Taran's Ozymandias Guide - Basics

A short guide describing the basics in the strategy game Ozymandias.

Introduction

For more information, I refer you to the in-game guide.

Starting a new game

After pressing "Singleplayer" you are led to the following screen.

This menu allows you to choose maps by clicking the arrows. On the bottom of the stone, the symbols for the available empires are shown. If you have won at some point, they will have a marker which will inform of the date of your win with hardest difficulty.

After pressing "Play" you go to the map screen. Here you choose your empire.

Civilization

Each empire is unique. There are three things to consider when choosing

• Location:
  Consider your neighbors and their type. Expansionist and militant empires can mount dangerous attacks earlier than other civilizations. The terrain is also important. In general you want a lot of the same terrain since this makes technologies more beneficial.
  
  
• Trait:
  Each empire has a trait. This determines your starting resources and a couple of advantages and disadvantages. Take this into account when you play. (Don't worry, the information will remain available in-game).
  
  
• Difficulty:
  You can choose to give either yourself or the AI an advantage by boosting wealth income. In addition, an estimated difficulty is provided.

Victory conditions

Pressing the Crown in the top left corner opens a victory condition menu.

Here you can manage the amount of victory points required to win (at most 10), and the amount of victory points awarded by each of the seven wonders (0-4).

Note that during the game, you will lose the wonder if you no longer satisfy its criterion.

Adjusting the amount of victory points awarded also changes the fulfillment requirement. You can "lock" individual wonders and re-roll the rest if needed. (Currently you have to reroll once to make the lock symbols appear).


For a domination game where all other empires must be eliminated to win, you can toggle the button on the top left.

Once you have won a game with Crown based victory conditions, you will be given the option to "Keep Playing" if you want to see if you can win in the long run, or simply want to paint the map your color.

For learning the basics I recommend:
To win: 7
Collossus, Mausoleum, Temple: 2
Lighthouse, Pyramids: 1
Gardens, Zeus: 0

Interface

Here we will go through the game interface.

Traits
On the left side of the screen, each empire has a banner. These are sorted by victory progress.

If you hover over an empire's banner, its trait type will display, and its territory will light up. Clicking on the banner will reveal trait details.



Victory progress
Above the banners a crown is shown. Clicking it will reveal your victory progress.

You can see other civilizations' victory progress by hovering over their banner when the menu is open.



Eraser and Hourglass
The eraser resets your turn.

The hourglass ends your turn.

Nuff said.



Settings
In the top left a cogwheel will open the settings menu. This will also reveal shortcuts.

A notable shortcut is "T", which shows terrain types.

Resources
On the right you can see your empire's resources.

In order they are: Knowledge, Wealth, Food, Power.

You can see opponents' resources by hovering over their banner to the left.

Food

Food is used for growing your empire and wage war.

This resource has four uses: Claiming Tiles, Building Cities, Growing Cities and Moving Units. With the exception of Moving Units, each of the actions are accessed by pressing the Food tab to the left.

Claiming Tiles
Any neutral tile on your border can be claimed by planting a flag.

• The cost of a flag has a base cost depending on the terrain.
  
  
• The distance to your nearest city adds +1 to the the food cost per tile.
  
  
• Flag technologies and number of adjacent
  tiles each subtract 1 from the cost.

At the end of the turn, all flags are evaluated.

If only one empire has claimed the tile, they get it. If more than one empire have claimed the tile, first power, then adjacent tiles are considered.

1. If one empire has more power in the tile than the others, they get the tile. The power will be shown as a pie chart on all contested tiles during the turn transition.
   
   
2. In case of a tie, the number of adjacent friendly tiles are considered.
   
   
3. If the is still a tie, no one gets the tile.

In the picture, see whether you can figure out who gets the tile in each of case.

Building Cities
There are two rules for building cities: They cannot be built adjacent to another city, and the cannot be built adjacent to enemy territory.

The cost of the city depends on your current number of cities, and the terrain. E.g. River and Grassland cities cost less than Mountain and Desert cities.

Each city costs +5 Food for each city you own, including captured cities.

Since the cost of claiming tiles depend on your nearest city, you should place them on the outskirts of your empire, rather than in the interior.

Note that cities start with 2 population.


Growing Cities
The cost of growing cities depend on their size and the terrain. The cost growth is linear, but the maximum city size is 8. The size of the city is indicated visually.

Both building and growing cities gets a 20 % discount if the city is coastal.

Increasing the size of a city increases its yield, so from an economic perspective it appears to be best to always grow the cheapest city. However, since cities project power in friendly and neutral tiles depending on their size, this may not always be the case. More about this in the Passive Power section.

Tip: Except in the extreme late game, from a yield perspective it is always better to grow an existing city than to build a new one if they cost the same, since city tiles are usually worse than the original terrain.

Moving Units
By clicking on a unit you can move it through friendly territory to another tile.

Each tile traversed has an associated food cost depending on the terrain and unit type. Armies are expensive to move on sea and islands, while it is expensive to move navies across land.

Note that while units can move across these expensive tiles they can't be positioned there.

The path shown when hovering over a destination tile, is the least expensive one.

Knowledge

Knowledge is used to improve your empire's capabilities in different types of terrain. Note that you have to control at least one tile of the specified terrain type in order to unlock technologies (Having a city on the tile counts too, even though your terrain counter says 0).

The knowledge tab opens a menu which gives an overview of all technologies. In the bottom it also shows your total tile/city yield.

There three technology categories:

Flag Technologies
Each terrain type has three levels of technologies, each of which decrease the cost of claiming tiles of that terrain type by 1 (the cost cannot be less than 1).

Terrain Yields
Each type of terrain give a yield of knowledge, wealth and food. The amount provided by each tile of that terrain type can be increased by the technologies. The yield from a type of terrain can quickly be read by counting the number of technologies unlocked in each category.

Terrain Power
These technologies increase your power in every tile of the given terrain type. You can level up the power technology for each terrain type an arbitrary number of times with the limitation that each level costs more than the last.
In addition, each time you unlock a power technology, EVERY other power technology will increase in cost.

Wealth

The economy tab is where you manage your resources and buy military units.

The best way to learn how it works is to play around with the spending percentage %, and hovering over unit and waste reduction purchases.

Stockpile
These are your current resources, and are shown on the right of the screen at all times.

During your turn, your stockpile will update as you spend your Knowledge and Food.



Spending
You specify an amount of the Wealth in your stockpile to be allocated to buy other resources for the next turn.

When specifying a % of your Wealth to be spent, it will spend up to that amount. Since Power and Food are not one-to-one transactions, your may not be able to spend 100% of your Wealth.

The numbers at "spending" display how many of that resource you will buy.

Waste
All unused resources in your stockpile are wasted by the percentage specified. Since this is after the Wealth is allocated to be spent, it will only affect your unspent Wealth.

This means they saving up resources is possible, but inefficient.

In the late game you will not be able to spend resources that efficiently, meaning that getting waste reduction becomes very important.

Yield
Finally there is the yield, which is the sum of your terrain yield, which we touched on the the Knowledge section, and yield from opportunities.

Next Turn
Adding all the numbers above (the blue numbers) gives gives your the amount of resources you will have in your stockpile[ next turn (the red numbers).

Tip: Hover over a waste reduction improvement or a unit cost to see the effect it will have on all of your resources next turn.

Tip 2: Power works the same as the other resources, except all empires start with 1 Power which is newer wasted.


Exchange Rates

• Food:
  Has a fixed cost of 2 wealth = 1 food.
  Since this exchange is used a lot in the early game, a wealth yield is worth about half as much as a food yield.
  
  
• Science:
  Has a fixed cost of 1 wealth = 1 science.
  This means that wealth yields are almost always better than knowledge yields. Wealth, however, takes an extra turn to give you it's knowledge benefit.
  
  
• Power:
  There is no yield, do outside opportunities the only way to get Power is to buy it.
  
  Power has a base cost of 4+x, where x is the amount of units you have. It is incremental.
  
  Example:
  You have three units. Base cost is therefore 7. Buying 4 power costs
  7 + 14 + 21 + 28 = 70.
  
  Hovering over the sword will bring up your specific situation up to 5 Power.
  
  When buying x power, each unit thus costs x(x+1)/2 wealth. Buying 10 power thus means that each unit uses 55 wealth.

Power

Power is the way the game handles war. Empires can use their power to support claiming tiles and conquering the tiles of enemy empires.

An empires power is evaluated for each tile separately.

Let's look at the power tab. It doesn't open a menu, but activates a selection of overlays.

1. See your power in each tile as a heatmap (or pie chart if another empire also has power there)

2. Hover over a tile to see an explanation of each empire's power level in that tile

3. Hover over another empire's banner on the left to see their power across the map

4. Hover over the Knowledge tab to view power contributions from your techs

5. Hover over the Wealth tab to view power contributions from your military units

6. Hover over the Food tab to view power contributions from your cities

7. Hover over the Power tab to view your total power in each tile in numbers

In this guide we distinguish between two types of power, passive and active.

Passive Power

This type of power is independent of your power resource. This depends on terrain, cities and technology. Unless a friendly unit is adjacent, this only affects friendly and neutral tiles. You will thus always have 0 power in enemy territory if you have no adjacent units.



Power technologies
There are 9 types of terrain.
Island, River, Grassland, Plain, Mountain, Forest, Desert, Sea, City.

Initially you have no inherent power on any of these tiles. Power technologies will change that, improving your power in every tile with that terrain type.

If you seek to defend or attack an area, unlock power technologies for that type of terrain.

This is also the way you complete the Temple of Artemis wonder, so you should never neglect this section of the knowledge tab.

Defensive bonus
Defensive bonuses only ever apply in friendly territory.

Hills get +2 Power in defensive bonus.
Islands and Forests get +1 Power in defensive bonus.

The owner of the tile is thus given free power, making it easier to defend.

Note that while placing a city changes the tile yields, it will still keep any defensive bonus. Cities in Hills, Forests and Islands are thus easier to defend.

Cities
Cities exert their influence on nearby tiles in proportion to their size. This power applies in both friendly and neutral territory, but never in enemy territory.

A city of size 4 has the following effect:
The city tile gets +4 Power.
In adjacent tiles you get +3 Power.
In tiles 2 away you get +2 Power.
In tiles 3 away you get +1 Power.

And so on.

Each city size thus gives +1 Power to: 1, 7, 19, 37, 61, 91... tiles.

Note that this means that city size is most beneficial at the front line, since it helps defend your territory. This is of course more dangerous, since you risk loosing your investment.

It also means that while it is more expensive to go from 5 to 6 population than from 2 to 3, it also gives you WAY more passive power.

Active Power

Active power is projected by military units, and is how you direct attacks against the enemy. It can also be necessary to defend your border if your passive power is insufficient.

This is the power resource shown on the right of the screen. It is gives by purchasing Power in the economy tab. (You always have at least 1 Power, and you can't buy any until you have a unit).

The amount of active power is the condition for completing the Statue of Zeus wonder, so it has the dual purpose of being essential for warfare and being a victory goal all by itself.

Armies/Navies
Military units project your empire power onto their own, and adjacent tiles. Moving them costs food.

Note that both types of units can stay in cities.

They cost quite a bit of Wealth to buy, so increasing your income by claiming tiles and unlocking yield technologies is essential. It may be necessary to decrease your spending in order to save up for the purchase.

Threaten -> Attack
Conquering spaces is a two turn process.

At the end of each turn, the power distribution in each border tile is evaluated. If the owner's power is less than another empire's and an enemy unit from that empire is adjacent, on of two things will happen,

1: If the tile is "normal", it will become "threatened". An overlay corresponding to the aggressor's color will show.

2: If the tile is already being "threatened", it will change ownership to the hostile empire with most power in that tile and an adjacent unit.

Note that the conqueror does not have to be the one to threaten the tile.

Killing units
Although units don't fight directly, it is still possible to lose and kill units.

After tiles have been transferred, any unit not on or adjacent to an empty friendly tile is destroyed. This is very dangerous on coasts since armies can't retreat into the water and ships can't retreat onto land.

Strategy

A few tips of the top of my head. These tips are sometimes in conflict with one another. Try to balance them.

Plan your victory
In the start of the game take a good look at the wonders. Sometimes it is far too early to tell which ones are easiest to complete, but other times there is a combination of wonders which is easy to achieve and reliable. If such a combination exists make sure to keep the goals in mind the entire game.

In the late game it can be very important to realize that it is fine to loose tiles in war. Allocating all your wealth to knowledge or food instead of power can let you win the game while loosing the battle.

Utilize adjacency discount
The price of flags are discounted by adjacent tiles under your control. This means that placing two flags next to each other in a sense wastes 1 Food. Sometimes it can even be worth it to grab fewer tiles in order to maximize the adjacency discount.

Optimize your resources
Short version: Minimize resource waste.

Long version: In order to rule a successful empire you have to manage your resources.
Since a percentage of your stored resources will waste away at the end of your turn if unused, saving up is usually not a good strategy (power is an exception since the stored amount IS its purpose). Especially in the early game, the amount wasted quickly approaches your yield of that resource.

You should therefore as a rule try to spend all your resources every turn. This brings us to the economy tab, where you spend wealth. In the early game, the important resources are knowledge and food, so unless you want to buy a military unit, wealth has no use and you should spend 100% every turn.

Buying tiles is relatively cheap, so having a stockpile of unused food is easy to avoid.
Technologies, however, are quite expensive, so the wasted amount quickly becomes significant. Try to plan what technologies you want, and allocate wealth so that you can barely afford one of them next turn. If you decide not to unlock one next turn, don't allocate any wealth this turn.
The same principle applies to purchasing military units.

Tip: When buying you first military unit, saving up an additional 5 Wealth allows you to increase your Power to 2 on the same turn.

The first turn
In my opinion, the first turn is perhaps the most important turn of the game for two reasons:

1. Your knowledge stockpile is as big as it will get for a while. This means that now is the time to grab a yield tech, unless it severely limits the number of tiles you can secure.
   
   
2. Your starting wealth means that your spending can have a significant effect. Next turn you will only have your wealth yield to spend, so now is the time for big decisions. Usually you can never go wrong with 100% on food, but take a look at the techs anyway, especially if your empire has a yield tech discount.

Cut off competition
Short version: Greed is good.

Long version: Try to secure large areas for later expansion by expanding aggressively. This involves expanding towards and securing prime city locations before the competition. Building a city in region with lots of unclaimed tiles, will end up paying for itself very quickly due to the flag discount.

It will also help secure the tiles adjacent to the city due to city power.

Avoid conflict
Short version: Greed is not THAT good.

Long version: Avoid claiming tiles which can be contested by other empires. If the other claimant gets the tile, the result is just that you have wasted food. If none of you get the tile, it will hurt you both, while the other empires expand unhindered. If you really want the tile, unlock a power technology and/or consider whether the other empire is likely to claim that tile.

Opportunities

A choice between two opportunities are awarded every turn, and you can have at most three selected at a time. Managing and choosing these are key to success.

They can be accessed by pressing the crown to the left.

Note that the game considers what opportunities you are able to complete, so you will not be offered ones that are impossible.

There are multiple types of opportunities.

Condition
This is the most common opportunity.

Once you satisfy the specified condition, you will be granted the reward.
If it happens during the turn transition it counts as having been completed at the start of the following turn.

If the reward becomes impossible (e.g. by unlocking all river yield techs ), the opportunity pops up as "cancelled".

There are essentially two types.
One rewards your automatically, the other require you to specify a reward, like a technology or a city to grow.



Claim
The benefit of this opportunity is free resources or a free flag. When you decide to use it press the "Claim" button to claim your reward.

If you have three opportunities, it is often a good idea to complete "Claim" opportunities to make room for a new one next turn.

In the early game these are the most reliably powerful opportunities. Free flags or resources can be gamechangers.


Pay
The following opportunities asks you to pay resources in exchange for a reward. These work just as "Claim" opportunities, and are completed by pressing the button which displays the cost (assuming you can afford it).

The don't appear in the early game.


Crown
For obvious reasons this type of opportunity is among the most impactful.

Try to plan ahead. If you will be short of victory by a single crown, you should probably grab and hold on to this type of opportunity at first sight, just in case. Note that they don't appear if there is a 4 Crown wonder in the game.

Power
This type of opportunity lets you convert resources to power very effectively.

These are extremely important in the late game, especially for completing the Statue of Zeus.

Pay attention to their duration, some only last for a single turn.


Disband
This is a unique opportunity.

Instead of paying resources, you disband an army in order to get food. This can be useful since it is the only way of getting rid of units (except by letting them be killed).

NOTE: This only works for armies, not navies.

The 7 Wonders

Here I will detail every wonder, ordered by increasing complexity.

Great Lighthouse
100 / 125 / 150 / 250 - Spaces on the map

As straightforward a wonder as they come. You can clearly see what empires are closest to completing this just by looking at the map.

Since most (not all) empires will have to conquer land in order to complete it, you can actively stop other people from getting this wonder by attacking them out just defending well.

Note that some empires have way more room for expansion than others, making this a very unbalanced wonder in some cases.


Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
1 / 3 / 5 / 10 - Captured Cities

The first two levels of this wonder can usually be completed with relative ease in crowded maps, since early war is not only possible, but necessary.

In other maps it can be almost impossible to complete, if other wonders allow for victory before this one can realistically be completed.


Pyramids
18 / 24 / 30 / 50 - City Population

This is the best indicator of how well an empire is doing, since it gives an indicator of resource yields.

Since population has the benefit of increasing your Power in friendly territory, it also means than someone with Pyramids is difficult to attack.

You should always try to go for this wonder, since it helps with all the others.


Colossus
5 / 7 / 9 / 12 - Armies & Fleets

In my opinion, this wonder is a trap at anything other than 1 Crown.

Units get VERY expensive and make Power cost more, meaning that going for Colossus means that you have a much harder time completing Hanging Gardens and Statue of Zeus.

The benefit is that you can pivot away from Hanging Gardens into this wonder for sudden victory.


Temple of Artemis
12 / 15 / 18 / 25 - Power Technologies

Let me emphasize: power TECHNOLOGIES
This is not a warfare wonder, it is a Knowledge wonder, and the only thing determining your ability to complete it is your Knowledge yield.

Usually you fight on only a couple of terrain types, and increasing Power technologies in other terrain types is suboptimal. Due to the increasing cost however, this is not a feasible way of completing this wonder.

If you neglect Power technologies for some terrain types they remain cheap, letting you buy multiple in a single turn. If timed properly this can secure you the win.


Hanging Gardens
250 / 400 / 600 / 1000 - Wealth

This wonder becomes quite simple when you learn to use the waste reduction upgrades.

During midgame your spending should be focused on Power. It should not be at 100 % though, such that you have Wealth to spend in case of emergencies, where you need to buy units or surge in power. During this phase you should gradually reduce your resource wast.

Of these, Wealth and Power are by far the best, with Wealth naturally being the first priority since it helps with the rest.

Once your Wealth waste is sufficiently low you can begin saving up, by decreasing the spending percentage on Power. After reducing spending you will be a bit weaker, but only for a few turns.

Tip: Waiting for the right opportunity lets you reduce Wealth waste to 0%, meaning that unless Power is needed, you can have Power spending at 10% and still maintain high power overall.


State of Zeus
12 / 15 / 18 / 25 - Power

This is the most complex wonder in the game. It has all the complexity of Hanging Gardens, but it also relies heavily on opportunities.

Unless you have very high yields, you can probably not maintain the necessary amount of Power for this wonder. This means that you have to time the completion of this wonder for the final turn.

Usually this should start thinking about this wonder after you have all the Wealth waste reductions, since this lets you save up for Power waste reductions. Having a lot of Wealth in your stockpile also means that buying Power opportunities are less likely to affect your Power spending.

Beware that increasing spending to compete Statue of Zeus can inadvertently cause you to lose Hanging Gardens.

Other Guides

[scribbler957]

Helpful guide. Got some typos in the "Crown" opportunities section.

[Wayne]

yeah im gonna need a guide its just not working at all the assyrians are purposely focusing their armies on me even after playing 5 different games

[Wayne]

Thank you Lord Taran

[Taran]

Wayne, the basic idea is to kill off Canaanites while the others distract Babylon.
With the extra land you should have enough to win compete, so you should start focusing on the victory conditions while attacking the stronger of your opponents.

There is some RNG involved with how the Canaanites place their first flags. If they don't start by placing a flag on one of the mountains to the north of them, you will be able to take all of the plains tiles before them (if you get plains power tech). Restart the game until they don't place a flag there on the first turn. It is about 50/50 in my experience.

[Wayne]

Been stuck on Fertile Crescent as the Hittites on scholarly, anyone got tips?

[Taran]

Thanks Morgân. I'll admit it is a bit long, but hopefully people can just look at the section they are interested in.

[Morgân von Brylân]

Rather extensive. Very nice work.

[Bobbyaxe]

You make money by reducing your spend on food,wealth,and/or power. If they don't add up to 100%, the remainder is added to your wealth. This is extremely obvious if you just click some buttons to see what it does to the resulting yields.

[Xerxes86]

Yeah I was looking for how you manage to make enough money to get troops. This is basically the same as the useless manual. Tells you how to spend it, not how to make it.

[Taran]

Oh, yeah you are right DaviddesJ with regards to the flag placement. If you no longer satisfy a wonder condition you lose the crowns, I will add that to the guide.