Introduction

March of Empire is a MMO strategy game with a medieval setting. The main focus is on building troops together with your alliance and ruling over regions by controling capitals in a realm. There is a lot of focus on growing your own city with a very elaborate set of buildings with each their own function.

Bind Your Account

Do not forget to bind your account. Even if you do not spend any money on the game, it can be quite addictive and it would be a shame if your phone or tablet crashes and you no longer have access to your game. In the Option menu (in the second part of the menu at the bottom) you can click Connection to bind your account. On iOS this can for example be done to your Game Center account.

Alliance

An important step is to find a suitable Alliance. Via the Alliance menu you can apply to join an alliance or join one of the alliances that are currently open for new recruits. As with other games with alliances it is important to find a likeminded group of people. Don't be afraid to switch to another alliance if you feel your first is not a good fit, or if either leaders or other members are not active enough. Make sure you have an active group of people. Not only the number of members are important, but also how many actually log in (this is difficult to determine, but the amount of Helps and activity in alliance chat give some indication). If you are intending to play for a long time, the social aspect is important for many people as well.

Relocation

At the start of the game you get two free Homeland Relocations. You can use this to relocate to a random location in your alliance territory. This is not always ideal, if your alliance controls multiple capitals, but a good option to try first and if you want to relocate later, you can use a Precise Relocation. You can acquire a precise relocation in the Store for 525 gold.

Castle and City Setup

Your inner city exists of several parts, each with a main building and several empty spots for other buildings. As your upgrade the level of your Castle more sections in the city will be unlocked. The level of your Castle also influences the March Size and number of Marches. You can only have one of most buildings within the City Walls, you can have only have multiple Workshops, Houses and Barracks. How many to build of each falls outside of the scope of this guide, we will deal with that in a separate guide.

Outside the City Walls there are many plots available to place resource producing buildings like Farms, Iron Mines, Stone Quarries and Lumber Mills.

Academy

One of the sections holds the Academy building. One it is available you should basically try to make sure you always have some research project active and you should make your research speed as fast as possible. There are 5 categories that are unlocked based on the level of your Academy building.

Training Troops

You can train troops in the Barracks building. You can have multiple Barracks. The level and number of Barracks influences the training capacity and speed. There are 5 different type of troops: Swordsmen, Spearmen, Mounted, Ranged and Siege. Each of them have 5 different tiers. The first tier troops can be researched from the start, the other ones have to be unlocked by doing research in the Academy building.

Upgrading Buildings

The game suggests some order of which to do things, including building and upgrading buildings (via the text next to the exclamation mark at the left top), you don't need to pay attention to that. I tend to focus on any specific upgrades that are required for the Quests, and for the rest upgrade at least one of every building before upgrading my Castle to the next level. It is a choice, an alternative could be to focus more on just the Castle upgrades, helping you to unlock regions faster. However note that the prerequisites for the Castle change each level, so you will end up upgrading a lot of buildings anyway.

City Walls

The City Walls can contain traps that are build in the Workshop building. You can build multiple Workshops and each level increases the Trap Capacity and Construction Speed. There are 5 tiers of traps, the first one is always available, the others need to be unlocked by research in the Academy. Traps can play an important role in defending your city.

Trading Post

On the Region Maps you can find Trading Posts that allows you to make trades for resources. This can be useful if you need a certain resource for a building upgrade, research or training, while you have got plenty of others.

Aiding Alliance Members with Research, Construction and Training

You and your alliance members can aid each other with research and building upgrades. Each time you are aided by an ally 1% will be deducted from the remaining timer.

Using Gold and Speed Ups

During the game there are various ways to get gold and speed ups, but they are not that easy to come by. Once your timers start to be more than just a few minutes you might get tempted to use these to speed up research, construction and troop training. My general advice is don't just use these for anything, only use them if you can get something back by winning prizes in the active Events or Quests. Saving up some gold and speed ups is important so that it will be easier to win the prizes.

Might

Although the might of a player has no direct meaning for your strength in combat, it is often used by players as a quick measurement of strength anyway. Typically alliances will set certain might requirements for their players which increase over time. As such it is important you get your might up as well. There are five basic categories of might: City, Army, Rewarded, Champion and Research. You can see your might breakdown by clicking on your profile in the bottom menu, it is in the Economy Overview in the first tab. It is an extra reason to always have active research projects, building upgrades and troop training. Your City Might increases as you level up your buildings, your Army might as you train more and higher level Troops, the Rewarded Might increases as you Claim completed Quests, your Champion Might increases as you level up your Champion (which can be done by getting Champion XP, which you get from a lot of different activities) and your Research Might as you complete Research Projects.

Champion Talent Points

After each level up of your Champion you can assign Champion Talent Points (via the Talents button in the bottom right of your Champion overview, which you can access by clicking on your Champion Icon in the top left corner). There are three different categories in the Champion Talent Point section. My suggestion is to focus on the Progress section early on, as you are not strong enough to fight much, and Construction and Research speed are more of an issue than resources. Focus on maxing out the Builder and Research projects. If resource becomes more of an issue you might decide to switch to the Income secion. Before going for serious battles you should reassign your points to the Warfare section. It is possible to reset the talents later by paying the required 645 gold for a Champion Retrain item.

Random Enemy Encounters

There are plenty of Random Enemy Camps of different levels around on the map. They have different names, when writing this guide there are Viking Camps, normally there will be announcement in game when a new type of Random Enemy Camps occur. You can initially only attack the level 1 camps, once you score enough points you can attack level 2 camps, and so on. You get chests as rewards. The type and level of chest depend on the type and level of camps. Once you have attacked a Random Enemy Camp a cooldown timer starts and you can only hit again when the timer reaches zero. Whenever you log in, hit an Random Enemy Camp, and whenever the cooldown timer reaches zero, hit another one.

Events

You can win prizes by completing various stages of Events. You can find the active (and upcoming) events via the event button in the right middle of the screen (with the timer below). There are various events, so always good to check it out when you log in. There are both Solo and Alliance events. I will write separate guides with tips on how to complete each of the typical events.

Alliance Contribution

In the alliance menu there is a menu Alliance Tasks. Here the higher level alliance members can set tasks which the alliance members can complete to earn Social Points, which can be used to purchase items in the Social Store.

Daily Quests

In the Quests menu there is a menu for Daily Quests. Each day you can earn gold by completing various tasks and a Daily Quest Chest by completing all Daily Quests. Most of the tasks are activities we discuss in this beginners guide and should be easy to complete.

Adventures

Via the Tavern and the Quests menu you can get to an overview of Quests that you can start and collect when finished. These give you some resources as reward, but are especially useful for the Champion XP. Starting Quests costs energy. The energy recharges slowly. In the Tavern building you can also hire Adventurers and Customize your Party to influence the duration, resource rewards, champion XP rewards, energy recharge and energy cost.

Gather Resources

Gathering resources is an important way to get extra resources. Make sure before you log off to send out your troops to gather.

Claiming Completed Quests

I tend to not claim all completed Quests the moment they are completed. Claiming them is a great way to get some XP to upgrade your Champion, and provides some resources as well. When you wait with claiming until you have a Daily Quest to upgrade your Champion XP level, you can benefit extra.

Check List of What to Do When You Log In

Most of the things in this section we already mentioned, but it might be good to have a reminder of what you should look at as a minimum when you log into the game:

• Click on the Shaking Hands icon to Aid all alliance members with research, construction and training
• Click on the Chalice at the left bottom to claim the reward, a new timer starts and you might be able to collect many more depending on how long you stay on.
• Start an Adventure and claim and start another one when it is completed
• Look at the Daily Quests and make sure to focus on completing all of them
• Look at the Events, see whether you can win gold and speed ups by completing your current research, building and/or troop training, or make sure you any other activity required for the events
• Attach a Random Enemy Camp, a cooldown timer starts, attack another Random Enemy Camp if you get the chance
• Start a research if none is active
• Start a building upgrades is none is active
• Start a troop training for each type of troops if none is active
• Start a trap building if none is active
• Look at the Alliance Contribution list to whether there are any tasks you might want to complete
• Send your troops out to gather resources
• Use your free lottery ticket
• Read your e-mails and PMs

If you have more time consider:

• Working more towards completing your Daily Reward milestones
• Working more towards the Event
• Discuss with your alliance members whether there is some nice targets to attack
• There is actually plenty more to do, but I wanted to keep the Beginner's Guide limited, just explore the map and your city and have fun!

Conclusion

I hope this helps you getting started. If you have questions, or if you have other suggestions for beginners, please share in the comment section.