HaE Empire Strategies

[Asakari]

1.Finding Allies
2.Making Enemies
3.Hiring/Firing your Hero
4.Location
5.Wall Formations
6.Road Formations
7.Farming
8.Population
9.Population Happiness
10.Population Incentives
11.Taxing
12.Research
13.Army



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1.Finding Allies
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Finding Allies is the first step to becoming a successful empire, you wouldn't want everyone to be an enemy now would you? Allies are an important measure to becoming an empire, because otherwise you wouldnt have anyone to bitch to or mooch off of when shit falls loose.

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2.Making Enemies
----------------------
The simple yet disregarded fact of being an Empire, is making Enemies. If you're the kind of person who likes to spice things up, you need to have enemies to keep the game entertaining. Unless you want to spend the rest of eternity killing Kale over and over with your noob allies that do absolutely nothing but question why their units are rebelling.

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3.Hiring/Firing your Hero.
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Having more or less of any number of Empires to Hero ratio is a bad thing. Mostly because all those heroes might grow jealous of your hero's level and might plan to gank up on you, or worse... Your hired uber hero ganks up on you! It is important to see these signs, for people are not always reliable. Always be sure that you have a tesla ready before you have your hero fired or unallied, because you never know. If you plan on unallying, be sure to fire him/her first, you still pay them if you don't.

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4. Location
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If it's one thing that matters it's location, location, location! If you're near Kale's base, you're an idiot! Make sure your enemies are funneled into one or more areas before you build your empire, because you don't want enemies coming from every direction. Don't build in small areas, allot of noobs like to do this and they end up dieing because of it.

Example of Noob Empire:


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4. Wall Formations
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Protecting your empire is one thing, but so is protecting your defenses! Formations are important not only because they are effective, but because they allow easy and quick tactical repair. If you have poor wall planning, then you'll most likely end up having blocks of empty spaces from splash attacks. Then later having your wall collapse after you try to repair it or from it being damaged.

The best wall formations are diagonal layered ones.

Example:


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5.Road formations
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Sumerians, Romans, Egyptians, and even the Myans had roads, and why? Because a nation is upheld by its roads! When road formation isn't good, then your Empire isn't either. Firemen can't get to fires quickly if you have poor road planning. Roads also help you get familiar with size and population control.

Example:


............[..F..].............[TOWNHALL]............[..F..]
............[......]............[.................]...........[......]
............[R][R][R][R]...[R][R][R][R]...[R][R][R][R]
[..F..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][..F..]
[......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][.....]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
............[R][R][R][R].....[..F..][..F..].....[R][R][R][R]
...........[..F..][..F..][..F..][......][.....][..F..][..F..][..F..]
...........[......][......][.....][.....][.....][......][......][.....]
............[R][R][R][R]....[..F..][..F..]....[R][R][R][R]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
[..F..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][..F..]
[......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][.....]
............[R][R][R][R]....[R][R][R][R]....[R][R][R][R]

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6.Farming
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Always get your farms before your houses, and make sure you have more farms than your houses later on. Food is good and whether you like it or not your people want allot of it. It's important to stay with demand and that your rations are always above your taxes.

Example:

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7.Population
----------------------
You don't need a shitload of houses just to get a decent population to tax. That's what housing capacity research is for, just 18 houses can make a population of 180k, and that's all you'll ever need. Because when you have 40% of your population researching things, it's enough to make you max out everything quickly.



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8.Population Happiness
----------------------
When your population is angry, it doesn't want to grow and it hinders population growth at the start of the game. Make sure you make them love you as fast as you can, so you can have a bigger set population before grace period ends.

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9.Population Incentives
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Your population is very lazy, mostly for the reason that after 20% of them start working, population starts to decline. What the hell kind of country has 80% of it's population unemployed? Make sure they have productive things to do by building malls and theaters. Keep in mind the range of these buildings, (IE. 500, 700, 1000) your road formation helps you understand how far it is before they stop effecting them. But buildings like these I hope you know are unimportant until later in the game, in beginning you have to worry about stabilizing your empire before you start to work it.



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10.Taxing
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Tax them too little and you have a happy but poor nation, tax them too much and you have an angry but rich one. Your food has to be a certain ratio to your taxes, and finding just the right ratio takes a few tinkering.

Hint: 1:(2)+1, but only if it's more than 6:13

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11.Research
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ALWAYS have your population researching something, this is the first thing to do when being an Empire. Have them research industry to get more lumber if you will, make them do something other than sit on their asses, because then you'll start stalling wishing you had more of this or that when you don't. You'll be able to handle 40% of them working when you have all the incentive buildings working on your population.



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12.Army
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The army is your defensive and offensive force of your empire, without it you're a sitting duck and it'll take a lot of resources to expand.

Note: If it's organic infantry, always have a healer:

Kickass Army:


Always know that plasma motars kick ass:







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The technique for Grace Period: (because a good start leads to a great victory)
--------------------------------------------
Find a position with only one or two entrances, then settle there and split your army to them. Use all you peasants and build a town hall and then quickly spawn more workers to harvest wood and do so till you have 150 gold left, but keep your beginning building your road formations. When your town hall is done training works, tell it to upgrade. As your road formation is completed, start working on a few foundations to build fire stations, but upgrade them to fire stations until just before grace period ends, and leave a few spots blank for foundations that increase population growth. Lower taxes to 0 and rations to 10, then build a farm. Meanwhile when the farm is being built, tell 20% of the population to work in the industry from your town hall and then start building houses. When your people start loving you, this is when you can raise your taxes, raise your taxes to 3. As you run out of lumber, you'll end up with a few workers with nothing to do, leave two workers to build the houses and tell the rest to explore and build walls or camp fires. Camp fires would be the cheapest way since it would prevent creep spawn, but not Kale attacks.

[Setokaiva]

Excellent work, Asakari! this will come in handy to quite some people. my only complaint is that the topic name should be just HaE strategies, not HaE2 strategies because you are referring to the original HaE. that aside, it looks very nice and has some good info in it. keep up the good work ;D

[ScytaleIRAx]

I believe you meant to title this post HaE Empire Strategy, as this has nothing to do with HaE2.

A good post but a bit slim on details. I hope you do not mind me contributing here...

About roads/building placement...
Road structure/building placement is important, I agree, but you do not specify a useful pattern to use. Here is my preference...

==================
=HHHHHHHHHHHH=HHHH
=HHHHHHHHHHHH=HHHH
=FFHHCHHHHHHC=FFHH
=FFHH_HHHHHH_=FFHH
=================

OK so i see that this picture thing is not going to display it well, so I shall describe: When I use the term 'block' I mean a square of building space equal to the size of one road.

-Roads are placed in a rectangular grid, this can be in columns or rows (long strips all going same direction). These strips of road are 4 blocks apart, which allows for 2 houses/foundations. This allows firefighters/repairmen to get to all of the buildings.

-Place Fire Departments on corners, and be consistent. For example, at every intersection I place a FD on the top-right corner of it. This way you never will forget to protect your houses from fire.

-Municipal buildings (things that give + house rate) are NOT THAT IMPORTANT!!! As you add these bonuses to your houses, the expected effect is that the growth increases. This can be used to then raise your population's working percent so that it matches your new growth.
To explain: If you have no bonuses at all, you can have 20% working with no loss. If you have every possible bonus on all of your houses, then this is improved to 35%. If you only ever use campfires then your people will sustain on 25%. I cannot make it clear enough that buying municipal buildings other than campfires are not worth your money until you are at the later stages of the game and want more people on research. Only using campfires is 10% less working than if you spent money and space to get all of those buildings in your empire, which means less wood income (just buy workers instead), less gold income (buy farms and raise tax/rations), or less research rate ( you are probably better off saving and spending your money on age upgrades anyway).

-Campfires are a must, but their size makes for odd placement. The way I use this in my planning is that I place a campfire several houses from the edge, in one of the middle two spots. This leaves an open space between the campfire and the road, which is preferred over an open spot in the middle of the buildings where a unit can potentially get stuck (hell if i know how...). This will offset one of your sides of houses by one block, but do not worry because another campfire will put it back to an even edge again. Once your new houses are beyond the range of the campfire, build 2x2 more houses, and then a campfire to make it an even edge along the side. Then place a new road on the end, and a fire department at every intersection again. Repeat this and all of your houses will always be affected by a campfire.

On Tax:
I'm glad people have adopted my ration=2tax+1 method, but note that it is not linear and actually only works for tax values 6 to 11 (11 to 22 is stable, and 16 to 31 is stable).

On Standing Armies/Heroes:
There are two reasons to have armies or hired heroes. Defense and offense.
-Army Defense
Not that useful. Towers are better, cheaper, and the research helps out A LOT.
-Army Offense
The only reason to have an offensive army is if you are taking out an obelisk, camp, or killing kal. Camps can be killed in 1 nuke, and obelisks in 2. If you have access to nukes, do not bother with an army at all. If you must take out a camp/ob before you get to nukes, then build an army with only your strongest units. Never waste money/wood on an army that 'just kills shit'.
-Hiring for defense
This is extremely helpful. If your base is easily defended at one spot, then hiring a builder is worth it. Hiring gives 10 TP each income for every 25% you pay, so it does not matter how much gold you pay the hero, he will get 40 TP at 100%. So hire a builder at 100% for all of the grace period and he will get plenty of TP's (and probably be 20 lvls ahead of everyone), which is enough reason for him to build you a good tower.
-Hiring for offense
Why would you do this? pay another player to have your fun? I do not recommend hiring a hero so he can become strong enough to kill kal because it is more fun to build an army and do it yourself.

Also, I never hire someone i do not know. I would rather have the extra gold so I can be stronger than the heroes in the game than have placed trust in the hidden identity of a kid who plays war3...

OK so this was a long reply and i sorta abducted the thread a bit with it, but it should help people who are afraid of trying empires.

I will see what I can do about putting up a video/replay of me getting future age in 30 mins.

[Asakari]

What is "C" and "_" supposed to stand for?

Is "C" Camp fire and "_" Empty space?

Here's my City formation.


............[..F..].............[TOWNHALL]............[..F..]
............[......]............[.................]...........[......]
............[R][R][R][R]...[R][R][R][R]...[R][R][R][R]
[..F..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][..F..]
[......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][.....]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
............[R][R][R][R].....[..F..][..F..].....[R][R][R][R]
...........[..F..][..F..][..F..][......][.....][..F..][..F..][..F..]
...........[......][......][.....][.....][.....][......][......][.....]
............[R][R][R][R]....[..F..][..F..]....[R][R][R][R]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
........[R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R]
........[R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R]
[..F..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][......][..H..][R][..F..]
[......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][..H..][......][R][.....]
............[R][R][R][R]....[R][R][R][R]....[R][R][R][R]


But pictures work better.



Examples thousands of them.

[FinalLegacy]

I usually go for something like this



dont mind the extra defense, no need to get it on pve. all you basicly need on defense is the square with the towers in it. itll get all creep agro. the extra castle is just an ensurance ^^

[Royce13]

OMG OMG OMG FINAL YOU LIED TO ME

Your playing empire every time we do HaE now That way I can kill you.

Also im lazy and like other people to do the work so

heroesandempire.proboards37.com/index.cgi?board=Strategy&action=display&thread=74

Seto this is for you

[ScytaleIRAx]

You are right, C is camp and _ is open.

As I said before, there is no reason to spend so much money on those municipal buildings. after spending enough to cover your entire population (at least 6k each wood and gold) you have gained the equivalent of 10% more people working. This does not affect tax income. It is therefore much more profitable to build more houses and farms. HaE is a game of extremes, you need a lot of houses and even more farms to move as fast as possible to the end and beat kal. Both final and asakari have well-buffed houses, but the pattern is very space-consuming when you try to repeat it. Having a more simple design means you can fill every block with something.

And when it comes to armies tanks win hands down. Artillery tech tank has more damage and armor than kal even before being maxxed out, and starts with 1k range. They also have splash and almost instant projectile speed. They have 2 flaws: infantry get veteran status and tanks do not. Artillery cant hit air, but if u are only fighting kal that doesnt matter anyway.

About walls: Yes diagonals are best for their ability to be easily repaired, but do _not_ place towers immediately next to them as seen in asakari's pic. Instead, place them at every other diagonal point, like this...(X=Wall, O=tower, _=blank)

X_O
_X
__X_O
___XB
___AX_O
_____X

This is because enemies are able to fit in the place marked with 'A' on there and would be able to hit the spot marked 'B'. Because towers are somewhat fragile and expensive to repair, it is best to make them far enough away to not be hit. Towers are also powerful enough to defend an entrance to most bases in groups of 4. Have 1 combust tower towards the back, actual position does not matter because the range is so high. Place 3 arrow towers at the front line. When you are able to, upgrade those to the 3 different types of tower--the one closest to the gate should be gun, the one farthest from the gate should be cannon, and the other should be flak. If your walls are not holding with just 3 towers, research Defense at the science lab, it gives the largest bonus of any one upgrade (25% armor, damage, and hp to walls, gates, and towers).


In re-reading my posts, I seem to be a bit pushy...Please do not take my suggestions/comments personally, just aiming to offer the best help for any new players who read this.

[Asakari]

It really doesn't matter, because most of the enemies you deal with have ranged attack and spells.

[ScytaleIRAx]

except for ones like most of the heroes and the invis skeletons (arguably the biggest jump in enemy strength between 2 enemy spawns)