Table of Contents
Ikariam is a COMPLETE strategy game set in ancient Greece where you build cities on islands, trade with neighbors, research technologies, and wage war. Success requires balancing multiple aspects of your empire. This guide covers the essential strategies for every area of the game.
RESOURCE AND BUILDING STRATEGY
Your first priority in any new city should be building an Academy as early as possible, since research is the key to progress. The Sawmill is your main resource at the start, and you should target level 10-12 first. Build a Carpenter early as it reduces building costs from level 3-4 onward. A Warehouse prevents surplus resources from decaying.
Every island produces one luxury resource: Wine, Marble, Crystal, or Sulfur. You can only harvest your own islands resource, so for the other three you need to trade or fight. This is Ikariams core mechanic and what makes diplomacy essential. Wine is important for population happiness, Marble is required for higher-level buildings and is highly sought in trade, Crystal enables advanced research and military units, and Sulfur is essential for military units and ships.
For building priorities, focus on upgrading expensive buildings like the Museum, Tavern, Town Hall, Warehouse, Palace, and Governors Residences as these increase your score. Your Town Hall should be upgraded to ensure space for new citizens. Each citizen earns points toward your total score.
RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY
There are four research branches in Ikariam.
Seafaring provides faster and stronger ships, trade capacity, and is important for expansion and commerce.
Economy gives production bonuses, storage capacity, and trade bonuses that strengthen your long-term economy.
Science accelerates research points, cultural treaties, and governors.
Military unlocks new unit types, stronger defenses, and siege weapons for war and protection.
Invest in Economy and Seafaring first. Military comes later when you have something worth defending.
EXPANSION AND COLONY STRATEGY
Once you have researched Expansion, you can found cities on other islands. Ideally, build four cities on four different resource types to become self-sufficient.
For late-game expansion, obtaining a 9th and 10th city is a major goal. This allows you to support a much larger army than opponents who only have 7 or 8 cities. However, it requires a very high-level Palace and Governors Residences. The construction of these levels requires enormous storage capacity. Experts build a Dump in their most secure city, replacing a low-level Warehouse, to achieve this.
CULTURE AND HAPPINESS STRATEGY
The culture system in Ikariam is essential for managing your empire alongside economy and war. A well-planned culture strategy increases your populations happiness, reduces wine consumption, and accelerates city growth.
The Two Pillars of Culture
The culture system relies on two main elements: the Museum and Cultural Treaties.
The Museum provides happiness to your citizens without any upkeep costs, unlike the Tavern which consumes wine. Each Museum level gives 20 happiness points, and allows the display of one cultural artifact worth an additional 50 points, for a total of 70 points per level. To exchange a cultural treaty, you and your partner must have researched the Foreign Cultures technology. You can have as many treaties as you have Museum levels.
Happiness and Population Growth
Your population growth rate is governed by happiness, with the growth rate being equal to your happiness score. You need 1 happiness per citizen. Once your Town Hall is full, any excess happiness isnt required, though it might be worthwhile to keep happiness at 50 or more in case a treaty partner becomes inactive.
The formula for happiness is:
Happiness equals Base Bonus (196) plus Well Digging Bonus (50) plus Holiday Bonus (25) plus Tavern Base (12 times level) plus Tavern Wine Bonus (80 times level) plus Museum Base (20 times level) plus Cultural Goods Bonus (50 times number of treaties) minus Population.
Happiness Levels
There are five happiness levels that determine your population growth rate.
Euphoric provides plus 6 citizens per hour or more.
Happy provides plus 1 to plus 5.99 citizens per hour.
Neutral provides 0 to plus 0.99 citizens per hour.
Sad provides minus 0.01 to minus 1 citizens per hour.
Furious provides minus 1.01 citizens per hour or less.
Key Culture Strategies
Build Museums in every town to reduce wine consumption and increase the number of cultural treaties you can obtain. The Museum provides a constant, free happiness bonus while the Tavern serves as an accelerator for population growth when needed.
The combination of Tavern and Museum is the key to supporting maximum population. The Museum provides base happiness, and the Tavern provides the extra boost needed for plus 100 or more growth per hour, which is crucial for continuously supplying barracks.
For advanced players, pushing Museums to levels 19 or 20 provides great benefits in terms of wine usage. The ultimate goal is to make citizen satisfaction independent of wine consumption, relying on the Museum as the primary happiness source.
Wine-Only Strategy
One advanced culture strategy is playing only with wine-producing cities, making them self-sufficient for happiness since you never need to transport wine between colonies. The key to this strategy is that each town produces the same luxury good. The Museum becomes a strategic building to replace part of the wine consumption, especially when reaching advanced construction levels like Town Hall level 66 which requires a Museum to maintain satisfaction.
DIPLOMACY AND ALLIANCES
Joining an alliance provides protection, trade partners, and the ability to build World Wonders, which are massive cooperative projects that grant permanent bonuses.
To start a Cultural Treaty, go to the Island view of the player you wish to have the treaty with, select one of their towns, click Send Message or Diplomacy, and choose the subject Cultural goods treaty.
Important rules to remember:
You can only have one Cultural Treaty per player, no matter how many towns or Museum levels either of you have.
If you are in an alliance, you must have an Embassy to send a Cultural Treaty request.
If you cancel a Cultural Treaty, it takes three days for it to go away. During this time, you will see the player name with a red line through it.
If you attack a player who shares a Cultural Treaty with you, all of your cities suffer civil unrest with 250 unhappiness for four hours.
MILITARY AND WAR STRATEGY
Attack Preparation
To conduct successful pillaging attacks, follow these recommended steps.
First, create units with specific abilities. Assault units like Swordsmen and Bombardiers provide a plus 30 percent attack bonus. Breacher units like Battering Rams, Catapults, and Mortars create breaches in the city wall, giving a 10 percent attack bonus per breach. Spies in the city attempt to open gates, and each successful gate opening also provides a 10 percent attack bonus. Cooks and Doctors are very important as they restore resistance and heal units respectively, with each supporting up to 20 units.
Next, select your target carefully. Attack a player with significant resources to get a good loot, ideally someone with a lower score than you. If attacking a stronger player, ensure they dont have a fleet or have a much weaker one.
Before launching the attack, send a spy and wait until the detection risk is at 5 percent before giving them the mission. Spy in this order:
Spy Regiment to see what troops, machines, and warships are stationed.
Inspect Warehouse to see how much resources are in the city.
Connection Status to see if they are active or absent.
Defense Strategy
Build all walls up to level 15 or higher and keep one Spearman and one Slinger in each town. Have one warship in each port. A speedboat is best for this purpose as it costs only 5 gold per hour and is never destroyed in an attack, it simply runs away if attacked by a navy.
If you can afford it, put 12, 18, 24, or 30 Battering Rams behind a wall with a single Spearman and Slinger. The number of Rams you can fit on a battlefield depends on your Town Hall level. If a looter attacks, your 30 Rams will take out 30 of his Hoplites per round. Each section of wall still standing will also eliminate one enemy unit. In a two-round battle, this means at least 61 enemy Hoplites annihilated with no losses to you.
Strong Economy Wins Wars
While Ikariam can be played as a war game, it is the builders who will inherit the world. While warmongers clash and waste time and resources on conflicts, the builders steadily become more powerful. A sufficiently provoked builder can become a fighter, and a large builder account can support a larger military than a persistent warmonger.
A strong navy can be a very effective strategy. Most aggressive players develop large ground forces and have little gold left for navy. You can easily inflict naval defeats on them and permanently blockade one of their sulfur cities. This will severely hurt them as they would soon run out of wine in that city, be unable to produce troops or sulfur, see their gold income decline, and experience army desertions.
HIGH SCORE STRATEGY
Your total score is composed of several sub-scores.
Master Builders: Points from the total number of buildings you have constructed.
Build Levels: Points from building levels. Expensive buildings like Museum, Tavern, Town Hall, Warehouse, Palace, and Governors Residences contribute the most.
Scientists: Points from the number of researchers employed in Academies.
Levels of Research: Points from completed research technologies.
Generals: Points from every troop, warship, and merchant ship created.
Gold Stock: Points from gold in your treasury.
To maximize your score, buy as many trade ships as possible. As you buy more, they become more expensive and worth more points. Upgrade your Town Hall for more population, upgrade Taverns and Museums and fill them with wine and cultural treaties to get higher happiness rates and more growth per hour.
COMMON PITFALLS TO AVOID
Pushing Rule Violation
The practice of selling resources at an unreasonably high price to a lower-ranked player to help them is called pushing. This is strictly prohibited by game rules and can result in a ban. Trades that mean an unfair profit for the higher-ranked player using price ratios too far from the world market are forbidden.
Losing Cultural Treaty Bonuses
If you attack a player who shares a Cultural Treaty with you, all your cities suffer civil unrest with 250 unhappiness for four hours.
Corruption Impact
Corruption affects satisfaction by reducing the effect of wine and cultural treaties. The best way to increase satisfaction in colonies is to avoid corruption by ensuring the Governors Residence level matches the Palace level.
Ikariam offers deep strategic gameplay that rewards careful planning and balanced development. Whether you focus on economy, culture, or war, understanding these core mechanics will help you build a thriving empire.
