your first realm becomes bigger, and then build buildings on the land just explored. Just the land does nothing good until you put buildings on it. The buildings can be looked upon as the "source" of your empire, together with "[castle improvements]" and the various researches, see "Technology Research". There are 13 unique land types in Fantasy Empire (Fertile Plains, Rocky Plains, Forested Plains, Fertile Hills, Rocky Hills, Forested Hills, Mountains, Findings Mountains, Caves, Deep Sea, Coastline, Lake and Swamp), see "Land and Buildings" for more information on your land. One thing you must consider is that you only can put a certain building on a certain land type, as for example you can´t build a farm on water since it would sink right away. But you can rezone your land and that means converting one land type into another so that you can build the buildings desired. That, however, will cost you both wealth and time since rezoning is hard work, see "Land and Buildings" for information at rezoning as well.

Another thing to keep in mind is controlling those resources, it´s not as wise to spend it all in one place as it would seem. While it might be very tempting to buy a new company if that bad-ass top-of-the-line unit you just lost in your current attack you might want to consider investing some resources in technology, that way your whole Empire will benefit from it, beginning at the time the investment was made. It´s ever so often worth the wealth spent. You should also keep in mind that different races require different amounts of resources. One race might have wood as their "primary" resource while another has stone, although it still needs wood but not in the same quantities. For further information regarding races and racial bonuses, see "Racial Bonuses and Special Qualities"

All races have their own specific militia. That militia consists of four units and one bonus unit, which is very hard to get. First, every race has two basic units, one purely offensive and one defensive. Although these units are decent you´ll eventually have to bring out the very best of your army to survive and prosper. The next two units are usually referred to as the "elites" and they usually have some kind of special power that is typical for the race you are playing. They can be purely offensive, purely defensive or a combination of both. Believe it, all special units kick ass in one way or another. And, as if that weren´t enough, they usually have some kind of special power such as "Counts as 1/2 spy" or "Counts as 1/2 wizard" or, if you play undead, "ALMOST never dies!" For more details on units see "Military Units".

While it might seem so at just a glance, the game isn´t entirely unit based. The features "Magic" and "spionage" are incredibly useful to gather information about a province you want to attack, weakening them in other ways than military invasion or just making them aware of your potential threat to them! ;) Just make sure you are a potential threat to them, not so clever to do this on the monarch of your realm if you just got started. For more details regarding magic and espionage see "Magic Spells" and "Espionage Operations".

Well until now we´ve been telling you stuff about what happens and a little bit why it happens. Now comes when it happens. Since Fantasy Empire is a turn based game, this means that everything happens on specified time marks. These time marks are every hour. The game is divided into turns, which occur during one round. One round consists of many turns; how long a round should be is not decided yet. All basic units, for example, takes 8 hours to train, counting from the moment you decided to train them, except for Royal gryphons that require 12 hours. Now unit training isn´t the only thing that happens "on the hour". Just about everything happens every hour, whether it is resource income, population growth, mana growth or a magic that´s wearing of. Just as in real life, independently of what it is, everything has a beginning and an end. This is just the way we chose to describe the time flow. While it might seem pretty stupid at first to have such long waiting times, you´ll soon become used to them, they are pretty easy to handle. For example, while 12h might seem dreadfully long to wait for your units to return from your recent attack, you didn´t have to send out all of your troops at once. This will become clearer as your Empire, and the provinces within it, grow bigger. Most things in the game takes 6, 9 or in some cases even 12 hours to complete. Some exceptions do exist, but they are trivial.

Through out the game you will also find different bonuses. The bonuses are there to give the racial differences more definition and to make the game more exciting. There are many different types of bonuses and they can be achieved in different ways. Check out "[castle improvements]" and technology research" for more details regarding bonuses. Researching isn´t the only way of gaining bonuses, each race has special "racial bonuses" as well.

This is the end of the introduction, which aimed at giving you a good overview of the game. You should check out all the other rules now, and get started as soon as you possibly can! If you already read the rest of the rules, here´s the registration page. The developers of Fantasy Empire hope that you will enjoy many hours with this game!