Cheats and Tips: Infinite resources await in old battles

Well, close enough, anyway. Thanks to crafty players on the Empires & Allies forums likeBrisson, we have probably the greatest cheat you'll ever come across. (And we're ashamed to not have thought of it ourselves.) 

It's this simple: Replay old campaign battles with upgraded units. Of course, the strategy for such a thing goes far deeper than that but be warned: This cheat is only possible after reaching a certain point in the game. To play on the safe side, don't try this until you're about Level 30.

1. Get the Goods
First things first, you'll need to get the equipment necessary for a trick like this work. Not to mention you'll need units that best match the battle you're looking to profit from. Brisson uses the example of grabbing at least three Sherman Tanks for the 7th Kai Tana battle in the Mercadia 1 series. Sherman Tanks require Level 26, cost 2,800 Coins, 140 Oil and seven Ore, and take 60 minutes to complete. Once you have these monsters, it's time to beef them up.

2. Better, Faster, Stronger
Once you've acquired your beefy units like the Sherman Tank (you can be creative if you like--just make sure it fits), it's time to give them the shot in the arm they need. So, head on over to the Army Research Lab and train the Sherman Tanks in Accuracy, which increases the chance of Critical Hits. (A damage or strength upgrade wouldn't hurt either.) 

This is vital to the process, because Critical Hits are proven to increase the amount of resources that an enemy drops in battle. And this is the sole reason for this strategy, the power of Critical Hits.

3. To Battle!
Now, it's time to try out your Sherman Tanks and blow up some planes. The 7th battle in the Mercadia 1 series features two fighter class Air units and two bomber class Air units. So, bring at least three of the Sherman Tanks along, and one pumped up unit to take care of the bombers. Even a basic, upgrade Cannon Artillery unit would do just fine. 

Then, select the right targets and let the Critical Hits roll in, dropping all sorts of free resources and Energy to compensate for the Energy spent. Remember to have your Sherman Tanks and Cannon Artillery eventually upgraded to the max, because the lynch pin of this strategy is to lose as few units as possible in order to maximize your gains. 

Rinse and repeat this until you have a load of new Oil, Wood, Ore, XP and Coins--and don't forget to keep that Bonus Bar going for extra Coins. Be sure to take advantage of this cheat before Zynga catches eye, as some players believe it already has, though nothing has been confirmed

New updates allow for shorter gift request timer, higher energy cap and more

You have to give it to Zynga. Over the first few weeks of its existence, Empires & Allies has been improved in some fairly large and helpful ways. Such is the case today, as quite a few updates were pushed out, altering all things from the energy received from neighbor bonuses to boss battles against some of the story characters.

Here's a full rundown of Zynga's announcedchanges:

• You can now receive up to 100 energy per day from neighbor visits. This was formerly capped at 20, and user encouragement has forced it higher.
• You can now send gift requests to friends every 23 hours, rather than 24 hours. This will help those players that play the game at the same time every day be able to play consistently.
• Fullscreen neighbor bar and video issues have been fixed.
• Various issues with Captain Krunsch boss battle have been resolved.
• Friend selector loading issues have been fixed.

Ok, so some of these issues may not have affected all of us, but I can bet you're pretty pleased about the increase in neighbor visitation energy. What started at just 5 energy per day has gone to 20 and now 100. If you have over 100 players on your friends' list, then you'll still have to stop short of visiting each one for energy, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. What's more, this suggestion was made by many of the game's players, proving that (for now at least), the development team is actually hearing and listening to what we have to say. We can only hope this is a positive sign of things to come.

Did you stop visiting your Empires & Allies neighbors because they weren't giving you energy? Do you have more than 100 neighbors, or simply believe the energy cap should be removed altogether? Sound off in the comments.

Unreleased Gems!

That could be needed for laser weapons! Sorry, but unreleased content like this just makes speculation happen. Zynga may soon release a new resource, Gems, to Empires & Allies. That's at least what they're rumored to be on Empires & Allies Base. The jewels come in Topaz, Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby and Diamond. Hm, that's the same amount of colors as there are Ore varieties in the game. However, we still wonder what they're purpose is. Our bet is still clinging for dear hope on laser weapons.

Empires & Allies Research Lab and Guide to Research

Just a little while ago I told you about the unreleased Research Lab and research feature in Empires & Allies and apparently Zynga didn’t waste any time: today I saw that the research feature has gone live in the game and we can start building our research Labs and start researching to improve our Land Units (for the moment).

So, what is a Research Lab and what does it do in E&A? Well, these are new buildings that allow us to research upgrades, making our units more powerful, less expensive, and faster to build! The first available research lab is the Army Research Lab (find it under the military buildings tab) and you can see the requirements below:

After building the research lab, you will be allowed to start the research for improving your units. This will be a very long process and I really doubt that anybody will manage to upgrade all their units too soon: first of all, you will have to gather some parts for being allowed to start the upgrade process:

Then, you will be able to start the actual upgrade process which will take time and resources:

Once you’ve done the research, you can upgrade the unit five different times, with different bonuses. Each upgrade will affect all units of that type! For instance, if you research higher damage on your Cadet Soldiers, all Cadet Soldiers you own (and any you build from then on) will do more damage.

You will also see the upgrades you’ve made during battles:

My advice would be to upgrade as much as possible while the Army Research Lab is out since pretty soon we’ll see released in Empires & Allies the Air and Water research labs and things will become even more difficult.

What do you think about the research feature in the game?

Empires & Allies Energy From Neighbors Increased

Yesterday there was an uproar in the Empires & Allies community because of the changes made by Zynga, limiting the energy obtained from visiting neighbors to 5. Today, Zynga decided to show us some extra compassion and increased that limit to 20, which is quite a decent number, I guess.

I think that most of you would really like to have more energy from visiting neighbors and maybe things will change in the far future, but we’ll have to take it from now. And it definitely sounds better than 5, which could’ve been Zynga’s strategy from the beginning: reduce it to a minimum for a short while, only to consider them great after they change to something decent and something that they maybe wanted in the first place.

Also, there is a new change in Empires & Allies starting today: a new icon that shows the active players to whom you can send gifts to (and therefore reduce the spam or sending gifts to inactive neighbors).

Is Empire & Allies Secret Guide Worth Its Cost?

When a friend in Facebook told to take a look at the latest guide for Empire & Allies, I was quite skeptical about the whole thing. I wondered why I should need a guide for a simple Facebook game, particularly because I was already highly knowledgeable about the other Facebook games of Zynga like CityVille, FarmVille, or FrontierVille as well as several other popular Facebook games such as Monster Galaxy, Army Attack, Zuma Blitz, Bubble Saga, and Monster Wars. However, when I really started playing the game and had landed in the red after 10 days, I realized that a guide might actually be necessary.

When I went through the tips offered by Empire & Allies Secrets guide authored by Tony ‘T Dub’ Sanders that my friend had suggested, I was truly impressed. When I actually applied the techniques and strategies of this guide, I was even more surprised. From level 8, I shot up to level 42 within 4 days. Now I own a huge empire and a fighting force that is a real threat to the ‘Dark Alliance’. In particular, advises like constructing industrial buildings to generate huge funds had been quite useful for my sudden success.

It is definitely possible that you are also struggling in building your empire in this latest craze of Facebook. Just think of the substantial amount that you had already lost in a fortnight by playing Empire and Allies without a proper guide. When you consider the money you had squandered and the massive funds that you are going to generate within a very short time, the cost of Empires & Allies Secrets is worth every cent that you pay for it. In fact, it is going to be one of the best decisions that you had ever taken in your life. Let us know what you do!

Zynga Ruins Energy Gained from Visiting Neighbors in E&A

Zynga managed to become very unpopular amongst the Empires & Allies fans with their latest “fixes” (they actually used this word to describe this very strange change): now if you visit neighbors, you will only get energy for the first five that you visit and you can’t get more for 24 hours! In other words, you can only hope for 5 extra energy per day from visiting neighbors, which ruins a lot of mechanics in the game.

As a result of this change, today I had exactly ZERO visits on my empire from friends, and instead I had 5 invasions. This is probably the effect of not being able to visit your neighbors for energy and proves decisively that this was the real reason people visited your empire and not their friendly nature. If that was intended by Zynga or not, we’ll see in the near future. One thing is clear though: I am not happy about this change and I really feel that neither will you.

Back to Zynga’s changes to the game, there were some other fixes, but the energy reduction thing is the only one messed out:

- Each neighbor on your Neighbor Bar now shows the Ore-type that they can mine right on their portrait!
- Added new gifts to the Free Gifts page.
- Military buildings now show the most powerful units first.
- Fixed a crash caused by tending a neighbor and then buying a full energy refill.
- The level requirements for some Government Buildings have been reduced.
- Energy gained from visiting your neighbors is now capped at 5 per 24 hours.
- Invasions on your neighbors’ islands should now be clearer.
- Removed some unnecessary pop-ups.
- Fixed some issues with missing quest icons.
- Other miscellaneous bug fixes.

What do you think about these latest changes in Empires & Allies and, most important, about the energy change for visiting neighbors?

Empires & Allies List of RewardVille Items

In case you didn’t knew already, you can start trading your ZCoins in RewardVille to get some really cool items for yourself in Empires & Allies. I have decided to share with you a list with all the items that you can get and actually urge you to start trading in a little bit, because there are some really useful items you can get from there, including a Small Modern House that you can get free of charge!

Here are the items that you can redeem for zCoins for Empires & Allies in RewardVille (the pictures are below):

- Small Modern House (FREE)
- Blue Island Hut (82 zCoins)
- Park Fountain (76 zCoins)
- Small Craftsman House (66 coins)
- Dinosaur Statue (58 zCoins)
- Dragon Topiary (52 zCoins)
- Small White Island Hut (48 zCoins)
- Dolphin Statue (36 zCoins)

- Rhino Topiary (32 zCoins)
- Small Blue Island Hut (28 zCoins)
- Elephant Topiary (20 zCoins)
- Tiki (18 zCoins)
- White Island Hut (88 zCoins)
- Craftsman House (110 zCoins)
- Modern House (124 zCoins)
- Park Pond (118 zCoins)

- Large Blue Island Hut (132 zCoins)
- Large White Island Hut (140 zCoins)
- Park Amphitheater (148 zCoins)
- Large Craftsman House (155 zCoins)
- Large Modern House (164 zCoins)
- Zynga Zeppelin (200 zCoins)

Will you purchase any RewardVille Items for your empire?

Unreleased Empires & Allies Stone Mine and Stone Works

You probably noticed that stone already exists in Empires & Allies, as a type of “debris” that you must remove from the islands you expand your empire to. However, the resource stone does not exists in the game and I think nobody wants to complain about this since it’s already a bit too complicated with the resources we have on hand at the moment.

However, it appears that Zynga has plans to introduce the new resource: stone to us and most likely some Stone Mine orStone Works in the process. Below you can see a bunch of unreleased stone-related images from Empires & Allies that prove that sooner or later we might have a new resource in the game:

Please note: This is unreleased content we are talking about. It could or could not be released in the actual game by Zynga – it’s their decision on when or if this happens!