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Welcome to utopia. You have just joined an interesting and dynamic world of strategy and politics. The first thing you should do is read and be familiar with The Guide. It contains most of the basics you need to know to play the game.

Once you have read The Guide you might have some questions about strategy. There are many strategies out there that people have created for their own particular playing style. Most of them are created by top players, and require a lot of maintenance to play. It's a good idea to read over some of the strategies for your race, as they will give you a general feel for how to manage your strengths and weaknesses.

Before you start reading strategy pages there are some basic terms and general rules that most experienced players take for granted:

Ratios

In the world of utopia many things are measured by the ratio of a certain unit against the number of acres of land you have. You will often find people speaking of a "3:1 thief ratio" or "the target only has 20DPA". Here, a 3:1 theif ratio means that you have 3 theives for every acre of land you have. DPA stands for Defense (points) Per Acre. You can find your DPA by adding up the defensive values of all of your troops and dividing by the number of acres you have. For an elf this would mean adding up the number of archers you have times 3 (archers have 3 defense) plus the number of elf lords you have times 6 (elf lords have 3 offense and 6 defense.) For 500 archers and 2000 elf lords on 300 acres of land this would be ((500*3)+(2000*6))/300 or 45DPA. You can find the offensive and defensive values for your own races units in the guide. Other ratios that you might encounter are OPA (Offensive (points) Per Acre) and WPA (Wizards Per Acre, also expressed as a percentage (85% wizards coverage) or a ratio (1:2 wizard ratio is one wizards per 2 acres)).

Theives are very important in the game. The effectiveness of your theives depends on your theif ratio. An average ratio for a province is about 2-3 theives per acre (2:1-3:1). If you want your theives to be more effective a ratio of 4:1 or 5:1 is better. In times of war theives are usually the biggest heros as they infiltrate the enemy provinces and sink their boats in the dead of night, thus disabling the enemy's military and protecting your fellow provinces. During peace time theives can be used to pilfer money from that province that leaves too much lying around. They can also be used to steal food, or runes if those items are on your shopping list. Even a mighty military province needs theives to spy on the enemy military and find out how many troops he has left at home, or how many guard stations he has for his troops to rally inside (and make it harder for your troops to win.) These information theif operations are not always accurate, so be careful how far you trust the information! Having a strong theif guild is also important as theives are the only one's who can protect your land from enemy theives. If you have a strong theif ratio then your enemy must have a strong theif ratio to get through your theives. When theives get caught many of them are killed, and they sometimes tell their captors who sent them. Theiving from much larger provinces is often not a good idea for just that reason.

Wizard, unlike theives or your military units, are created randomly by guilds. Every guild has a small chance of producing a wizard each utopian day. The more guilds you have the more wizards will be produced. Wizards (and guilds) are necesary for the sucessful casting of spells. All of the spells are described in the guide, and the only spell it is really important to use is minor protection, which you should have cast all the time. Your wizard percentage is the number of wizards you have divided by the amount of land you have. A wizard percentage of under 50% is normal, and a percentage higher than 80% is very good. Your wizard percentage affects how often you can cast succesful spells against other provinces, and how much defense you have against them casting spells at you.

While your offense and defense are not affected by the number of acres you have, having a lower defense ratio means you are much more likely to be attacked, and having a low offense ratio means that you can't attack very big people, and therefore can't get much land from war. Your defensive military should be your first priority. You can't grow in the game if you are always losing land. You should leave utopian protection with a defense ratio of at least 25-30DPA, and by the time you have 500 acres you should have 40DPA. If you are starting right at the beginning of the round, you can often get away with less defense, but as you fall behind other people in size you have to raise your defense up to where it should be. If you have offensive elites (orcs or avian) then you should not count your elites in your DPA. Elites by the way are your special troop that has both offensive and defensive abilities. The units that have only offense or defense are called specialists. If you have elites that serve both as offense and defense (such as dwarves. also sometimes humans or halflings) then you should count enough of your elites as defense to have a good DPA, and leave at least that many of them at home when you attack. While your troops are away from home they aren't protecting, and you can be sure that people will take advantage of their absence if you send too many out. Your OPA will vary a lot as you grow. You need enough offense to attack people over half of your size, so 20OPA is a good ratio to aim for at the beginning. As you get larger you will have to get a higher OPA, as larger provinces usually have higher DPA's.

Alliances

In the world of utopia there are many different alliances. In the broadest sense of the term you will find many people who keep in touch with each other through ICQ (pronounced "I seek you.") These are usually undeclared alliances, and you won't know where they exist only that they do. ICQ is a good way to keep in touch with your own kingdom mates (and your friends and family as well.) I suggest you download it and try it out, you might be surprised how useful it is.

Another type of alliance is the "Non Agression Pact" or NAP. When two kingdoms enter into an NAP they are agreeing not to attack each other. There is no other provision in the agreement, and thus the relationship is not really an alliance. Most islands have an NAP even if one is not formally declared. Before attacking someone on your island you should check with your kingdom to see if you are allowed. Inter-island attacks do not require boats, and this is the main reason on island attacks are not allowed. An on island war is often much more devastating because both sides can continue to attack well beyond where they would normally have to stop from lack of boats. Sometimes membership in an island NAP is also signified by putting the i## (where ## is the island number) in their name. If you are on island 15 you wouldn't attack any kingdoms on island 15 with either NAP or i15 (or I15) in their title.

The third major type of alliance is the formal alliance. Kingdoms belonging to these alliances usually have an alliance indicator like AA or xXx in their title. Starting a war with one of these kingdoms is often a bad idea because they usually have friends. Random grabs against alliances is usually thought of as a good thing, and as long as you don't attack them repeatedly you can usually get away with a single attack against their kingdom.

Terms

• CB - Crystal Ball. An information spell you cast on an enemy province to see his "menu page." Doesn't tell how many theives he has.
• CB Formatter - A program that nicely formats CB information so it is readable when posted in the forums.
• CE - Crystal Eye. An information spell that lets you see the enemy's paper from the last two days. (the paper is a list of events for the kingdom)
• DPA - Defense Per Acre
• K - thousand (i.e. 5K is 5,000)
• NAP - Non Agression Pact
• OPA - Offense Per Acre
• SoM - Spy on Military. A theif operation that lets you listen in on the enemy's military advisor. Tells approximately how many troops an enemy sent out, and approximately how many he left at home.
• Super Thief - A province that has stopped growing and builds only theives to acheive a ratio of over 8:1 theives. Usually friends with some much larger provinces.
• Survey - A theif op that lets you listen in on the enemy's internal affairs advisor.

Links

Some places to look for strategies include Glorat's Page and Utopia Depot.

Glorat's page contains a crystal ball formatter (and an SoM and survery formatter.) Another formatter which you can install on your computer (a very cool program) can be found at the utopiaCB page. This program does not (at this time) format SoM or Survey information. It's accompanying military calculator does allow you to enter SoM and Survey information to help calculate your attacks.