Legal

Disclaimer

The advice is a personal opinion given free of charge with the best intentions, but there is no guarantee that it is best practice. You follow the advice at your own risk. We take no responsibility for any time or money you may waste. If you can improve on the advice, please let us know. Updates may take some time, as this is a hobby site.

Credentials or Who runs this site?

I play as Conkeror, a member of Redemption, the number 1 guild on the international server, East Nagach (https://en5.forgeofempires.com/).

Currently, this site is my blog, mainly of my thoughts but also including others' ideas.

You can compare rates of growth at FoE ScoreDB.IO. Use the search tool to compare it with yours.

There is much more to add and that would happen faster if this was run by a cooperative team. So I hope to make this a social site.

Reasons I am successful?

  1. I am a mathematician and I check advice by worked examples, this gave me different priorities;
  2. Being in a great guild;
  3. Being active;
  4. Like most players, I have highish combat bonuses;
  5. I focus more on Forge Point production more than most increasing investment in Great Buildings;
  6. Almost all of my buildings are event buildings, most of which give me goods, Forge points and military bonuses. That combination is essential to growth.
  7. I used to use foe-helper to get the best out of my investments. However, after investigation for this blog I found that foe-helper breaks the rules, so I stopped, See legal -> Warnings -> Foe-Helper for details. Also FoE-helper's information is incomplete so some of its advice is just plain wrong.
    1. Some advice comes from the FoE Helper, as it is useful I kept it in but I will not be adding to it.

While they all help, it is their combination that accelerates my score. These tips are for the base game taken to an advanced level. They will help you grow faster, earning more points.

I explain my tactics in detail. Hopefully, you will find them some of them helpful and enjoyable.

More information for beginners

If you are new to the game, then here are several more useful sites:

e.g. https://www.mooingcatguides.com, https://www.foe.tips, etc. They give much useful information on strategy that is especially useful during events. I thoroughly recommend them.

There are several more to choose from, including the official wiki:
https://en.wiki.forgeofempires.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

and the official forum:

https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php

https://foe.tools/gb-investment is an essential tool for Arc 1.9 threads

From here on, I will use terms like GVG, GBG and Arc 1.9 threads, assuming you know what I mean. If not, read more these sites.

The game moves on.

I have been writing this blog for months, at the moment I am writing polishing the template and structue of the site, rather than adding content.

But even in that time some of my quoted examples refer to things that the more active players no longer use. They are kept in because they still explain good advice.

The information is offered free of charge. Currently the copyright is all owned by conkeror.co.uk and indirectly by its owners. You can quote it anywhere so long as you attribute it to the source, conkeror.co.uk and enclose this same legal restriction, that you quote the source. If you publish a recognizably modified version you should add yourself as a source. The purpose is so that improvements can be reported back by anyone from anywhere and you can be added to the list of Contributers.

Once such improvements are published the modified text will be added to our hall of fame.

Version history

Version Date Contributor Description
0.1 2024/2/19 Conkeror Publication of first draft for review
1.0 2024/3/8 Conkeror.co.uk Initial publication
1.1 2024/3/13 Conkeror.co.uk Gramarly editted
1.2 2024/3/21 Sam Aargh Improved XS(extra small screen size) font sizing added by conkeror.co.uk but tested by Sam Aargh
1.3 2024/3/24 Rabbit Sausuge of the Reds Revised space advice that straight roads are a good idea
1.4 2024/3/24 Jfcbear Reduced image sizes to speed up loading(More enhancements to come)
1.5 2024/4/04 Jfcbear Requested menu access for better structure and load times.
1.5 2024/4/04 Conkeror.co.uk New template to allow the restructuring for and the restructuring of the document.
1.6 2024/4/04 Conkeror Replaced the Space page with more precise descriptions and better examples of the effects of branches and bends and embedded buildings.

The copyright holder may be referred to by user name, real name or both. If a player wants only to be known by username, we also need your user number, which is your unique identifier. You can change username every six months, and we do not want to lose your accreditation just because you decided to change your user name. Your user number never changes.

Player number User Name Real name Description
12291775 Conkeror Player
Conkeror.co.ukmore This web site
11199954 jfcbear Player
850674796 Rabbit Sausage of Reds Player
11656451 Sam Aaargh Player who tested small screen mobiles

You can find your user number on the Settings about page:

Click on the cog Icon, then about tab

Please note using your real name and player name is not without risk. Players come from all over the World. Any in-game political allegiance to a warring nation, for example, Ukraine or Russia, can lead to physical attacks if people know who you are. On the other hand, you may want people to know.

At the moment this web site exists purely for helping players play Forge Of Empire, with no real world agenda other than the free sharing of validated information and tracking of its history.

Legal Warnings

Do not publish exploits.

Do not publish exploits. Publishing exploits of bugs can get you banned. If you doubt whether something is a bug or afeature, always ask InnoGames support before publishing it. Here is an example I checked when writing this blog.

Summary

All extensions use JavaScript or the more modern Typescript to find information and to control actions on the screen. The rules do not allow the use of scripts. So all (except the most simple extensions) including FoE-helper are banned by the rules.

You may not remember it but you checked a box saying you would abide by InnoGame's General Terms and Conditions before you started play. They state that if you break the rules of one of their games, InnoGames may give you a warning which if ignored will allow them to close your account.

However, as they found out earlier, banning lots of players for using a popular extension just looses them customers and income. So InnoGames have decided to ignore the issue and leave it up to your integrity.

There are mobile players who cannot use foe-helper, so foe-helper gives desktop users a huge unfair advantage, which is what made me want to stop using it.

It also makes me want to extend this website to give mobile players some of the information you cannot get without it.

Also on Foe-helper support discord channels, you meet characters like Beelzebob666 a very Satanic name, which as a Christian gave me the creeps and endorsed my decision not to lose my integrity. Twisting your life into cheating, is a satanic tactic. As is judging people, Satan is the accuser. Whether you want to use FoE-helper is entirely up to you.

The rest of this post goes into the exact details.

Forge of Empire rules and InnoGames's General terms and conditions

Playing Forge of Empires is subject to two separate contracts.

  1. Forge of Empire's Rules
  2. InnoGame's General Terms and Conditions, also known as the Terms of Service.

These contracts rarely change, but the URL sometimes does. If either link does not work, please let us know.

If InnoGames plans to change either, they will inform users eight weeks beforehand.

The rules explain what you are allowed or not in the game. The General terms and conditions explain the legal restrictions imposed, which includes what happens if you break the rules.

Section 10.5 of the rules explain how your account mmay be cancelled for various reasons including not abiding by the rules.

  • We are in particular, but not exclusively, entitled to cancel the Licensing Agreement or the Premium Licensing Agreement for an important reasons, ifyou are in arrears with your payments in the amount of at least EUR 1.99 and do not pay, despite a reminder;
  • your account pursuant to 8.12 is in the red and you do not settle it despite a payment request including a deadline;
  • you, despite having been given a reminder, culpably violate the game rules, laws or these GTC;
  • you commit criminal acts; or
  • there is a violation of Art. 11 or Art. 12.3 and this violation, despite a request and the expiry of a certain deadline to remedy the situation, has not been healed or is repeated despite the warning.

So if InnoGames becomes aware of you breaking their rules they will give you a warning before cancelling your account. But their is no time limit given between the giving of the warning and the cancellation of the account.

There are a couple of things to note.

FOE-helper.com

The Foe-helper plugin is a very useful. It provides the excellent collated information that help you validate and monitor your growth. It can be used be to check that you are playing optimal for your style of play. However, loading your data onto their servers for your own purposes means that FoE-helper are indirectly mining data off InnoGames servers, this is definitely against InnoGames General Terms and Conditions and is also probably illegal.

Other FoE bloggers state that InnoGames allows extensions, so long as they follow InnoGame's General Terms and Conditions. For reasons given above I disagree, the rules ban scripts.

At the current time it is widely believed that FoE-helper meets those conditions and various renowned players, such as MooingCat, openly state that they are using it without being banned.

However, reading the rules there are two clauses that concern me.

Forge of empire Rules state:

6) Bots and scripts

It is strictly forbidden to use bots or scripts.

Examples:
- It is strictly forbidden to use bots or scripts that automatically collect your resources.
- It is not allowed to use click-bots or scripts that minimize your manual clicks.
- You may not use programs that mimic premium features or provide an unfair advantage.

The rules state that scripts are banned, extensions such as foe-helper are based largely on scripts such as Javascript or TypeScript that collate information and activate features of the expansion and it uses css and html to display the collated information. According to my interpretation of the rules, use of any extension should be banned because they all have to use scripts.

The General Terms and Conditions Article 11.3, a part of "Art. 11 Safety, cheating", does not allow data mining.

11.3 The use of software which allows data mining or that in any other way collects information associated with the Games is prohibited.

FoE-helper collects information associated with Forge of Empires, a user's city. That, as I understand it, breaks clause 11.3.

However, InnoGames has, as far as I am aware, not yet given anyone warnings for using foe-helper and considering how many paying players would be banned if they changed that ruling, I strongly expect they never will.

I suspect they are very unhappy about it.

Addiction

Forge of empires is designed to entice you to play more.

If you play every day, monitor your playing time. Does Your game play:

  • Causes interpersonal stress with family or friends?
  • Cost more than you can afford?
  • Made you miss an appointment?
  • Made you forget to read your emails today?
  • Stopped you going to bed at the same time as your partner?

If you can answer yes to any of these, think about looking for medical help especially if you can say yes to more than one of them or any of them become regular events.

Forge of Empires is supposed to be a fun way to pass the time; Not a way to waste your life. You can get addicted. The World Health Organisation defines "Gaming Disorder" as when games become detrimental to real life. If you are worried you are playing too much, contact your local online Gamers Anonymous or mental health services.

  1. Gamers anonymous in the USA
  2. NHS Centre for Gaming Disorders in the UK, for which there is a long waiting list.

If you know details of services in your country that are not already on the list, please provide contact details and a suitable label in your language so we can add them to the list.