1. 'What is it all about ?'
Utopia is a online strategy game. The purpose of the game is to increase in size/power while having fun.
2. 'How to grow ?'
You can expand your small country in two ways, exploring or attacking. Exploring is by far the easiest and the one I recommend newbies. Attacking is much more difficult and requires not only knowledge but also alot of time.
3. 'What buildings to build ?'
There is alot of buildings to build as you can see. Only a few are worth building when exploring. The exact building setup will depend on your race ( Dwarves need more farms, undeads need no farms etc. )
A good setup in the beginning is:
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25% Homes ( Houses peasents and military )
10% Farms ( Produces food, 10% is a bit too much but it's better to have a surplus than to be starving )
30% Armouries ( Lowers military building costs, very important in the beginning since you only start with 250 soldiers )
25% Banks ( Increase your income, money is always nice)
5% Guilds ( Trains wizards, important for spellcasting )
5% Towers ( Produces the runes that are needed for spellcasting )
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4. 'Defending your lands'
The two most important issues in Utopia is to increase in acres and to defend those acres. Unfortunately newbies only seems to take regard of the first issue, having insufficient defence.
There are four kinds of military units in Utopia ( The offensive specialist, the defensive specialist, the Elite & the thief ) In the very beginning of the game all explorers use the defensive specialist as defence ( to approximately 500-1000 acres )
but after that most races ( all but Avians and Undeads ) switch to Elites only. Elites are more expensive but later in the game, space and not money will be the limited resource. That's why everyone switch to Elites.
5. 'How much defence should I have ?'
That is one tricky question. In the beginning ( if you start when the round begins that is ) you need less defence than if you start now in the end of the round. One very important abbreviation is DPA ( DEFENCE POINTS per ACRE ). In the beginning maybe only 5 DPA is needed, whereas I have ~100 DPA now.
6. 'How to calculate DPA ?'
It's pretty easy, I will show you how by calculating my own DPA.
I have 40000 Elites and 4000 Defence Specialists. The Defensive Battle Strength for one halfing Elite is 4 and the Defensive Battle Strength for one halfling defence specialist is 3. The sum is 40000 * 4 + 4000 * 3 = 172000. Furthermore I have 35% Warscience and the spell Minor Protection active ( 10% bonus )
My total defence is therefore 172000 * 1.35 * 1.1 = 255420 Defence points. 255420 Defence points divided with my acres ( DPA ) makes 255420 / 2500 = 102 DPA. Pretty easy as you can see. All races has differnt values, but they are all in the guide