Empires & Allies

Empires And Allies ran on a heavily modified version of the CityVille engine (which is, in turn, a modified Farmville Engine). The game is focused around resouce gathering in order to buy units for use in combat, integrated with social interaction between the user's friends on Facebook. The game's notable depth when compared to other previous Zynga games can be attributed to the fact that it was developed by former Electronic Arts developers. The game had its run on Facebook ended on June 17th 2013.

Story

Wrath of The Raven Storyline

After suffering an air raid that nearly decimated your peaceful island, You must lead your forces against the Dark Alliance, headed by the Raven, which seek to destroy your empire and take over Earth. Each of the Regions of your empire have been captured by a member of the Dark Alliance, and must be defeated before the islands in the area can be liberated.

Campaign Mastery was introduced, which allowed players to rebattle the enemy COs up to 3 times to earn mastery tokens, which allowed them to unlock golden versions of the villian units.

A second campaign, Molten Terror, was announced, starting at a medium difficulty.

Gameplay

The game is divided into an overworld where resources and unit production is managed, and a battle mode which can pit up to 5 vs 5 battles.

in the overworld, the player is given a map with limited range of movement. the space available to develop in can be increased by buying expansions. within this space, the player must focus on gathering eight different resources; Money, Oil, Wood, Gold, Aluminum, Copper, Iron and Uranium. all of these resources are needed to build and train units, and construct bulidings. As of November 8 2011, a Decoration Bonus was introduced, giving bonus resources to buildings placed near decorations. there is also a population limit, which can be raised by the construction of Government buildings. Military buildings can also be constructed to create three different types of forces: the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.

Multiplayer

the player is able to interact with other facebook friends' empires, either helping them improve by preforming tasks for them, such as collecting resources, speeding build times, and repelling other invading players. also, the player can choose to invade a friend's empire to steal their resources. however, this is done at the risk of the player themselves being invaded.

There is also an honor system built into the player's interactions with friends. the player earns Red hearts for good actions to his neighbour, and Black hearts for conducting invasions.

The game also has a Player Vs Player mode that allows them to invade empires of random facebook users not on their friend list, and can win prizes after every battle. the player also earns black hearts for invading.

Campaign Mastery was later introduced to allow for re-battling of defeated enemies in the campaign for an increased challenge and the ability to gain Mastery Tokens.

Combat

in fighting, the units are split into 3 types, Naval, Aerial and Ground forces. these are further subdivided into a weakness triangle, with each unit having a rock/paper/scissors effect on each other.

overall, there are nine different types of units, each with a strength and weakness across all factions. The units which a specific type is strong against is written in red.

Army Faction	Type 1	Type 2	Type 3
Ground Troops
Navy
Air Force

Each unit type has units of increasing tiers of strength (eg. Grunt Soldiers are stronger than Cadet Soldiers), but each unit can be upgraded when a research faciltity for each faction is built.

The Titan Class was introduced on 2nd December, 2011, and is only available as an opposing class. They are segmented Mechas with Arms, feet and a Body of variable health. the arms are weak to Aircraft Carriers, Fighters and Tanks. The body is weak to Submarine Gunboats, Soldiers and Bombers.

Prototype Units

Prototype units were introduced on Sep 20, 2011. these units have a secondary ability in battle, and run on canisters of Chemical Z. These units have no affinity for attacks, so they have no strengths or weaknesses.

Elite versions of these units were introduced on Nov 21, 2011, and were upgradeable, unlike their previous versions were.

Navy Units

• Sea Shadow - Area Barrage - Attacks all enemies on the field at once (5 Canisters)
• Hospital Boat - Combat Repairs - repairs a damaged ship by 200Hp (1 Canister)
• Support Craft - Smoke Grenade - Improves a unit's chance of evading attacks (2 Canisters)
• E-War Cruiser- EMP Burst - Temporarily Shuts down an enemy unit for multiple turns (2 Canisters)

Army Units

• Tactical ATV - Smoke Grenade - Improves a unit's chance of evading attacks (2 Canisters)
• M-163 Vulcan - Surpression Fire - Reduces an enemy's chance of hitting friendly units (2 Canisters)
• Army Ambulance - Combat Repairs - Repairs a damaged army Unit (2 Canisters)
• Barrage Truck - Area Barrage - Attacks all enemies on the field at once (5 Canisters)

Air Force Units

• SR-71 BlackBird - EMP Burst - Temporarily Shuts down an enemy unit for multiple turns (2 Canisters)
• Starfire - Incendiary Rockets - Does damage over multiple turns (3 Canisters)
• Medivac Chopper - Combat Repairs - Repairs a damaged Aif Force Unit (2 Canisters)
• Cold War Interceptor - Area Barrage - Attacks all enemies on the field at once (5 Canisters)

Powerups

An important feature of the game are powerups. these can be used to assist the player by improving their units, or sabotaging the opponent's units. they are also in three grades of strength.

Affecting Friendly units

• Field Repairs- Repairs all ally units, restoring HP
• Hunker Down- Increases Defense for a few turns
• Evasion - increases evasion, preventing a direct hit by the enemy
• Explosive Ammo - Increases Attack for a few turns
• Accuracy - Increases Accuracy, increasing chances for critical hits

Affecting Enemy Units

• Poison Gas - Causes the enemy to suffer damage every turn for a period of time
• Target Jammer- reduces the enemy's accuracy
• EMP- prevents an enemy unit from attacking
• Missile Attack - Missiles are fired at the enemy (3x damage vs. Navy units)
• Air Strike- The enemy is bombed from above (2x damage vs, Army units)
• Tactical Nuke - (Ungraded) - OHK's enemy units.

Survival Mode

Survival mode was introduced on October 6 2011. This mode allows you to select up to five units to fight off endless waves of enemies (akin to Horde mode/Zombie mode). after surviving each wave, you are awarded with different items, including resources, energy and special units. the more waves survived, the stronger the opponents, and the more rewards you receive for surviving. however, your units do not recover from damage, and will be lost if destroyed. also, you are not able to call on allies for help, but you are able to use powerups. you can give up any time by surrendering, which has no penalty.

on November 12 2011, an alternate Aerial mode was introduced, making the opponents only flying units, and changes the rewards.

Survival Mode is enabled when the war room is built.

Special Unit Additions

27th November 2011 - Pirate Ship Added - 350hp (Battleship)

28th November 2011 - World Infantry Soldiers were added

• Alpini Infantry - 210hp
• British Gurkha Infantry - 220 hp
• Chinese PLA Infantry - 200 hp
• French Legionnaire Infantry - 375hp
• German KSK Infantry - 370hp
• Turkish Infantry - 360hp
• Navy Seal Infantry - 400hp

6th December 2011 - Japanese Units added

• I-400 Submarine - 360hp
• Elite I-400 Submarine 420hp
• Type 94 Tank - 570hp
• JASDF Stealth Figher - 225hp
• Elite JASDF Stealth Fighter - 330hp

6th December 2011 - British Royal Navy Units added

• HMS Dreadnought - 560hp
• Elite HMS Dreadnought - 630hp
• HMS Ocean - 460hp
• HMS Warrior - 270hp
• Elite HMS Warrior - 350hp