Farahad, an online strategy game (like Utopia, but better ;))

[Lemmy]

www.farahad.com
I've been playing this game for a few eras now, 7 i think, and a new era is about to start in a few days, so maybe some of you utopia players and others want to sign up for it.

Like the topic said, it is somewhat like Utopia, but it has much more depth IMO.

You are the ruler of a province, and with a few other provinces you form an empire, with your empire you can declare war on other empires and gain a nifty 20% attack bonus...not much difference with Utopia yet.
But, province management is different in farahad.
First of all, you got different resources:
Gold
Wood
Stone
Food
Iron
Mana, needed for magic
Sulphur
And since this era:
Weapons, must be bought, improves unit offense power by 1, like war horses
Arcana, must be bought, can improve magic effect

Secondly, the buildings are different.
You have a few basic bulidings, and these basic buildings can be upgraded to other more effective buildings.
For example Worker Guilds is a basic buliding, it doesn't do much, except lower the cost of weapons, but you can upgrade them to Smithies which reduce the training cost of your troops.

The resources Gold, Wood, Stone, Food, Iron and Mana can be produced by buildings (mines etc.), Gold is also earned by each of your workers, so you usually don't need a buildings to produce gold.
Needless to say, to contruct buildings, you'll need Gold and other resources, depending on the type of building.

Thirdly, units are also different.
Like buildings, there are basic units, and upgraded units, almost in all cases is the upgraded unit stronger then the basic unit in every possible way. There are some exceptions where the upgraded units loses some strength in one area, but makes more then up for it in another.
Now, what is a unit...
A unit had several ratings, these rating are War Offense, War Defense, Spec op Off, Spec op Def, Magic. Besides these ratings, a unit also requires a maintenance in the form of gold and/or food. The amount of maintenace needed depends on the unit, most units require 1 gold and 1 food, but some require none, and some require 1 gold and 3 food.
Besides maintenance, units can alse produce certain resources each hour, for example 1 wood and 3 food.
Each race off course has their own specific units, but here are also general units that every race can train, there are Mercenaries, and 3 different types of Dragons, Dragons are a lot more powerfulll then units, but require more upkeep, and are expensive.

So now we've had the units and buildings...next up, science.
Science is called improvements in farahad, and is a lot more expanded then utopia.
Basically each unit, and a lot of buildings can be improved individually with a resource, Smithies can be improved with Iron for example, the higher the improvement, the more effective your building/unit will be.
Improvements is one way to improve your province, but it can also be done with skills. Each time you level up, you can choose a skill, there different type of skills, ranging from Farming (more food production) to War Skill (more war power).
You level up when you reached a certain amount of xp, xp is gained by attacking, doing spec ops and magic.

And now the fun part: Slaves and War
Unlike in Utopia, where you only have prisoners, you have slaves.
Slaves can be used as workers, and the more slaves you have, the more workers you can train into units. When attacking a province you have several options to choose from:
Simple March, just attack their army
Conquer Land, duh
Take Slaves, take some of their worker population, and turn them into slaves

There are also some secondary options like massacre and plunder, which can be used in the same attack, eg, you can massacre, plunder, and conquer land or take slaves in one attack. Although the cost of the attack will be higher off course.

There is also thievery and magic, but this post is long enough now...so if there are any questions, ask 'm here or in the farahad forum, it may seem a bit complicated now, but when you start to get the hang of it, you'll see that there are endless strategies you can use, which makes the game a lot better then Utopia.

[Eli]

Nonononono. I spend enough time on Utopia already, I dont need another game.

[Zopperoni]

Actually, it's the simplicity of Utopia that appeals to me.

I've looked many alternatives to Utopia, but the entire "hodge-podge" of resources, buildings, races, and units kept me away from joining.

[Lemmy]

Once you worked out a strategy, like in utopia, all you really need is 4-6 different buildings, and 2-4 unit types, including mages and thieves.
So when playing it isn't all that complicated, only figuring out the best strategy can be difficult, which is were the fun is IMO.
And off course there is a lot less competition in Farahad, not more then 500 players.

[DinoDoc]

Is there a strat site I can look at like there is for Utopia?

[Lemmy]

nope

[Makeo]

Is there that much of a difference between them? Doesn't sound like it.

[Lemmy]

maybe not at the surface, but there is.
The buildings are different, there are upgrades.
Unit also got upgrades, units can produce resources, unit can both be mages, thieves and military. The dragons and slaves bring a whole new element to the game, you can stay small (500 acres) ad still be stronger then people with 1500 acres. Improvements are per unit/building instead of global science areas. The level system and skills allows for customization of your province. There is a market, where you can instantly trade one rsource into another for a fee.

btw haven't seen you in a while Makeo, you still playing utopia?

[Lemmy]

Attack and defense bonusses are also different.

In utopia can have 20% offense from barracks, ~10% from science, the war bonus, your general bonus, and the happiness bonus, this can't get much higher than 100% off bonus.

In farahad you can first improve your offense unit to 80%, this means all his stats are now 180% of what it was, 5 offense unit gets 9 offense.
Then you get 60% bonus from buildings.
There is also a pendulum, which swings from good to evil, if you're an evil race, and it's and 15 evil, then you get 15% attack bonus.
The is also a council bonus, which can get higher if you get more levels. You can have a War Skill, which also increases your offense (6% to start with).
And finally there is a tactics round, if you win it, you get 12% attack bonus.
This all could lead to an attack bonus of over 200%


whoops...gtg now....maybe more later...

[Lemmy]

Nobody going to play this then?
It's reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllyy fun you know .

[Zopperoni]

I can't have too many time-consuming activities =\