Welcome to Empires & Emperors’ new friends! We love to have you. Empires & Emperors is a highly custom game mode which has many custom and new mechanics. That is why we have made a starter guide for you to learn the basics of the game and get you started on playing this amazing game mode.
The first time you spawn into the server, you will find yourself in SpawnEmpire. This civilization has all the basic buildings and necessities to get yourself started on your journey. Spawn has a bank where you can sell the ingots which you have mined, a grocer to buy food at, a global market where you can buy and sell different items and a stable or a shipyard which you can use to fast-travel to nearby civilizations at a small fee.
If you are new to the game we recommend you to join an existing City-State or Civilization to learn the game and to get yourself started with some basic tools and supplies. However, if you are keen on starting your own City-State make sure to have a look on the dynmap for the location of other Civilizations and a spot to place your own. While looking for a good spot it is good to keep the stats of biomes in mind. These stats are necessary in order to progress through the eras and technologies. You can click on a culture zone on the dynmap (10x10 chunks) to see which town stats they have.
Beakers, Hammers, and Growth are all calculated per hour. If a culture zone has 200 beakers that means the zone has 200 beakers per hour. You can calculate the total research or build time in hours by dividing the total amount of beakers or hammers necessary by the number of beakers or hammers your town has.
Beakers are used for researching technologies. The beakers of all your towns are added together and will form a civilization total, you can see how many beakers your civilization has in /civ info and how many beakers your town has in /town info.
Hammers are used to build new buildings and upgrade existing ones. Hammers are different per town and do not get added to a civilization total.
Growth is used to grow your farms & your units and is not nearly as important as beakers or hammers.
Happiness is used to determine the state of happiness. If you have a high happiness state you will get a boost towards your stats. Happiness is also per town just like the hammers.
Once you’ve found a decent spot to settle your first town you can start with your adventure! To begin with, mining will be your main source of income. You can sell your ores at the Spawn bank or at other civilizations' banks. Make sure you are using the highest possible bank at all times! This bank can be found by using the dynmap.
Once you have settled your first town you will have one culture zone. This is a 10x10 chunk area that belongs to your city-state. The beakers and hammers from this area will be added to your town or city-state total. You can gain more culture zones by leveling up your Town’s culture. This can be done by building monuments, altars, and temples early into the game. We advise you to go for these buildings first in order to speed up culture leveling.
The beakers from your culture zones can be used to research new technologies. These technologies can be found in /civ research list or for a more complete overview you can look here. These technologies will unlock new buildings like a monument and altar for culture, your own bank to sell ores without tax fees and trommels to turn your stone into valuables. As mentioned above we recommend new players to go for culture buildings first in order to speed up building, researching and culture growth.
Using /build list you can see which buildings you have unlocked and which can be built. You can start building new structures once you have unlocked them through technologies. These buildings cost money and hammers. Structures will usually have a special ability or a boost towards stats. You can find all buildings and what they do on the wiki. Buildings will also need to be maintained through daily upkeep. Every structure has upkeep which will happen at the daily tick. There is also a hammer upkeep which is dependent on which era your city-state is in. You can view the exact rates in /t info all. This hammer upkeep will force your town to spend hammers on this daily maintenance.
There are many custom buildings in Empires & Emperors, most of which have custom abilities. The bank allows you to sell your ores, a trommel will sieve through various stones and give you dirt or gravel and ores, the farm allows you to grow crops and the windmill automatically replants the seeds. Making good use of these buildings is crucial for maintaining and growing your civilization.
Currently there are a few fields of making money in which civilizations can specialize. These methods have their own corresponding government and tech paths. Players can choose a field which adapts to their own playstyle.
Mining is a great income for people who want to play actively. Using the quarry building you can passively generate stone using pickaxes. Once you have gotten the stone by either mining or using the quarry you can make use of a trommel to sieve through that stone from which you get ores. These ores can in turn be sold at a bank. This strategy works best with the despotism government but can also be used by democracies in combination with other passive incomes.
Farming is an income used by people who want to play semi-passive. You can start building farm related buildings like farms, granaries and windmills once you have unlocked a few early game techs. With farming you can either sell your crops directly to the market vendor at spawn or you can put your crop yield in granaries which are used to feed cottages. These cottages have different levels and generate money per hour accordingly. If you want to go for an income based on farming, we recommend you go for the monarchy government. If you go for cottages as your main income it is also recommended you construct the cottages in quite a few towns in order to maximize your income within your civilization.
Trade is often chosen by people who want to play passively. Trade pillars are scattered throughout the map symbolized by their bedrock pillar and glowstone top. They have a hologram above it which shows the buff and value of that specific trade goodie. Trade goodies can be utilized by building a trade outpost on top of these pillars. Once you have an outpost on these pillars you can unsocket the goodies and put them in the item frames at your town hall or capitol. Once your goodie is in the item frame it will give you the buffs from the trade goodie and generate the value of the goodie per hour. When focusing on trade income it is smart to optimize your output by stacking goodies together and combining their respective buffs. It is recommended for civs focusing on trade to go for the mercantilism government seeing as it has the most goodie slots and the highest trade rate.
Of course you can also combine all of these methods to maximize your money output and to keep you busy! Some combinations might be more effective with some governments than others. Remember to check out the wiki for more detail about trade, cottages, trommels and governments.