Power Building

Introduction
Power building involves using the most efficient methods in building a town to result in a quick growing population, but also maintaining a well balanced town to provide maximum productivity. Power building works best after you gain access to a wine and marble town. There is no "right" way to power build, but there are certain methods that provide the largest gain in the shortest time.

The general idea in power building is to keep your Growth per Hour (GPH) as high as possible. To do this, you must keep happiness levels up by upgrading the Tavern. However, don't forget that once the maximum occupancy of the town is reached, population will stop regardless of the GPH. The objective is to time the builds in such a manner where there are no idle growth periods. A dedicated player can increase their Town hall level to 7 in one day.

Also keep in mind that Ikariam, as many other MMO games, has an easy path and a more difficult one, before you engage in player x player combat. The easy path is just raising 5 or 6 towns, a reasonable sized army, then starting to attack your small and medium sized neighbours for resources. The longer, more difficult path takes time, but it is the way of the power builder. By being patient with attacks you will suffer at the beginning of the game, and building 7, 8 or 9 colonies, you will be able to field a larger army than your warring neighbours. It takes time and patience to achieve, but if you do that, you will be a force to be reckoned with.

Starting a new town
Many times new players will begin a new town before their other towns are mature. Try not to do this, except if you are in a hurry. By starting a town too early, you put strain on the distribution of resources and inhibit fast growth. The reason for this, is that, while a new town may give a boost in the Total score, it will make additional growth tedious.

On the other hand, a new town will provide you more citizen, meaning more gold and resource production. Consequently, there are some cases you may wish to make a new town before your other towns are mature. Starting a new one, especially if it's your second, is imperative to growth and should be done within the first week. Using power building methods, a dedicated player can raise 6 towns in less than 40 days.

Time management
The most important factor in power building is time management! Remember, Ikariam is always playing, even when you are not there. When you perform new construction, take in to consideration the time of the build. To be most efficient, schedule longer builds during times when you will be inactive (e.g. sleeping). This utilizes game time where otherwise no account activity would be going on.

In addition in inactive building, consider what builds would be the easiest and most beneficial during the times you are able to access your account. For example, if you know you are going to be somewhere later in the day, don't schedule a build that will end while you are gone. Instead, try to find an upgrade that will end before you leave. This will allow you to schedule another build during the time while you are gone.

Movement of resources
Always be aware of your resources in a growing town. Try to schedule your resource transfers according to what you will need for the next build. This being said, you don't want to accumulate a massive surplus either. New towns can be easy targets for pillaging; especially when using a power building method.


 * A good reference to help with planning are the tables under each building on the Buildings pages.

Protecting your empire
When using the power building method, building military and navy is the last stage of building. This may be controversial to many players traditional style of playing. However, a town can be successfully built without an initial military if proper time management is used.

When you start playing Ikariam, the godly protection mode provides you with protection against attacks by other players until you reach a basic level of growth. Furthermore, by keeping surplus resources to a minimum, as well as a high level Trading port, in the event of an attack there is minimal loss. As building times get progressively larger, the Barracks, Town wall, and Shipyard can be added as builds to fill time.

It is a very good idea to raise your Hideout levels and put as many spies on defense as possible, as it will make more difficult for potential raiders to know how much resources you have, and where they are. Also, you can concentrate all of your resources in just one of your towns, protecting it with a high level Town wall and a high level Hideout, and your army. To concentrate your resources, is best to choose a town that has never been attacked before, and raise the hideout level there to at least level 15 (the ideal minimum would be level 20). Do not forget to raise the levels of your hideouts all over your empire, or the enemy will be able to check your fleet movements from an unprotected town, and therefore find out where your resources are.

Do not forget to do your research: raise your Academy levels to at least Level 12 in every town. Research plays a very important role in the game.

Building military is also useful for attacking the Barbarian Village, which gives you a great amount of resources in the initial stages of the game. However, do not forget that every unit that is trained costs and resources, ultimately slowing the growth of your town. Also, keeping a war ship at each city helps prevent attacks from islands other than yours.

Research
When power building, choose carefully which research is essential to prepare your empire for the future. As said above, you must invest in Academies to have a good generation of research points. Five academies at level 12 will give you, without any bonuses,.

Of course you can start off by the military branch of research. After all, to be able to defend yourself, you will need to have the capacity of raising Hoplites, swordsmen and Rams.

Upgrading the Governor's Residences
It is always easier, and more profitable, to start a new town only after all existing towns have an upgraded Governor's Residences. Obviously, this prevents widespread corruption. In a new town however, expansion of the GR is time critical. The effects of corruption depend on the level of the Town hall in relation to the level of the GR. This needs to be monitored closely when power building. Deciding when to build a Level 1 GR is important. The town shouldn't be so large causing corruption to be extremely costly, as corruption also affects happiness, preventing you from keeping a high growth per hour value. A good rule of thumb is to build the GR in relation to the town's gold income per hour.

One useful strategy is to build up the Town hall right before you start the GR build. By increasing the Town Hall level you increase the maximum number of town occupants, thus avoiding stagnant growth. Since GR upgrades are rather time consuming, they are best performed during times of inactivity (e.g. while the player is asleep). Try to plan accordingly.

Improving your empire's infrastructure
Every level of every building in Ikariam consumes a greater amount of materials than the previous one. So, if you are power building, you might want to improve your infrastructure accordingly. Just as an example, if you raise your Palace and your Governor's Residences to level 2, you will have to move throughout your empire around 14,500 resources. Now, if you plan to raise them to level 3, you will have to move close to 60,000 resources. This happens because not only the necessary amount of resources for building new levels increase, but because you will have to improve the governor´s residences in every colony you have in order to create the new one without having to worry about corruption.

That said, you will need a cargo fleet of compatible size to handle the transportation needs of your growing empire (by now, your ever increasing number of citizens should be giving you around  to  per hour), and you will have to fight the temptation of buying new materials at the market to grow even faster, to instead "doing the right thing" and buying Cargo Ships.

Not only the Cargo Ships must be adequate for your empire's needs, but the level of your ports must be sufficient to haul the cargo into your vessels without much delay. So for Level 4 Palace and Governor's Residences it would be recommended to have a level 10 port in your "safe box" town as an absolute minimum. For Level 5 growth (6th colony) it would be best to have at least a Level 15 Trading port there.

Assisted growth
If you are in an alliance, this can be extremely beneficial in helping your power build. An alliance can help you by providing you with extra resources, or military defence. As building costs increase, try negotiating loans from fellow alliance members to avoid stagnant growth. But then again, don't rely too much on them because in the end you will become dependent on the alliance and that can lead you to losing the alliance, less growth and bad times.