Ikariam User Interface

Overall look
Once you've first registered on Ikariam, you'll land on a screen that looks roughly like so:



There's a lot of information and actions available on this screen that we'll break down.

Main menu
Let's start at one of the most critical areas of the screen, small empire or huge:



There are 6 buttons on this menu (some of which show information) and 6 information indicators:


 * Buttons:
 * Cargo Ships - This complicated button is an essential one.
 * Clicking on it takes you to the Overview page for your Trade Fleet, showing what all your Cargo Ships are currently doing.
 * It also displays how many ships you have both available and total. In our case here, 25 are available to dispatch, and we have (25) total.
 * Gold - This button:
 * When clicked on, takes you to the Balance Sheet page, showing the gross income*, expenses, and net income (gross minus expenses to get net) for each city, nicely totalled.
 * Displays the current amount of gold your empire possesses.
 * City list - This drop-down starts out small, with only your Capital. As you grow to multiple cities, you'll use this button to switch between them.
 * Action points - The number of action points the city has.
 * Show World - When you press this button, you'll see the World View.
 * Show Island - When you press this button, you'll see the Island View.
 * Show Town - When you press this button, you'll see the Town View, which is the default view when you first create your login.
 * Information: All of these information indicators are city specific. Also, because these are resources, they need to be stored somewhere - if you hover your mouse over each value, you'll find out the city's capacity to store that type of resource. When a number goes pale red you are near capacity; bold red you have reached the limit and risk spilling to waste.
 * Population - How many citizens this city has
 * Wood - How much wood this city has
 * Wine - How much wine this city has
 * Marble - How much marble this city has
 * Crystal Glass - How much crystal glass this city has
 * Sulphur - How much sulphur this city has

Advisers
To the right of the Main Menu are these chipper fellows:



For the most part, they each hold reports that you can read on their area of responsibility when you consult them, serving to alert you:


 * Towns - The Towns adviser lists building completions, trade activities, and other current events happening to your cities or the resources on their islands.
 * Military - The military adviser will notify you of incoming attacks, the reports of any attacks/defends, and any current troop movements.
 * Research - The research adviser notifies you when you are able to buy a research from th advisor.
 * Diplomacy - The Diplomacy adviser notifies you of any messages you have received from other players and records sent messages; any more than a week old disappear. He also helps you with communicating with other players, whether via writing, treaties, or alliances.

Info panel
This panel we won't go into a great deal of specifics, because it changes depending on what screen you're on:



Here are some examples:


 * For another player's city, it'll show you information on the player and city, and list possible actions - options for interacting with either
 * For a building, it might give you the current level of the building, the cost and buttons to upgrade, and any units currently in production
 * In the World View, it'll give you navigation controls (eight directional and a co-ordinate jump).

Geography trail
In the upper left corner of the largest view panel is this little tidbit:



This shows "World > Eldutia[51:27] > Polis" in our example:


 * World - a quick link to the World View
 * Eldutia - the name of the island the city is on
 * [51:27] - the coordinates (coords) of the island. You may need to be able to tell these to other users, so it can be handy to remember them.
 * Polis - The currently viewed city. The word is Greek for "city" is set by default; it is recommended that the user should change it to something more distinctive.

Town view
Your brand new town will look pretty vacant (and is always the same no matter what your position on the island view led you to expect):



You start out with only a Town hall, but each of those flags is a place you'll be able to start filling up as your town grows.

If you want to create a new building, change to the town view and select a free building space. Then you receive a list of possible buildings and their requirements.

There are two reserved spaces for port buildings and one special place for the Town wall.

On a building location you can build any building that you meet the requirements for.

There are only two of this space, which are for the two ocean-related buildings.

The yellow flag could be for either the wall in town view or a new colony in island view.

To use a building, simply click on it on the City Map. You can also expand the building. As a general rule, the higher the expansion stage the more effective the building will be.

As a start it is recommended to build an Academy, a Trading port, and Barracks, plus, when you have researched the necessary technology, a Tavern.