When answering a question please quote the question and provide a solid un-opinionated answer. 

I remember when I first joined Illyriad I had no idea how the sov. system worked until my 3rd town, and I wished I would of asked someone about it earlier. 

So ask away!

But good idea to bundle new questions to this thread, geofrey.

People, there is no such thing as dumb questions... if there are, they might be entertaining and help other people not to repeat them 

But I would say a new player should focus on learning about all the options available in the game. A good place to start with this is to read through the research tree.  This gives you a good idea of all the stuff you can do in Illy and the buildings and research you need to do them.

Oh, and while you're reading, UPGRADE YOUR STOREHOUSE!  Also your resources and library.

Have fun out there and know you are welcome.

And thanks for offering your help.

Sometimes I have questions that I think are too silly to deserve a new thread to be opened about them, so I guess this could be the right place to ask them (no offense). Actually, had I noticed your thread before, I could have posted here most of my (silly) questions.

2:  The Crows (or crowfed) are Illy's largest confederation of alliances, although they seem to each have a slightly different idea on how to conduct their business in Illy.  

3:  The Blue text is the player's title given to them from their medal, the black text is that player's role in their alliance.  

About question n. 2: What I really wanted to know is where did the reference to crows originally come from.

For example, does it have anything to do with the movie "The Crow", or with Poe's poem, or with the Tower of London or what else?

Militia, in this example, would only ever use spears and leather armor, but you can use crafted items to give them certain bonuses, like increased attack on hills, or defense against cavalry. 

It should be noted that these are very work intensive and marginal, so newer players are pretty safe just ignoring it for a bit.  

Too bad there are no bisons then. Hopefully there will be some in the Broken Lands.

1)  Are there mass battles involving dozens or even 100's of players

2) Is there an end game or does it go on forever

3) Do you have hundreds of cities or just few but more detailed

4) Alliances are really important as in LoU or just a minor issue

5) Are troops just a number or are they more detailed

6) Does Electronic Arts have anything to do with this game

7) Haven't figured out if there is goal to meet 

Lord of Ultima is getting shut down in a couple of months my alliance is working on getting their crown in the next few days and we are looking at finding a new home. So I am have been trying this game for the last couple of days to see if it is something we would like (We enjoyed playing as a group and many of us would like to stay together)

2:  The game is open; there is no end.  

3:  The maximum amount of cities is 20, and each one can be quite specialized.

4:  Alliances vary in importance, although I would say they are one of the most important factors in the meta-game.

5:  Just a number, although there are a number of interesting and strategic modifiers that can affect that number.  

6:  Not yet, we hope.  

7:  See #2.  

I was recently involved in a battle that involved more than 100 incoming attacks along with multiple defender armies, as well as use of magic and diplomatic attacks.  If you are looking for complexity, Illyriad offers that.  It's also possible to engage in single-player combat or to fight against system-generated NPCs.

The game is persistent and so far has been going for nearly 4 years.  There is only one world in Illyriad at the moment, although the developers have suggested that new lands might open in the future.

There are some players who choose not to join alliances, but most active players choose to join an alliance eventually.  There are many different alliances and many different styles of alliances; some are more peaceful, others more warlike; some have specific goals or expectations, others are more free-form.

For more information on the people behind Illyriad, check out http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Home/About

There are lots of possible goals in Illy; it's up to each player and/or alliance to choose a goal.  Once you meet a goal, you might choose another one.

Until you complete this research you cannot equip any of the special crafted gear that you may own onto your troops.  Once you complete the research you can, for example, equip Hunter's Bows (+24% vs Animals) onto your archers and send them out to hunt rats.  If you come back from hunting to see an army of cavalry descending on your town you can swap the Hunter's Bows for Long-Draw Bows (+16% Cavalry Defense) to help them protect the city.  You can also place the special gear on your commanders.

Nope, those are orcs 

Being a Crow, I'm eating daily fresh Harmlesses, Dwarven lords and Night Crusaders.

They are really tasty 

Thanks for the info...very helpful. I've tried my luck at hunting and mostly lost many troops for a few hides. This tells me that there are upgrades to help with that problem. I've started using scouts and have read the NPC difficulty material which is good for knowing which NPCs are tougher to defeat. I'm still looking for a guide for number of troops vs NPCs. I've been told that not enough and you're wiped out (well acquainted with this scenario) and too many increases your losses and the need for re-recruiting...if true that would make exacting troop count very important. 

Hunting is on the shelf ftm while I tend to other growth priorities but I'm sure to use the info when I resume hunting..thanks again  Dragonwort

Helpful Tip #1:  When hunting NPCs for hides focus on creatures like rats, wild dogs and wolves.  They are the weakest critters out there with defense scores that average in the 4-6 range.  The best troops to attack them with for a human will be cavalry, with attack scores ten times as high.  Work on getting your barracks up toward 15 and doing the research for cavalry before you worry too much about hunting.  At lower levels you can attack with infantry and still get decent results, but attacking with weak bow or spear units tends to bring poor kill:loss rations.

Helpful Tip #2:  Make several strong offensive commanders (men-at-arms, charioteers, knights) and level up their Heroism skill.  Put all of the commanders into a single army of multiple divisions and add 70-100 offensive troops.  Heroism increases the attack power of each commander by a factor of 6 or 7 per level BUT their max attack power cannot be higher than the total attack power of the units in the army with them.  A single knight commander with Heroism 10 can reach an attack power of 3500 or more if he has enough troops to power him up.  usually about 70 troops of his type will do the trick.  An army of 50 knights and four heroic knight commanders has more than 16,000 attack power, enough to wipe out hundreds of rats with minimal casualties.

1: Wars between major alliances tend to revolve around sieges, with dozens of players on one side reinforcing the siege camps and dozens on the other side trying to eliminate them.  I have seen battles involving over a million troops and there were probably bigger ones that I wasn't a part of.  Coordinated offensives involving multiple alliances in a single battle are also possible but timing such operations can be tricky.  Unless one side has a gross numerical advantage however, tactics and coordination will often win over brute force.

2: There is no set ending date when "the winner" will be announced and the server will reset.  You basically play as long as you are having fun.  If your idea of fun is military however, be aware that politics and diplomacy will make or break you.

3: Up to ten cities per account and up to two accounts.  The first few cities come pretty fast, the ninth and tenth take a lot more time and effort.  Cities can specialize in manufacturing, trading, harvesting or military units.  It is usually worthwhile to specialize each town to do one thing very well rather than try to make a city dabble in everything.

4: Alliances and inter-alliance diplomacy are vital if you want to do anything remotely military.  If you just want to chat, sell items and resources and watch your city grow you can usually thrive without an alliance as long as you make more friends than enemies.

5: There are four basic military unit types, two for attack and two for defense.  Each has its own advantages and disadvantages and thrives in some situations while struggling in others.  Each race has one unit type that is better than comparable units made by other races, so many players specialize in one troop type.  Others may have a certain military role in their alliance and specialize based on their function.  Then there are the diplomat units such as the scouts who count troops in your city and the assassins who kill your commanders, the spies that find out what you are building and the saboteurs that burn those buildings down, and the thieves who descend like locusts to "redistribute" your wealth.

6:  No, not that I know of

7: The only real goal is to have fun.  That can mean cornering the chainmail market, getting the highest questing score in the game, building the biggest city, having the most formidable army you can make, fighting wars, helping feuding alliances negotiate peace, or just hanging with friends in the chat room.  You can pretty much do what turns you on unless someone bigger and meaner makes you stop.

When looking at the stats of crafted items you see, for example: "+12% defence against cavalry" or "-5% speed", and I get that.

But when you read something like: "+8% against animals" or "+6% for elves", does that mean in attack or defence or both?

If I equip only half of my units with crafted weapons  and I suffer ~50% losses in a battle, will I leave 50% of the weapons on the battlefield or none?

Some equipment will be lost forever; only a percentage is recovered.  The exception to this is fighting in a city; in this case 100% of the equipment (from both sides) drops into the city's inventory.

I've seen things like the Council of Five? OR The circle of Nine? or some such and I wonder what they do...Can someone explain?..thanks.. Dragonwort

Factions are NPC groups that will eventually function like alliances, trading with or possibly warring with their neighbors depending on their programming and your actions toward them.  For the moment their only function is to provide flavor text for the various trading hubs located around the map and to occasionally litter the map with small NPC camps, but one day there should be more to it.

1)  Players can place buy and sell orders at faction trade hubs.  Some items such as crafted items and advanced harvestables can only be traded at faction hubs and not by city-to-city marketplace trade.  (Although these items can be traded informally without going through the marketplace.)

2)  Factions generate small armies that set up camps various places on the map.  These armies can be killed by players.

There are other things that factions theoretically will do in the future; however these features have been promised for several years, so no one is holding their breath as to when these features might be rolled out or what they will look like when they do.  Some items that have been discussed are faction troops attacking player cities or player armies and factions generating NPC cities on the map that can be attacked, thieved and/or captured.

We will believe that when we see it.

(Also, Daufer, your Dwarfness is showing.  You excuse for a cavalry unit may have a 3500 max, but a maxed heroism knight commander gets 3965 attack points :P )

AND is this considered "bullying" or does that only apply to aggression against your cities?

Dragonwort wrote: What is the proper etiquette re. Bumping? As a newbie if I'm bumped by a much larger player do I bump back? And then what? He rebumps me AND stations troops? Or what? Dragonwort AND is this considered "bullying" or does that only apply to aggression against your cities?

Every so often someone will come to global chat and ask if any new players need resources. there are usually a number of responses and sometimes the person giving resources will ask how many the newbie can hold. The newbie answers and this is the confusing part....very often the generous resource supplier will send much more than the amount requested and include a message to "upgrade your storage".

Is there a way to do that? Something similar happened to me(although storage amounts were not discussed) and I found 10 K of each resource inbound when I could only hold around 7500. Thinking there might be some lag, I waited until the very second that the resources arrived and upgraded my storage, hoping to upgrade with the overstock and then have the remainder to work with. I failed miserably and succeeded in using more than 1/2 of the 7500 I actually could store. My storage was upgraded but at the time I would rather have used the incoming to upgrade resource production and then upgrade storage with the increases resources I produced.

I certainly don't mean to look a gift horse...etc. BUT if the extra resources are lost to cyberspace; is the inclusion of extra resources a way to emphasize your need to upgrade storage? OR is there a way to make this work and I just don't know it yet?  thanksDragonwort

2) With regard to the folks who send more than a new player's storage can actually hold, I have never been able to fathom why they thought that was a good thing.  They may feel it's helpful, but more often it is just annoying for the new player.  Probably it reflects the fact that it's been a long time since they were a new player themselves and can't put themselves in your shoes.  My advice would be to make the best use of whatever is incoming that you can, consistent with your own goals.  Play your own game.

3)  If you don't have any rare herbs or minerals around you or if they are all claimed, there is little point to building a herbalists guild or a miners guild.  A skinners guild can be handy once you have a small army and start killing stuff, or if there are a lot of unclaimed animal parts left lying around your area.  Cotters are cheap and very useful.  Building a trade office and merchants guild can be useful to build a trader and take advantage of safe storage in hubs.  I wouldn't recommend upgrading them very far unless you plan to be very active in hub trade.  (Upgrading merchants guild beyond level 1 seems pretty pointless for all but perhaps the top 1% of traders.)

Faction standings cannot be changed at this time.

This is a petitioned issue and has been an issue for well over a year.

What you queue up for production is rarely what you will make.  Mind you, more often than not you will produce more than you actually queue up.  

I am a newbie located in Tor Carrock with many other newbies and more appearing everyday.

My question is this: 2 new cities have now spawned next to my favorite spot to gather herbs. (actually the ONLY spot for many squares). One settlement has a population of 5 and the other 3.

Am I poaching? I assume they are not far enough along in research to gather the herbs anyway. 

should I wait until they are larger and ask permission to harvest there OR just wait until they bump me ? Oh, and they are unaligned..Whats the proper etiquette for this situation?Dragonwort

I already expressed my support for freedom of harvesting so my suggestion is to harvest as much as you want (provided you don't overharvest) but if the patch is being harvested by someone else wait till they are finished.

A few more things to keep in mind:

Herbs are regenerated to the max available on each spot at midnight (game time). So if you scout the patch shortly after midnight you will know how many herbs are there.

This is important to know because if herbs are overharvested (e.g. if you send 10 herbalists on a patch with 9 herbs) they will disappear forever from that spot.

I am also a self-appointed "environmental guard" meaning I protect the rare herbs patch closest to my city by scouting every time I see other people harvesting it (I advise you to do the same). If I ever see too many harvesters there, I am ready to bump them off and even kill them (if I don't have any harvesting units to bump them with) but luckily this has never happened.

Considering the size of your neighbours they will not be interested to the rare herbs for a long time, if ever. Chances are they will either abandon the account or tenaril to a new location.

If any of them decides to stay in the area I think you should approach them not to ask permission but to encourage them to agree to a shared use of the resource.

If they claim rights on it because of vicinity you could claim precedence, since you were there first. My personal opinion is that natural resources belong to everybody so they should be shared.

This is more of a long-term consideration than one you need to worry about in your first month or two of play.  Note that you can just knock down the trade office and merchants guild in your other cities after you've completed the research.  Also note that the merchants guild is not used for any purpose other than to build traders and complete research, so once you've built a trader it's possible to demolish the merchants guild in your trade city as well.  (You would need to rebuild it if you ever wanted to make another trader in that city.)

I am not an expert trader, so hopefully one of those will weigh in, but until then here are my thoughts.

There really are no special requirements for a trading city.  The trade office itself is high population (2k), so you want to find a square that has good food sovereignty.  This is true of any city in general, of course.  Trade office consumes a lot of wood, moderate stone and low clay, so you might choose a low iron square.

However, there's really no reason to "specialize" a city in trade.  Trade buildings take at most 2 squares (merchants guild and trade office).  I suppose if you were a really gung-ho trader you COULD build more than one trade office to have more orders, but there's no need to have them both in the same city, as trade offices operate at an account level rather than a city level in terms of placing orders.

The next question is what combinations work well for a trade city.  Pretty much any military specialization is possible, although bow or cavalry might be less preferred because of the wood production of the trade office.  A harvesting and/or crafting specialization is also very possible and perhaps desirable.

The additional specialization (if any) of the trade city will influence location.  In particular if you choose a harvesting and/or crafting specialization, you will want the city to be close to a ready source of supplies for harvesting, including animals to hunt.  The center of the map may not be conducive to this aim, so any benefit from being close to centrum and having less caravan travel time would be outweighed by the relative scarcity of animals to hunt and other rare resources to be gathered (as well as the increased competition for such in densely populated areas).

Keep in mind that caravans can be sped up with prestige, while armies cannot.  In terms of broad geographic location, I would recommend placing defense and hunting opportunities above hub proximity, even for a trader.

I think it's worthwhile to have some defensive diplomats of each type to give you a CHANCE of catching any incoming diplomats of that same type.  As to how many, that depends on whether you are at war or peace, how many people you've pissed off lately, that sort of thing.

There is little need to maintain a large body of defensive assassins unless you are at war (and perhaps not even then) since the main risk from assassination is from assassination when you are under siege.

As for saboteurs, once your city is largely built, you will rarely be researching anything (research will be completed) and so the risk of saboteurs is diminished.  Therefore it's harder to justify keeping a large body of saboteurs.

I'd start with 5 of each as a minimum and adjust from there based on your level of paranoia and/or tendency to engender controversy.

Everybody tells you you should use T2 units as commanders but, since T1 units can give a higher defensive bonus, shouldn't we have some T1 commanders for defensive purposes?

edit@ aurordan: could you please elaborate? how should I decide which T1 commanders to use in different situations?

Do you know how long do they stay there before being erased?

Is it only system messages that get erased or also messages from other players?

You are absolutely correct that in the long term you will probably want to have some t1 commanders as well.  I personally build at least one t1 cavalry commander in each city both for speed and for the enhanced defense against cavalry potential.

T2 commander can give up to a 15% attack bonus to troops of their type in their division.  For example, if you have a city building infantry for attack and plan on sending out more than 500 troops at a time, you will get better overall attack power by using a T2 infantry commander trained to 15% Bloodlust than by using a T2 cavalry commander who can only be trained to 10%.  For small units (anything under 500 or so)  there is more advantage to using T2 cavalry commanders because their much greater attack power via Heroism more than makes up for the 5% difference at the division level.

T1 commander can give up to a 15% defense bonus against troops of their type.  If you are setting up a siege camp for example, it is most likely going to get hit by a lot of cavalry.  A T1 cavalry commander will give his division 5% more defense against cavalry than any other type of commander can and this bonus applies whether your defending troops are spears, bows or anything else.  If you are trying to protect someone who is being sieged and their city has a mountain next to it, odds are a lot of bow units are going to be landing on that mountain before the camp arrives.  You could send a bunch of troops under a T1 bow commander there to wait for those troops to arrive and get a slightly higher kill ratio.  Of course the alliance doing the sieging is probably going to scour that mountain with cavalry before their defense troops arrive just in case so you might still be better off with a T1 cavalry commander instead.

System messages will usually hang around for like a week, and then get automatically deleted. Forward these to someone (Like yourself) if you want to hang on to them.  

RE: Commanders

Basically what other people said.  When using large numbers of defensive troops, T1 units of the type you want to defend against will give you a 5% bonus over other commander types, assuming you max the appropriate skill.  

I noticed that spell casting includes a racial bonus..I am human so it doesn't seem to apply to me....to whom does it apply? AND while on the subject, are there other racial bonuses? (bonea?) AND if so, perhaps a list of said bonuses?  Thanks.. Dragonwort

Researchers are still working on that question.  Surely it must have some evolutionary purpose.

Some buildings that create large amounts of population that you may wish to build early in your Illy career are Mage Tower, Consulate and Architects Office.  There are other buildings that create large populations, but they are not very useful for very new players.

Smelliness keeps away the grumpkins and snarks.

MAGIC: Is there any purpose for the last 3 schools of magic? the first 2 open everything listed to research, so why are the other 3 there? Is this the Dev's way of saying that "soon" (lol) magic will be expanded? Or what?

SIEGING: I have  seen where players are about to siege an abandoned city and they send troops to the city to prevent thieving...How exactly does that work? Do you blockade to keep others from entering a city that is not your's? Or what? ALSO..how many catapults are usually sent for the siege of a city 19 K to 22K population? AND when you storm and capture do the catapults automatically stop and return home OR do you need to send a messenger as when you want your conquering troops to return?

REPORTS: I suddenly found one of my cities with no scouts, no rangers, no agents. If they were eliminated because someone sent more of each to your city; do you get a report or not? Does their disappearance mean I've been scouted sometime during the night?

I really do have many more questions but forgot to keep a list and they elude me atm..soooo..Thanks in advance for any replies Dragonwort

No, there isn't.

Dragonwort wrote: SIEGING: I have  seen where players are about to siege an abandoned city and they send troops to the city to prevent thieving...How exactly does that work? Do you blockade to keep others from entering a city that is not your's? Or what?

Not sure what you are talking about... If you want to prevent thieving in a certain city, you could send your thieves there to defend from enemy thieves. But you have to attach them to your army which is then set to "occupy" the city, as thieves ordinarily just thieve and quickly make a run for it (:

Also, blockade is used in PVP to stop a portion of caravans at random from entering or leaving the city you are sieging. If you're sieging an abandoned city, you don't need it.

Dragonwort wrote: ALSO..how many catapults are usually sent for the siege of a city 19 K to 22K population? AND when you storm and capture do the catapults automatically stop and return home OR do you need to send a messenger as when you want your conquering troops to return?

Depends on whether it is defended :p

If you are sieging an abandoned city to capture, you want less catapults so the city population drops slowly and you can pick the "right moment" when the city pop has just dropped below the requirement to capture. That way you lose less pop... 10 cats should do nicely.

If you capture your cats move inside the city, fight a battle with any occupying forces and stay there till the occupy timer you set runs out or a messenger arrives.

Dragonwort wrote: REPORTS: I suddenly found one of my cities with no scouts, no rangers, no agents. If they were eliminated because someone sent more of each to your city; do you get a report or not? Does their disappearance mean I've been scouted sometime during the night?

Your diplos inside a city cannot be killed by enemy diplos. You probably ran out of gold or something... 

For example standard bows' production time is linked to the level of the fletcher, but production time for the poachers bow is linked to level of the bowyer (also you give the build orders in the fletchers menue...).

Thus, if you want to produce lots of crafted items in short time, you upgrade them.  And if you want to keep the building, better take the pop increase than only block the building plot with a Lvl 1 building =)

ALSO if this is possible will it show up as movement on the world map. You could then redbird or just follow them home.

UNLESS there is some advantage to having thieves with the military when occupying resource node or NPC kill for harvesting?

Thanks for the prompt reply..DW

HOWEVER, if I attach those thieves to an army and send the army set to Reinforce to one of my cities or a city of someone in my alliance or with whom I am NAP'd or confed, THEN those thieves will settle down in the city and defend it from any attacking thieves.

So sending a diplomatic mission is very different from sending diplomats as a diplomatic contingent in an army.

With regard to the crafted buildings, the building must exist in order to make crafted equipment.  If you demolish a crafting building after having started a queue of crafted equipment, the crafted equipment will NOT be made.  However, if you have enough of X crafted equipment and don't want to make that anymore but instead want to make Y crafted equipment of another type entirely (bows instead of spears), you can knock down your X crafting building and build a Y crafting building.  This also applies if you have specialized the crafting building to one type of equipment and now want to make another one.

With regard to the description of the effect of additional crafting buildings, each building will indicate that it reduces the time required to make crafted equipment; there should be a notation in the description that indicates each additional building is half as effective as the first one, but sometimes they omit this information since it's provided elsewhere in the documentation of the buildings.

A number of cities 10 squares apart...2 or 3 alliances but predominately one, A player abandons a city. After a time a member of the predominate alliance asks permission and builds or exoduses a city between an alliance mate and the abandoned city. Now there is a city 5 squares from the abandoned city. No one has made a move on the  abandoned city yet....no sieges ...no troops next to it..nada.

Is it permissible to siege the abandoned city? The idea is to siege and then exodus to a more desirable location Or is it a no-no and why?

Input is desired and will be appreciated  Dragonwort

UPDATE: forgot to say The abandoned city is unaligned..

Updated update: basically you.re saying that the exodused/built new city has first claim on the abandoned city because he built within 5 squares of it.

UPDATE: forgot to say The abandoned city is unaligned..

Updated update: basically you.re saying that the exodused/built new city has first claim on the abandoned city because he built within 5 squares of it.

AND if that is the case...then I only need to ask permission of the new city owner and not alliance leadership since the abandoned city if unaligned. Correct?

So which is it? Can any veteran player say with certainty whether or not the pool troops will defend the castle? I realize they cannot benefit from a commander(since there is none) but are they penalized in any other way IF they can, indeed, defend the castle?

Would really like to know one way or the other....thanks Dragonwort

Are the research pages the same for all races...Under the title effects on individual items, there are various +,- for terrain and races, etc. which would seem to indicate that the pages are the same BUT just to be sure...are they?  Thanks  Dragonwort

And yes, the research tree is the same for all the races.  For crafted equipment with different bonuses, any race can research and craft, for example, forester's armor.  No matter who crafts it, the 8% additional bonus will only apply to elves.

There are Discoveries (which must be achieved and cannot be researched directly) that do differ based on race -- for example, the racial swords and the racial mounts.  Only an elven city can achieve the Elven Thoroughbred discovery; only a human city can achieve the Traditional Sword discovery.

With that said, it is possible for a city to HAVE the discovery from another race.  This occurs when a city is owned by a player of race A, who makes the discovery, and then is captured by a player from race B.  So for example, if I as a human capture an orc city that has the War Wolf crafting discovery, I can make war wolves (mounts with bonuses for orcs).  I might want to make them and sell them to orcs, but I probably would not use them myself because of the penalties to humans.

If you use the puzzleslogic site, the crafted items that are Discovered rather than directly researched are highlighted in light blue.

Honestly if your goal is the "specialize" an entire account only in mining, probably you wont be able to find enough mines to keep you busy (unless you happen to snag silversteel or obsidian, which both have short harvest times and large quantities in a given mine).  However, mining can still be one activity among many.