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Guide for Beginners

DeletedUser

(Updated 1/22/2016 by SFM-ByeOrDie)

Disclaimer:
And kind regards to all guide owners who allowed using links to their guides!


Introduction

So, you recently started or intend to start playing Forge of Empires and want to know what you can expect, how you progress and stuff like that :confused:
Here is a little summary for all of you nubies :p

Quotation from official Web page:
Forge of Empires is a browser-based strategy game that lets you create your own city and accompany it from the beginning of the Stone Age onward throughout the centuries. Build structures typical of the epoch. Enlarge your sphere of influence through military campaigns and skillful dealings. You can expect exciting tasks and demanding challenges.

Quick Jump (Every topic is split into a new post so you can directly jump to it)
 
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DeletedUser

Part 01 - Exploring the main screen

Part 01 - Exploring the main screen



You start in Stone Age with other players who are part of your neighbourhood. You only see 80 people in your neighbourhood. Ragu Silvertongue - your quest giver - already waits for you.


TbYDad3.jpg


But before you go on, let's take a closer look at your main screen:


el1HJli.png


At the top you find the name of your city, which can be changed if you click on it. You can also change your avatar and profile text there (or click on your town hall and choose Profile to do it). The next element shows your rank in your current world, available population and next to them, their happiness. If you hover over anything you get more information. Same is true for everything else in the game. In the middle of that header you find your current era and your Forge Points. You will use those Forge Points to research new technologies and for trading with other players. If you click on that plus symbol, you can buy them for coins (which you generate yourself) or for diamonds (premium currency of the game). On the right side you find the amount of your coins, supplies, medals, diamonds and our chat directly below the top bar.


You already know about the quest giver on the left side. And at the bottom of it we have the following (self-explanatory) items:


hWdUu3W.png
 
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DeletedUser

Part 02 - Coins, supplies and symbols

Part 02 - Coins, supplies and symbols


But back to the game. Your first goal will be to built a house. Like I said before - if you hover over something you will see several stats about it. Take this hut for example:

xSa1aer.png

You will get 14 peoples for building a hut and get 6 coins every 5 minutes - if you collect them. The hut will cost 60 supplies, takes a size of 2x2 and 5 seconds to build. Be sure that you put the hut into the right place – it will turn into green if you can build it there. I saw some players already stumble on this :(

If you want to know more about houses, what income they produce, how active you have to be to get the most of it and how many people are living in be sure to visit Surge's Gold Coin Super Guide

The next quest will be to build a hunter, which will provide you with supplies. You may have noticed that there is a symbol (sleeping moon) above the hunter.


This means you have to click on that building to produce something. So lets do that just for fun ;)


Now you see, what you can produce at the hunter. The times in the supply production buildings are always the same – so you can choose your favourite time.

If something is ready for you to collect you will see a box above the building.


But wait, there is another symbol out there:


The thunderbolts symbol has two meanings: if you see it in your city this building was plundered by another player. You have to click on it to restart the production. If you see this after you won a fight against a player it has the meaning you can plunder the building. Coins, supplies and goods can be plundered.

o7zw0W1.png

The little symbol above indicates that the building is not connected with a road and therefore doesn't produce anything.
 
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DeletedUser

Part 03 - Research

Part 03 - Research


Time for some new technology – don't you think? Or do you like your awful looking town hall (did you know that you can collect coins every 24h from it)? You will reach a new era every time you research a technology from that new era.


From the beginning you have 10 Forge Points. Every hour you get another one (hover over the bar to get the time for the next one) – this will stop if you reach 10 points until you spend some. Like I said before, you can buy Forge points with coins – each purchase will raise the cost (by 50 coins).


If you take a look at the research tree and hover over other researches you will see, what researches you will need for others (those green lines). Slingshots for example needs Spears and The Wheel before it can be researched.


Did you recognize that new researches have to be unlocked (with coins / supplies or goods) very soon? If you haven't unlocked the technology later (maybe you forgot or don't have the needed stuff) you may stumble about a dollar sign.


This means you haven't unlocked the technology yet. And because of that you won't get any further there until you unlock. Goods? Where will you get those goods from? I will tell you shortly – but first just one more hint :D
 
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DeletedUser

Part 04 - Quest hints / Happiness

Part 04 - Quest hints / Happiness

You may have noticed the question mark in quests. If you - again - hover over it, you get an useful hint of what to do.

ZUnv5BY.png

You may wonder whats that happiness is all about. If you take care of your population and keep them happy, you will get a production bonus for coins, supplies, and battle points. If you don't care for them and their happiness, it can happen that you could only get 50% of your production. An angry happiness symbol indicates that. You can hover over that happiness symbol to see their demand for happiness and what you provide so far.
If you want to know more about happiness please visit funonline's thread Happiness optimized ! guide

But let me show you an example of the impact of happiness: normally you get 11 coins from a Stilt House. But with happy people you will get 13 coins instead!

1dUFxer.png

That doesn't sound much but it will surely pay of in the future. Sometimes you lose happiness because of building a house and getting more population. If you build more decorations or cultural buildings to regain the happiness be sure that you get the happiness bonus for collecting coins and supplies!
 
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DeletedUser

Part 05 - Scouting / Sectors, Provinces and their rewards

Part 05 - Scouting / Sectors, Provinces and their rewards


After the "Gain Happiness“ quest you've got your first military units and will start some action in the following quests. First you have to scout the province above you and will find a good deposit there (each player gets resources/boost randomly – 2 resources in each era).

ygCRHH4.png

Later in the game you will also find other rewards than good deposits - like Expansions, PvP towers or lootable stuff.

gPb2T91.png

Do you remember that you need goods for research later? Sadly you can't use the good deposit yet... the province is owned by someone else, but that shouldn't hold you back :D

The province itself is grouped into different sectors. The first province has 3 sectors. Every sector offers some kind of options:


You can negotiate and take control over it without fighting - if you have the amount of needed goods, or you can infiltrate before you attack. As "reward" every enemy unit will lose 10% of their health points.



But enough of it... lets start a battle about one sector :)
 
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DeletedUser

Part 06 - Battles

Part 06 - Battles


Now you will see a battlefield with a lot of hex fields on it and different terrain like hills, rocks, forest, bushes and so on. The light green colour shows your movement radius for your active unit. If you hover over a square or an enemy unit you will see some information (if you are keen on military stats please visit -Vanguard's guide with some statistics regarding military buildings and their units). For example bushes or forest grant your spearfighters defense bonuses or the predicted path for the enemy unit.

The red arrow shows your plan to move to that spot. If you click, your unit will move there and you can move back and forth if you still have movement steps left. If you click on the unit itself the movement of the unit is skipped and it's the turn of the next unit. But let's take a closer look at the unit bar:


Blue framed ones are your units, red ones are the enemy - the active unit is in that little window on the left and of course you can scroll a bit to the right and back to see more units and when their turn is. In this example my 4 units can be moved first (1 till 4) - then the enemy can move the spearfighter (5), the slinger (6) and at last the warrior (7). You (and the AI) can't decide which unit you want to move and have to keep the given unit order! On the left side there are also three icons which give you the possibility to surrender, finish battle automatically (which isn't recommended because of the poor AI :p) or make one move automatically (which is above you current unit's frame). It should be easy for you to conquer your first sector and acquire your first boost soon:


After defeating your first few provinces, you will unlock the Bronze Age Tower. This will allow you to compete with other neighbors in PvP to win medals! Now if you complete a battle, you will see something like this:

P8WWA8F.png

Now what do we see here? I got 313 points for slamming the enemy into the ground! My city is mad, so I could have had way more points if they were not mad or even more for being happy! I need around 30 points more to advance to the next rank. And our current rank in the PvP tower is 8th. Remember that the points used for the PvP tower will depend on your highest used military unit. So if you use one soldier from Iron Age and slingers from Bronze Age you will get the points in Iron Age PvP tower.

If you look at your military building you see the healing time per health point. Units cannot heal if they are in battle (spearfighters heal very fast), so it always safe to open up the Army Management menu - where you can put your troops into attacking and/or defending army and also delete or heal (with diamonds) units - and I swear they will be healthy :p

aEG7P1w.png

After you took control over the province more quest givers will show up and compared to the main quests you can skip those if you want to. But maybe you are missing something great ;)
 
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DeletedUser

Part 07 - Goods and Trading

Part 07 - Goods and Trading

Now you theoretically have the ability to produce goods – after you researched the needed technologies and built the producing building. If you have already researched the needed technology for the good building you could build one (or more to speed up production ;)).

Even if you have not acquired a necessary good deposit, you can produce that good at lower output (1 piece in 4 hours instead of 5 with good deposit). But you may choose to trade or plunder goods you don't have as well. To get more information about goods, please visit farmerlynch's/byeordie's explanation and guide to good buildings. This is also great for knowing which goods will be available in what age, what are their production costs, and also the amount of each good needed for researching.

If you have trouble building a good producing building or with building something earlier, you should hover over that unbuildable item:


There you can see that maybe it still needs something before it can be built. Here for example, you need an available population of at least 41 people but don't have it.

Now to the most important game mechanic to progress - the trading system. Sure you can build all good producing buildings by yourself. But it will take ages to get all of them and maybe you are stuck until then. If you don't trust in fortune by plundering other players goods please use the trading system :D

umlHYPT.png

All merchants starting with the goods name and rate 0.1 are non-player character (NPC). If you only want to trade with players from your neighbourhood, then you can select the appropriate option:

1iTssEy.png

You can also select the option for stuff you can actually accept, or guild offers (or any combination of three):

xoELxJ7.png

Or create offers by yourself:

l8TEFhu.png

Creating or trading with a NPC won't cost you a Forge Point. Only accepting a friend's or neighbor's offer will (any guild offer is free of charge ;)). You could send the offering person a message and ask them if they can alter their trade to lower the cost of Forge Points.
Don't misunderstand the meanings of Offer and Need: In trading screen, "Offer" means what you will get and "Need" meas what the merchant wants. When you create an offer it has the correct meaning - Offer there is what you will give and Need what you will get. In "Your current offers" you can always cancel created offers from yourself.
 
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DeletedUser

Part 08 - Move or sell buildings and expand your city

Part 08 - Move or sell buildings and expand your city

After building more and more buildings, your available space shrinks and you may have to move or sell buildings and build better ones. You can find those little helpers in the Tools menu.
4O1vgkH.png
Before a building will be sold you will be asked again if you really want to do it.


But be aware of the following: if you want to sell a house and have not enough free population available you will get this error

UbE60tw.png

Sometimes you will also find expansions in scouted provinces which you can use to expand your city limits. As you may have noticed, you can also research expansions, buy them with diamonds (it is limited to two diamond expansions per era) or win medals through the tournaments in the PvP towers and buy them with those medals (again you need more medals for expansions while you go on). You will always find your expansions in the Build menu. Using these expansions will cost coins – the more expansions you use the more you will have to pay to use them. Be careful where you place them, you can't move them later!

 
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DeletedUser

Part 09 - Player Interaction / PvP tower

Part 09 - Player Interaction / PvP tower

Apart from messaging and trading you can aid (motivate or polish) or fight against other players every 24 hours. If you visit others you can motivate a building - residential or production building - or polish a cultural building / decoration which will last 12 hours. Your reward for that social service will be 20 coins and maybe you will also get support back from the visited person (the little star above your stuff) :D


If you are martial you can attack them and maybe plunder coins, supplies, or even goods and earn points in PvP tournament.

oCvfMlc.png

This is an overview of a PvP tower. You can see when the tournament ends, how long it lasts (time doesn't count down automatically) and who is the current champion. The PvP tournament lasts for almost 7 days of the week. You see in the window the players' rank, name, points, how many fights they had and how many medals will win when the time finishes. You can attack players from the PvP tower or directly from your neighbourhood bar (the crossed swords icon next to their avatar) or visit a neighbor you haven't aided yet. But remember that there could always be revenge - so don't forget to put military units into defense :p
 
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DeletedUser

Part 10 - Frequently asked questions

Part 10 - Frequently asked questions​


Q: How do you get points?
A: You get points for collecting coins and supplies, fighting battles and the construction of buildings.

Q: How do you get more people?
A: Build residential buildings like Hut, Stilt House and so on.

Q: How do you increase happiness?
A: Build decorations (don't need to be connected to a road), cultural buildings (need road) or roads other than trails.

Q: How do you get more supplies?
A: Build more production buildings (like Hunter, Pottery and so on) and start the production.

Q: I need goods to unlock technologies. Where to get them?
A: You can produce them by yourself (at a lower rate if you don't have the appropriate good deposit), trade with computer merchants (currently at a rate of 1:10), neighbourhood players, guild members, or friends (sometimes it helps to write them a message), buy the techs with diamonds or be bad and plunder the needed goods - but don't complain if players leave then.

Q: Is trading global?
A: You can friend any player in your world in order to accept/give an offer if you both have friends each other's friends list. Note each trade will still cost a forge point unless the player is in your guild.

Q: How long do PvP tournaments last?
A: The tournaments in every age will last almost 7 days and start up in the beginning of each week.

Q: How many medals do I earn in every age for being in top ranks?
A: You could get these information from -Vanguard-'s Medal Scoring Chart?

Q: And how many medals do I need to get an expansion?
A: Have you already visited and read -Vanguard-'s Expansion Costs Guide? :p

MISC

Q: I won a battle against a player, tried to plunder and got logged out... what now?
A: Don't worry - you can plunder a defeated player anytime within the 24 hour timeframe.

Q: How can I restart or delete my account?
A: It doesn't seem to be possible yet. If you want to start new, you can try playing on a new world or server.

Q: What is the point of the inventory?
A: I wasn't sure if I should of made another part to include this, but since our first special/seasonal event, the inventory became a holding spot for items won from quests or events or even holds blueprints from Great Buildings! Unfortunately, it is NOT a holding spot for your buildings when moving them around, and will never be one as far as I have heard.

There are a lot of other answered questions in Hippocratia's FAQ section
 
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DeletedUser

Part 11 - Advanced topics

Part 11 - Advanced topics

I'm nearly at the end with this guide and hopefully most things you wanted to know are already covered. But as always there can be more if you are interested in :D

Once you researched Cultivation, this new guy appears on the right side of your screen. It's the Treasure Hunt awaiting for you to win some awesome rewards. You can learn what this guy does and gives on byeordie's Guide to the Treasure Hunt

You earn this thing called a blueprint and you heard it's for a Great Building or something along those lines: you can visit -Vanguard-'s Great Buildings Encyclopedia if you want to learn more!

Once you reach the Iron Age and have found a comfortable guild, you can now improve your guild ranking by entering Guild versus Guild (GvG) and gain awesome rewards for the rest of your guild! You can read more about it in The Countess' Guild Vs Guild Full Guide

Every guide we own is linked with Surge's Glossary of Guides, and he even has a recommended section just for newcomers, so give that a nice look if you need some further help :)
 
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DeletedUser

Part 12 - Help to improve the game

Part 12 - Help to improve the game

So, you like or dislike the game? If you can spend some time please tell the game creator about it in the feedback section - but remember: what goes around, comes around.

If you got more questions about the game that this or other guides and threads didn't cover (hopefully you know how to use the forum search :rolleyes:) you should use Questions and FAQs area

Maybe you got an idea for the game, which you can share with the community here. Or you want to write a guide by yourself? Feel free to do this in Forge of Empires guides.

While Forge of Empires is still undergoes development, you may also run into bugs which you can report in the Bug Report section. You may also try contacting support (right-click ingame and click support) - but make sure you checked the forum first!

 
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DeletedUser7719

Hey guys, updated this guide a bit, and also deleted all the previous posts for a cleaner look for the guide. (Posts/replies are still welcomed :))

Guide for beginners Changelog:
Introduction
-Used more efficient links (no more auto-open in a new tab ;))
-Removed "Please help to improve the beginner guide. If you have something to add or found spelling / grammar mistakes (English is not my native language) feel free to tell me about - directly in this thread or per PM. Thank you very much :cool:" and "Warning: If you want to try FoE because of the PvP feature (which stated that you can challenge friends), please be patient until this feature is more developed. Currently you only fight against AI and can't invite friends to join you. And don't ask about alliances yet! ;)"
Part One
-Replaced (with newer image):
laAaFl.jpg
-Replaced:
ZpwQJl.jpg

Part Two
-Replaced:
Vr5oXl.jpg

-Removed:
Be aware that supplies – and only these - will spoil if you don't collect them after some time! This symbol will show you that you came to late:

Part Three
-Removed "500" from "coins from Town Hall" as it is age dependent now
-Reworded "you won't get more points if you reached the maximum of 10 (forge) points" to "this will stop if you reach 10 points until you spend some" for clarification (after new forge point update)

Part Four
-Replaced:
aVJgGl.jpg
-Replaced 13 and 15 with 11 and 13 (respectively) for stilt houses since their output changed. Image also replaced:

Part Five
-Replaced:
lGCPql.jpg
-Removed "(cost 100 coins)" since infiltration prices have changed depending on sector
Part Six
-Had to specify where "make one move automatically" is (since the bottom buttons during battle were updated a bit)
-Updated Battle result image which includes rankings, so added a little bit above the image, and updated the stats of the battle to reflect new image (plus added a bit on the happiness bonus):
5xBnzl.jpg
-Removed "A little annoying bug may interfere you while your waiting for your units to heal. If you look at your military building you see the healing time per health point. When their health points didn't changed over hours (spearfighters heal very fast) you better open up the Army Management menu" and replaced it with another idea.
-Replaced:
HqGrel.png
Part Seven
-Removed "If you are keen on knowing which goods will be available in what age and what are their production costs use Preto's List of goods in each age. " with further guidance to Farmer's guide since all info is on there now.
Replaced:
Ndpyvl.jpg

-Replaced 10 with 0.1 for NPC rates since are now calculated inversely

Umk7Hl.jpg

-Replaced "You can also select the option for tradable stuff (or both together)" with "You can also select the option for stuff you can actually accept, or guild offers (or any combination of three)"
kRhZll.jpg
czVXyl.jpg

-Replaced "someone's offer will" with "a friend's or neighbor's offer will (any guild offer is free of charge ;))"

Part Eight
-Added image to steps to find the move and sell buttons
-Replaced:
ftbyIl.jpg
Part Nine
-Replaced:
P5XhVl.jpg
-Reworded "Don't wonder about it if it's the first tournament which lasts 7 days - it will show the player who had the first battle. He didn't got a reward for that. Then you see the players rank, name, points, how many fights they had and how many medals they won so far" with how the PvP tower works now
Part Ten
-Updated "Q: Is trading globally?
A: As of now you can only trade within your neighbourhood."
-Updated "Q: How long do PvP tournaments last?
A: The first tournament in every age will last 7 days - after that 14 days."

-Removed Bugs section to FAQ which included:
"Q: After a battle I got an error and logged in again. I choose to continue the combat but only fight against 2 spearfighter instead of the original troops and didn't get the sector... WTF?!?!?
A: Sadly this is a know bug and they are working on it.
Q: I got an internal error after collecting stuff. Why that?
A: This is also a known bug. Mostly it seems to happen when the timer is to fast. If you log in again you may see that the building you harvested is still producing or offers you to collect again.
Q: After some conversation with a neighbour (around 6-7 messages total) I can't read new messages anymore.
A: This is a known bug - try to start a new conversation before you reach 6-7 messages till the bug is fixed :("
Removed "Q: Will there be a reset after Beta?
A: There will be no reset and you keep your points, diamonds and stuff like that."

-Updated "Q: How can I restart or delete my account?
A: It doesn't seem to be possible yet. If you want to start new, you can try playing on a new world or server.
Q: You didn't mention the inventory menu in your guide... why?
A: The inventory can't be used yet - it is a future feature.
Part Eleven
-Removed previous recommended guides (Ooidal started a Tech Tree Analysis , slurpz's Basic Optimization Strategies, and MadGab7's City Planner) and linked Surge's glossary.
-Added link to guide to Great Buildings and GvG
Part Twelve
-Replaced link to Ideas section since it was not working.

Overall, I corrected a bunch of grammar and may have done a bit more rewording to some descriptions.
 
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DeletedUser5180

hi, post number 3 displays the older symbol showing that a building is disconnected from the town hall rather than the new symbol from update 1.36 or 1.37
 

DeletedUser7719

Thanks Akbhoy :D Also updated the first image as well.

Previous images:
WuWsw.jpg
hdSKI.png
 

DeletedUser7719

Small update. Just replaced a few images and updated some of the links :)

Previous images:
5HBUOF4.png
 

DeletedUser

Hi Upapa Epops,

I can also confirm this issue is present when I attempt to access the link provided. Are you sure that this is the correct link?

To answer your question, if you would like to notify an Administrator then you need to send a Private Message to Tracey, Kimba Lioness or Starzaan. The relevant Contact details can be found here.

Princess Amira
 
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