Empires

Empires are a mid game bonus achievable by getting 15 tiles, giving you 1 Empire Point (EP). There are 9 Empires each with their own unique bonuses. Each level requires lower tier bonus before it can be chosen.

You get another EP for every 15 tiles you buy/conquer. This tally carries over between sailing away; if your first continent had 32 tiles, you would only need to get 13 tiles (including the 4 you start with) on your second continent to get your third EP.

Spent Empire points can be respecced. for 25 Amber, allowing you to choose different bonuses. You also get 5 respecs for free.

Filling out an empire's upgrades requires a total of 20 empire points (that's 300 tiles).

Unlocking all bonuses (180 Empire points after 2700 tiles) allows you to go to space.

The three empires that need EP spent to unlock do not stay unlocked on a respec, and unlock only on spent EP, not on earned EP; for example, to buy English 1 you will need 21 EP, with 20 EP spent on other empires first. Doing a respec resets spent EP; for example, having 10 EP of upgrades, then respeccing and spending the EP again, will not unlock the English empire.

**Potential tactic:**

Note: make sure you do not waste any amber until you can get the 999 bonus as that one will be incredibly powerful. After that you can buy the percentage bonuses.

Initially, it's recommended to get lvl 1 in each empire (even if you're not using evasion, Japanese will be useful later). The strongest bonuses are Roman I, American I and Russian I. Especially Roman is powerful (10 workers on a shipyard, cathedral or school are a big deal).

After that, you should focus on getting lvl 2 and 3 bonuses. Keep an eye on your gold as your progress. If you can get to 1M several tiles before you reach ships, Russian III becomes very useful to speed up mid-game. Egyptian II and III are always useful, because they add value to your cathedrals even if you don't need faith anymore (remember that faith doesn't add to your abdication gold). Egyptian III can be very powerful when combined with Oni, because Oni gets low holiness otherwise. it will also be useful for the frog god. Romans is useless as you'll be skipping farms directly to schools by now. Japanese probably won't be much use either beyond the first lvl (depending on play style). America II can be useful depending on how you conquer your tiles.

Once you've got some of the 2 and 3 bonuses (maybe 4s as well), you should have unlocked English. Immediately get the first point here. The bow will be incredibly powerful during the initial buildup to quickly capture some tiles (this power works well with Jap I). English III will double your abdication gold. English IV will allow you to reuse most of the gold you spent on tiles on experts. Try and get this bonus along with the frog god (300 fame). This will allow you to reuse the gold you buy tiles with on lowering the cost of religion perks, which increases your abdication gold and allows you to buy even more tiles.

After that, try and focus on getting some lvl 4 bonuses. Egyptian IV can be powerful as it triples the speed at which the ritual can hire monks. That way you can quickly upgrade your relics. Greek 4 can increase the speed you need to unlock pantheons and religion. American 4 will lower the costs of everything so it's useful regardless of playing style. Russian IV can be useful as well. Japanese and Romans are basically useless.

Then you should try to get lvl 5 bonuses. Recommended ones are American, Egyptian, Russian and Greek. Russian and Egyptian work well together on lvl 5. Egyptian is very powerful because it can both increase the number of rituals for extra abdication gold and lengthen them for increased monk (worker) hiring.

Don't bother with Chinese as the bonuses aren't very useful. Lvl 1 is a joke because you already have your relics for this. Lvl 2 can be used to hire monks (workers) a little quicker, but you're better off getting Greek V and getting a faith bonus as heritage.

Once you've got German, immediately try and go for lvl 5. This will be incredibly useful because by then you'll be buying almost all of your tiles with the frog god. Most of the time will be spent buying and building on tiles. 5M gold is nothing by now.

Once you've got German 5, the rest of the game is just a grind to get more EP. Occasionally you'll be upgrading your relics, but mostly it's just abdication, restoring tiles, lowering cost to buy tiles, buy new coastal tiles, build ships on new tiles, lower religion perks, get frog religion perks as high as you can, use one ritual to activate frog bonus, abdicate again and repeat until you can sail away (the required tiles to sail away are capped at 50 and you'll have reached that by now). Romans V can be useful to add an extra 100 workers to your initial tiles. Anything else won't do much at this point.