Review of Earth 2025 multiplayer Online game
Posted: Wednesday, August 04, 2004
by Mr Steve
SeekDotNet
Hello and welcome to earth! This is the best on-line game I've ever played, and has very advanced o
General game concepts:
- Turns: These are what it is all about. The best way to play this game efficiently is to be careful with spending turns. For every 40/25 minutes (depending on the game server) in real life time, you will be granted a turn.
- Your military: This is your most obvious way of getting things doen in-game. If you want to: take down another player, help your allies out, get more land or defend yourself. you will mostly have to use your army. You can produce your own or buy one, which depends on your strategy.
- Land is the way to provide an income for yourself. There are different buildings to put on your land. Construction sites are the most important buildings, as they are very costy, but will help you a great deal. Though they may seem a waste of turns at first, they will help you save a lot of them in the long run. For a good build strategy see with 'strategies'
- Tech: Technology is a way of boosting your income without having to increase your land, which may make other players eager to attack you, since they also want more land. You can either produce or buy technology. Some, for example weapons tech are of very good use to every strategy, others are beneficial for specialised playing styles only, ie a 'casher'.
- Allies: These are also an important key to success. If you are a great player but you have lousy allies, this will hold you back! Sometimes it is wise to switch allies, but beware former allies can becom enemies or people that offer you an alliance can just want you to open up a 'slot' so they can attack you more easily. The alliance page has slots of different types, two defensive alliance slots, three offense all slots, three technological alliance slots two intel and two trade slots. The defense allies boost your defense up to 100% (depending on their military), the bonus for offense allies is more limited, but also worth it. Research allies give you a share of your allies technological researches, intelligence allies help you in defense from enemy spy operations and trade pacts are just 'empty' alliances, they only ensure peace between you and someone else and enable the foreign aid function (for which you need a formal link to the other player). Make sure your alliances are worth it, because they cost you money!
- Tech: Technology is, for example, a way of boosting your income without having to increase your land, which may make other players eager to attack you, since they also want more land. These are beneficial for specialised playing styles mostly, ie business and residential tech for a 'casher'. Some other techs , for example weapons tech or SDI tech are of very good use to every strategy.
You can either produce technology in research labs or buy it.
- Spy operations: These are used for two purposes. To learn about you opponents country or to sabotage your opponent in it's ways. Well, there's always the 'steal technology' operation, but it is hardly ever used
Now for one of the key concepts of the game! Specialisation:
You should focus on one type production, depending on your strategy/government/tech prices.
For example, one of the easiest strats to learn is the communist industrialis, you are a communism, you only build industrial sites (and construction sites) and you buy mainly industrial tech. This is to take full benefit from the communist +25% military production bonus.
You can also become a casher, where you only build enterprises and residences (and construction sites, everyone needs those), buy mainly business and residential tech and your government will be a republic (for the +15% per capita income bonus) or democracy (for the higher tech levels). If you want more on the subject, you should read the strategy sites mentioned in the 'earth FAQ thread' which is a valuable experience, you can also contact someone over icq for some explaining. Mine is 162047607
How to grab for beginners:
It is best to grab people really low on your scoresheet, who are big in land, but low on (defensive) military units, you may want to spy them and check their news, if they attack a lot, they won't have as much defense as people who do not attack. If they have been in attack the last 24 hours, without having re-attacked themselves, don't bother grabbing them, they won't pay off a lot of land anymore
However, if you want 'bottomfeed' you should look for targets through the 'search' option, give in random numbers/letters and check the news for the found countries. You could also find a smaller person then you, and offer him 'protection' against others if he sends you through HIS scoresheet every day, providing you with juicy targets.
There are other ways of grabbing, but they are a LOT harder (to explain as well, so I'm bailing out) and you'll have plenty of fun experimenting
with 'bottomfeeding'.
By courtesy of Dolphin:
'DI, I would add ...
Etiquette
While most Earth players are friendly and polite, there is a minority that will insult you and/or attack you just because you are new. You can minimize bad interactions by following a few informal rules.
- Landgrabs are part of this game. Expect to have them done on you and expect to do them on other people. Topfeeding (attacking people much larger than you) tends to make enemies the quickest. Bottomfeeding (attacking people much smaller than you) tends to annoy some people, and midfeeding (attacking people around your size) tends to annoy people the least.
- Special attacks (anything besides SS or PS, including any destructive spy operations) are regarded as hostile acts. Missle-based retaliation, in particular, invites more attacks.
- Messaging random people in the game is a good way to make new friends and get helpful tips. Pestering people who don't respond immediately is a good way to get attacked repeatedly by the person you've annoyed and all his friends. In particular, the people in the top 10 likely have all their alliances filled and have many friends in the game. Asking them for alliances is a low-probability proposition, and pretending you know one of them when you don't is a quick way to make powerful enemies.'
Try this game now @ http://games.swirve.com/earth
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)I think you did a good job covering Earths basics and you have a nice area for beginners to read overall i would rate it a 4.5 Nice Job
Nice tips on etiquette. That is what I find myself when I play the game.Good Review.This is a great game to play people!
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