Strategies, Tips & Tricks - Basic Military Development for New Players

Note: If you are in an alliance, please ask your alliance about any rules or suggestions it has about appropriate use of armies. Different alliances have different rules about who or what may be acceptable targets for your armies.

If you are a new player interested in self defense, there are more effective ways to defend yourself than building an army right away. Check out http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/basic-self-defense-for-new-players_topic2368.html" rel="nofollow -

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

The experienced players in global chat were echoing Gen. Eisenhower's sentiments. In order to be a successful "leader" of your Illyriad empire, you need to balance economic and military production. Military is an important aspect of Illyriad, but it is not the only aspect. So this guide will encourage you to seek balance as you build your military capacity.

With that in mind, consider the following steps to building your initial army. You can work on some of these items concurrently.

1. Create a strong economic base to support your military capacity.

In your first day or two in Illy, focus on building storehouse, library and basic resource production. You will need basic resources and research points to create buildings and perform researches necessary to build military units and send them on missions.

2. Try diplomacy first.

"Military intelligence" may be an oxymoron, but building the capacity to gather information on opposing forces is very handy when planning military operations. In Illyriad, military intelligence gathering is performed by scout units, built in the consulate. After your economy has started humming along, research Negotiation and build a consulate. Also build a paddock and start producing a few horses. (You can also buy some horses on the market or receive them as gifts, but it's handy to be able to make them yourself.)

Once you have built a level 1 consulate, you can scroll to the bottom of the Diplomacy section of the research tree and study Scouting. This will enable you to build basic scout units -- human scouts, elf trackers, dwarf sentries, or orc hunters. Scout units are cheap to make, requiring only a little gold and a horse.

You can perform basic scout missions with as few as 1 scout, although sending 2 scouts seems to reduce the random failure rate. I recommend building 10 basic scouts, as this will also allow you to complete most diplomatic quests (with the exception of those that require advanced scouts). Scouts have upkeep costs in gold 1 -- 1 gold per hour for basic scouts. So if you are going to build 10 scouts, you should either have a positive gold income of at least 10 gold per hour or sufficient gold saved (and a plan to make more) to cover the cost.

If you do not have gold to pay your scouts -- because you are negative on gold and run out -- your scouts will simply leave. Do not panic if this happens; you can always make more scouts. Still, it's better to plan ahead so you are not left without eyes and ears for your crucial intelligence gathering.

Once you have built your scouts, you can use them to do quests and explore other aspects of your environment. You can send them out to count the number of grapes in a grape patch, discover what type of rare mineral is over on that mountain, or if you are very bold, how many soldiers your neighbor has in his or her city. (Note: Many players consider it rude if not aggressive to scout their cities. Check with your alliance or the other player before you scout a city, or be prepared to face negative consequences.)

You can also use your scouts to check out NPC animals in your area. Your scouts will not only count the number of animals in a group, they will also return a report on their defensive characteristics. You can use these reports to get a feel for the number and type of animals in your area and how many soldiers you might need to defeat them. You can either add up their defense statistics by hand or use http://illyriad.varda.nl/battle/" rel="nofollow -

3. Develop a stash of gold.

Like diplomats, army units are paid in gold. And like your scouts, if you don't have gold to pay them, they will just disappear. You could raise taxes to cover the hourly cost of your military units. However, this would reduce your resource production, and usually when you are very new you need all the resources you can produce to keep building. As your city matures and your resource production improves, you can gradually raise taxes and bring your gold back into balance. However, when you are a very new player, your population is small and the extra gold you generate by having higher taxes is usually not worth the trade-off in reduced resource production. And you don't want to have to wait until your city is huge to build your first army!

The solution to this quandary is of course to find a source of gold OTHER than taxes to fund your army. Some possible ways to develop a bankroll for your future military are gifts of gold from established players, harvesting gold from the world map, making cows in your common ground and selling them, or using cotters to harvest basic herbs, basic minerals, hides or grapes, then selling them. (Get more information on gathering items to sell from http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/10-gathering_topic4014.html" rel="nofollow -

However, you get your gold, I recommend having a MINIMUM stash of 20,000 gold before you build more than a few military units. Certainly if you plan to go negative on gold to maintain your military, you will want to have at least several days' worth of gold on hand, just in case you can't connect with the Internet for a few days or in case you get distracted. There are few things more disconcerting than signing on to discover that your loyal troops have all sought employment with the neighboring city because you forgot to pay them.

4. Upgrade your barracks and research military units

In order to build military units, you will need to research Militia and build a barracks. Upgrading your barracks will unlock researches for various military units. Choosing which military units are the best to build and use depends on many factors. For your first army, I will recommend units that have low input costs, can be built with lower-level barracks, and are effective for attacking NPC groups on a variety of terrains. Basically this is the "cheap, fast and easy" guide to a first army. As you develop your military prowess, you will make more informed decisions about the types of units to produce.

Race	Unit Type	Barracks Lv/ Research	Resources	Support Buildings
Elf	t1 bow (sentinel)	Level 3/ Ranged Weapons	Beer Bow	Brewery Fletcher
Human	t1 sword (swordsman) OR t1 cavalry (chariot)	Level 5/ Infantry OR Level 11/ Cavalry	Chainmail Sword OR Beer Saddles Horse	Blacksmith OR Brewery Saddlemaker Paddock
Dwarf	t1 sword (axman)	Level 5/ Infantry	Chainmail Sword Beer	Blacksmith Brewery
Orc	t1 sword (fang)	Level 5/Infantry	Chainmail Sword	Blacksmith

5. Build production buildings to support your troop types.

Now that you are able to build military units, you will need advanced resources to produce them. You can trade for these resources or receive them as gifts. However, since you will be losing your troops in battle with some regularity, it is convenient to be able to make the items needed to replace your losses. The recommended units above are chosen in part because not very many buildings are required to produce the needed goods.

Making an army without having the ability to recreate your troops can be dangerous to your health, http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/can-i-haz-some-spears-as-told-by-ryelle_topic2725.html" rel="nofollow - - guide to hunting NPCs . And fluffy has a great http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/everything-you-need-to-know-about-commanders_topic2742.html" rel="nofollow -