Open Sourcing Realm Of Empires code

We have decided to open-source the game engine that is used to create Realm Of Empires!

Realm of Empires launched in Friday June 13 2008, to a world of gamers eager for good quality independent games. Now in 2024, the world is over saturated with online games of all kind! Yet, Realm of Empires continues to enjoy a loyal following of die hard fans, and pure-strategy bad-asses! 

The one constant request we had from the player community, is for the community to be able to design realms as they see fit. We have tried to deliver this in a number of ways, with the latest feature allowing a design custom realms in 2019.

After much deliberation, the only natural step forward, is to open source the engine!

Anyone tech savvy, can now download the code, run the game and adjust it as you like it.

The engine can also be used to launch a brand new type of game, and the open source code includes an  (incomplete) "StarWars" theme that demonstrates this ability. 

You can use the engine to experiment, launch non-for-profit projects, even run commercial games. All that we ask in return, is that any changes to the code, are offered back to the open source community. 

The project comes with a simple HOW-TO but we can expand it at your request to show off the full configurability of the engine.

Check it out: https://github.com/GregBalajewicz/RealmOfEmpires-MMORTS-Game-Engine 

Announcing a big new feature!

 Hail Lords and Ladies!

We are pleased to announce an exciting new feature, debuting May 26 on realm 314!

One of the common complaints is that Realm of Empires is only a zero-sum game. That is – a game where one player has to always lose. Once you get into a battle with another player, one of you will eventually lose everything. While certainly exciting, you have asked many times to add more fun yet meaningful content to the game. Content that does not result in zero-sum outcome each time. Over the years, we have added features like Rebels and Raids. While fun, these are dumb targets. The skills required to take advantage of those, is minimal in comparison to the skills necessary to take on another player.

Also, we have heard that it is hard for new players to learn the battle skills when only attacking Rebel or abandoned villages. Practicing on real player is a daunting perspective!

But what if you had targets that would actually put up a fight? Targets that would be more lucrative than rebels? Requiring more skill to take, but would not leave you wondering if you are picking a fight that might be your last? Soon, you will be able to experience just that!

Introducing AI players!

We will be carefully trying out this new feature on Realm 314 opening May 26^th. This will be a limited release of between 25 to 50 such computer-controlled players. At this stage, these players will not attack you, but will defend when attacked. If you tell us that this is an interesting addition to the game, more skills will be added to their arsenal.

If you are wondering if this will perhaps be the end of the excitement of the zero-sum feature of the battles you engage in, please do not worry. Computer-controlled players will not take that away. But they will be a way for you to gain valuable (larger) villages early on, to teach new players new skills as you coordinate attacks or to try out new clan members on such targets, etc.

In the future... 

In future realms, we might have those players band into clan and support each other, thus making well planned coordinated attacks even more important. That will depend on your feedback. Could those players even attack back on some realms? Maybe. Again, will depend on your feedback. Maybe a few Tournament realms could feature such players and you can try your skills against a computer? The possibilities are endless!

If you think this has potential, then please reach out to old players, invite them back, so that we can continue to expend on this functionality!

Your questions are welcome in comments below, but please do not expect us to release all our secrets just yet 😊

"Community Realms" feature - Pilot 2 !

As you may remember, we've run our first pilot of community realms via player designed RX.

We are now proceeding with Pilot #2. You will now be able to design a full realms based on these parameters.

Because this pilot still involves a lot of manual work, we want to limit the submissions to only serious ideas, and we require that each players makes a donation in order to be able to design their own realms.

If you wish to proceed:

1. Make a $20 donation here

You will receive a confirmation email. Note the "Donation from:" email - it should be the email you entered in the donation page.

2. Send email to support@realmofempires.com. Include the email that appears in "Donation From:" We will get back to you with an invite to enter the parameters for your dream realm.

We will work with you to make your realm a reality.

If for some reason we do not run your realm, we will refund your donation.

"Community Realm" Feature is a-go! Pilot starting ASAP

Hail Warriors!

A few days ago, we've asked the player community if you want to be able to design and launch your own realms.

Basically, you will be able to decide on all parameter of the realm (speed, handicap, morale, duration, ages, age of cities, start date, end date, win criteria etc) and everyone will be able to join and play on your realm.

We had a positive response, and we've decided to give this a shot! Implementing this fully, is a significant investment on our end, so we will begin with a pilot program, where we will test the waters a bit. We will begin by allowing you to design the next RXs.

List of options for RXs is much more limited, but we hope it will be a good try!

Unfortunately, we have only 7 realms currently to work with. So only 7 people can build the realm in the first round. So the natural question is, how to decide which 7? Survey certainly hinted there are way more players interested in doing this.

Idea 1: first idea, was to allow you to add your name to the list of interested, and then have player community vote on the people they feel are the best to create a realm. This seems like the best option but was rejected due to complexity and would require development, which defeats the purpose of a pilot

Idea 2: allow you guys to bid on the 7 realms; top 7 bids win. We are afraid this would seem like a many grab, which is not the intention so we rejected this.

Idea 3: allow everyone to bid a small amount of servants, and randomly select 7 players from top bidders.

That last idea is was we decided to go with, as having some monetary skin in the game, will result in only more serious submissions, a very rich player cannot outbid you since there is a max you can bid, and if money is an issue, you can get a group of friends, transfer servants and thus poll resources together. We hope the latter case will naturally allow us to select players with biggest community backing.

We are setting the maximum bid at 300 servants

Facebook login problems and workaround

Hello Realm of Empire players!

Realm of empires is not accessible on Facebook for a moment, but there is a work around

Details

We were contacted by Facebook on Saturday morning of a violation of our of their policies and were giving until July 22 12noon PST to fix the issue.

We have fixed the issue that same day where the warning was received, and have attempted, unsuccessfully to contact their support to alert them of the fix.

Well, Facebook decided to suspend the app early and the game it temporarily not accessible until our appeal is address which Facebook promises to be "by the end of the next business day". 

Unfortunately, this is the 2nd time we had this happen to us, and it took a week and multiple apologies from Facebook to unlock the game.

Workaround 

Fortunately, there is a work around, follow the steps here

CRITICAL : Facebook login problems and work around.

Facebook is still not responding to our appeal from April 8th, despite their promise to respond within one business day

The reason for suspension, was that the game was opening by default in full-screen mode. We’ve fixed the problem almost immediately when warned, but a couple of weeks later, they still suspended us. Most probably because whoever was testing it, had a cookie in their browser that instructed ROE to open in full screen mode.

We filed an appeal immediately after suspension but are still waiting for a response from them. We've tried to contact them in other ways ( user groups etc) with no results. Facebook does not have any other way for developer to contact them.

Important messages we want to share: 

1. There is a desktop login work around
2. There is a mobile login work around
3. There is a way to fully protect your account from Facebook in the future. 

DESKTOP LOGIN WORK AROUND. 
The work around, ironically, is to open the game in full screen mode! Steps:

1. Try to enter the game, until you get the notification that the app is unavailable
2. Then access this link : https://www.realmofempires.com/fullscreen.aspx 

MOBILE LOGIN WORK AROUND
We are not sure this will work for everyone one, but for at least some it does work:

1. Uninstall the mobile app 
2. Install it again
3. When asked how you would like to login, say you are an existing user, then select Facebook. 

If this does not work, read on. 

PERMANENTLY PROTECT YOUR ACCOUNT

To permanently protect your self from Facebook's outages, we have a way to convert your Facebook account to our own Tactica account. However, read careful what this entails before you do this. 

We do recommend that all players convert their accounts. We have no idea if the above work around will continue to work. Covert your account

Facebook to Tactica conversion

Realm of empires celebrated 10 years on Facebook in 2018. Throughout those years, we've had a number of Facebook outages that prevented players from logging in.

Because of this, we allow our Facebook veterans to convert their account to our Tactica Account.

All this means, is that rather than logging into Facebook to access ROE, you will enter your email and chosen password.

You will however, lose all Facebook functions like the ability to invite friends or send and receive gifts.

Also, for old veteran players who still use the old user interface (UI) - you will, permanently, lose access to this old UI.

If you want to proceed and convert your account, login to ROE via Facebook with this browser, then come back here and click here to start the process

Frequently asked question & common problems

1. Will I lose my progress? 
   
   No, your account will be intact
   
   
2. Will I be able to send or receive gifts?
   
   No, you will not be able to use any of the Facebook functions. 
   
   
3. I made the conversation, but now I am asked to login as a new player - I get an intro. What do I do?
   
   This can happen if, during the conversion, you have ROE opened in another tab, or on mobile device. All that happened, is that a brand new account was automatically created for you, however, your old account is not lost. Simply close all tabs, then click here to reset your login, and when asked how you would like to login, choose "Tactica" and login with your email and password. 
   
   
4. How do I login via mobile devices?
   
   On both Android and iOS, if you already had the app installed and logged in via Facebook, the easiest thing to do is simply uninstall the app, and install it again. When asked how you would like to login, choose "Tactica" and login with your email and password. 
   
   
5. Can I use the same email that I am using now?
   
   In most cases yes. Unless, at some point in time, you've created another ROE account and used that email there. Then you will have to use a different email address
   
   
6. It tells me that my email is already in use. What do I do? 
   
   You will have to use a different email. You can easily create a new gmail account. 
   
   
7. I did the conversion, but the login does not work?
   
   If you enter your user name and password correctly, and it does not work, it is possible that the conversion did not work. It happens once to us in testing but we were not able to reproduce it. In that case, you should try logging in via Facebook again. You can do so, by first resetting your login method, by clicking this link, then select "Facebook" as your login method, and try to enter the game. Remember the temporary fix (https://www.realmofempires.com/fullscreen.aspx) to enter via Facebook. If you are back in your account, then conversion did not work. We suggest you contact support. If you are not back in your account, but get an introduction video, that means conversion worked out and you should again reset your login method, select Tactica, and follow the steps to reset your password. Contact support if you continue to experience trouble
   
   
8. Why I will lose access to old UI?
   
   Yes. There is a technical reason for it. Basically, old UI is tied to Facebook login and cannot support any other login. This is partly the reason why there are no more old-ui-only realms as we once hoped. There is nothing we can do - old UI is only accessible via Facebook. 

In case of trouble, contact support via Support@RealmOfEmpires.com

Raids!

Today we have fully launched the Raids System. Let us explain how it all works!

Solo Raids

Solo raids, are daily events where you can defeat the monster on your own. You do not lose any troops attacking these beast and the reward is fixed to what is presented on the screen. 

The strength of the monster increased with age of the realm and your size on the realm. More rare raids are also a bit more difficult to complete

Clan Raids

Clan raids are weekly clan events. They are designed for the entire clan to participate in. Unlike solo raids, attacking these monsters costs you troops.

Your reward depends on how much damage you do to the monster. The slider, allows you to explore the rewards per damage done.

Every member of a clan raid has their own set damage contribution. This depends on their size, and the size of the clan. Doing more damage than you're supposed to yields less and less rewards, and thus becomes more costly, so beware. The slider defaults to the ideal percent, and your reward "sweet spot"

We determine "the sweet spot" based on your size, compared to clan size. The larger you are in the clan, the more HP damage you are required to make in order to achieve your reward sweet spot. 

Note that if you do significantly more HP damage than what you "should", you will be losing more troops than you will get in the reward. 

As a clan, you will get the maximum reward, if everyone participates up to "their sweet spot" 

Strength of the monster depends on the number of players in the clan. Reward also depends on the number of players in the clan. Such that, no mater the size of the clan, every clan member, in every clan, is capable to receive the same reward if they participate properly (ie, up to their sweet spot)

Only clans with at least 4 members will get clan raids. 

FAQ

Q: What happens when a raid expires?

Any raid that expires but is not beaten, is practically over - you cannot send more troops at it, and you cannot collect rewards. However, any outgoing troops will still land and do damage, and if beaten, reward can be collected 

Clan Raids and new realms

Hello Realm of Empires players!

Raids

We are pleased to announce a brand new feature - Clan and Solo Raids.

Raids are basically a PvE system where you can commit your troops to fight a monster of some kind.

In case of clan raids, all clan members are encouraged to participate, resulting in rich loot for everyone

This allows clan members hesitant to engage in PvP play, to still participate and benefit the clan.

The more active the clan members are, the more the entire clan will benefit

2 New Veteran Realms

Raids will debut on two new veteran realms.

Based on your feedback and our research of the summer realms, we are pleased to announce two new realms for September:

FOR PLAYERS WITH MORE TIME: 
Sep 14 - No morale, large realm.

FOR PLAYERS WITH LESS TIME:
Sep 29 - New morale design, large realm

Based on your feedback, you either like morale or do not like it. Hence two parallel realms, different mostly on morale.

Also, based on your feedback, we are adjusting the morale to be more friendly to players with less time. Details to come but we are adjusting parameters such as how it effects farming, vs real battles, bonuses and penalties.

We hope you will enjoy the new feature and realms!

Raids! Sneak Peek ...

Hail Lords and Ladies!

Raids are small missions you can undertake (like raiding a cave infested by bandits), and get rewards that will help you expand your empire.

You will be able to do private / solo missions, just for you, clan missions ( those kick in day 7 of the realm) where everyone can participate and get a portion of the loot depending on their participation, as well as realm wide missions where clans and individuals can compete.

First few hours since your registration on a realm, will give you easy to beat, very frequent raids, but with that, comes smaller reward per raid. After that, you will get daily raids that are giving better rewards.

Day 7 of the realm, you will start to get clan raids. In clan raids, the more people that participate, the better very all reward for the clan. 

This functionality is still in its Beta release, and parameters like raid frequency, monster HP, rewards etc might change without notice.

FAQ

• What does the green bar on raid indicate? It is the "raid health /HP" that you must beat
• Do I lose troops when sending troops at the raid? No, not for solo/private raids

Known Issues

• None 

Recent Fixes

Release Notes

• Version 0.3 - released Sep 14 2017
  - Clan raids kick in day 7 in realm
  - First few hours on realm, players get very easy to beat but frequent solo raids
  - more monsters
• Version 0.2 - released Aug 29 2017
  - raids become more lucrative but also harder to beat as realm ages
  - there are 5 different types of raids from common to epic rarity with higher rarity yielding higher rewards
  - raid's strength depends on player's strength as to village points
  - raids are accessible on device as well 
• Version 0.1 - one solo raid, available on desktop interface only

Target System - Release v1

Our Target System went through a number of iterations (alpha, beta).

We learned a lot - what works, what is unnecessary, how you want to use it. Based on your feedback, we are releasing a new update, now a full version 1 release.

Greg Bala explain the changes and how to use it, in these two developer log videos

Developer Log 21 Part 1 of 2

Target System

Calling for support

Developer Log 21 Part 2 of 2

Target System

Calling for attacks

Make a HOW-TO video tutorial and earn servants!

Hail Realm of Empire players!

We want YOU to share your best how-to-play Realm Of Empires ideas with the rest of the community, and we will reward you - we will shower you - with servants for doing so!

IN A NUTSHELL 

1. Make a how-to video about Realm of Empires, and upload it to YouTube
2. Send us a link to the video
3. Get between 500 to 5,000 servants.
4. Repeat (see rules)

WHAT SHOULD THE VIDEO BE ABOUT

Your video should be a tutorial or strategy guide for a specific concept or part of the game. 

Examples: 

• How to maximize your early game growth / quickest way to the palace
• How to use the war-room
• How to attack in a war (feel free to simulate with a friend, or record actual war) 
• How to defend when under attack (feel free to simulate with a friend) 
• How to use any of the mass features
• How to use the village list
• How to efficiently raid rebels on a morale realm
• How to setup and run a clan
• How to use the target system 
• How to use the clan claim system 
• How to properly use legendary bonus villages 
• etc ....

SERVANT PAYMENT STRUCTURE

• If your video is a serious attempt at a good quality tutorial, or strategy guide, you will automatically earn 500 servants; basically, no joke videos please
• If we judge your video as good enough quality and content for our channel, we will post it on our channel, and you earn 1000 servants
• If we judge your video as good enough quality and content to feature it in game, we will share it with all players in game, and you will earn additional servants, up to 5,000 based on quality

We know that making videos is time consuming, therefore it is our intention, to reward every video that is a serious, honest attempt at a how-to tutorial. 

RULES

• video has to be of at least 480p quality
• audio has to be clear and understandable
• video has to be showing RoE game-play; no theory, hands on how-tos only please, only new desktop or mobile UI. 
• video can be of any duration, however, try to keep the video as short as possible for the given topic
• once you have the video ready, contact us with the link to your video and "how-to video" in subject line  
• your video will be automatically accepted as per payment structure; if you wish to do more videos, please contact us and let us know what you want to do next. 

RESOURCES

If you are wondering how to make a video, we suggest this free video capture program. Microsoft Movie Maker is an easy video editing tool, Adobe After Effects is a more powerful but more difficult to use option.

QUESTIONS?

Ask below in comments and we'll update this post with clarifications as needed

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Clan Claim System

Realm of Empires started in 2008. We regularly have veterans coming back after years of absence. Sometimes they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years. We've compiled a guide designed to help veterans get up to speed on all the change.

In this post: Clan Claim System. See here for full summary of change.

Clan Claim System

Claiming of villages was typically done via forums or on chat. A new system allows you to simply claim villages right from the map

You can then see your claim, and other's claims right on the map

Lots of configuration options are available to clan leaders

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Target System

Realm of Empires started in 2008. We regularly have veterans coming back after years of absence. Sometimes they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years. We've compiled a guide designed to help veterans get up to speed on all the change.

In this post: Target System. See here for full summary of change.

Target System - easy calling for support or attack assignment 

We wanted to simply how you ask for support from your clan mates and allies. Until recently, you had to manually message players asking for help. 

Now, you can simply create "Calls for support" and your clanmates and allies will be able to see where they need to send support, and by when. 

Likewise with organizing offensive operations. Assigning targets was tedious manual work via mail or chat. Now you can setup a "Call for attack" on a village and either allow clanmates to claim them or even assign targets to specific people 

This system went through a number of changes since it was released in its Alpha version to Beta version. Click those links for details and a how-to

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Research Changes

Realm of Empires started in 2008. We regularly have veterans coming back after years of absence. Sometimes they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years. We've compiled a guide designed to help veterans get up to speed on all the change.

In this post: Research Changes. See here for full summary of change.

Research Changes

Research has significantly changes to become a critical part of empire building. 

First, for simplicity and ability to focus on particular research tree, we no longer allow more than one researchers. However, all research time has been cut by a factor of 5, so over all duration of research has not increased. With this change, you are able to focus all your effort on a particular research tree and master it, rather than be forced to distribute your researchers among many trees. 

Likewise, we've added more research trees like over all empire wide attack bonus, empire wide defensive bonus to applies to your village regardless of the level of walls and towers. 

We've significantly increased the bonus of some less research trees like the Trading Post which went up from 100% bonus to 240%. This results in interesting options - for example, rather than building palaces in all your villages early on, it may be worth while to research Trading Post and take advantage of very large trading post capacity to transport silver to villages with a palace. 

Later on, we've adjusted the research times a ages, such that you must specialize; you can no longer simply master all research trees in an age. For example, in age 1, you typically can only complete about a third of research available, so you must decide on your long term strategy - concentrate on improving silver production and leave attack and defense research till later? Focus on just attack bonuses and spread out your efforts between offensive and defensive research? Or perhaps max out your defensive research and infantry bonuses and play defensively? 

More details in these videos :  

What had changed? A guide for veterans - End Game

Realm of Empires started in 2008. We regularly have veterans coming back after years of absence. Sometimes they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years. We've compiled a guide designed to help veterans get up to speed on all the change.

In this post: End Game. See here for full summary of change.

End Game - win conditions and tournament-like play

In realms without a specific end date, we've set a "win condition" that everyone can see and work towards. Typically, the realm is considered won, when 1 or 2 allied clans control all of the realm, but some clans have other win conditions.

This was introduced in R100 as Greg Bala explain @ 2:12 in this video

Tournament style play was introduced to make it possible to win a realm in significant amount of time, Greg Bala explains: 

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Clan change freeze

Realm of Empires started in 2008. We regularly have veterans coming back after years of absence. Sometimes they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years. We've compiled a guide designed to help veterans get up to speed on all the change.

In this post: Clan change freeze. See here for full summary of change.

Clan change freeze 

In order to have a set end game, a goal that all players can work to, we now disallow change changes at late ages of the realm. This means that at some point in time, clan changes are no longer allowed and you must therefore decide where you want to be. Beware, you can however be kicked out of a clan!

Greg Bala explains @ 1:36 in this video

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Legendary Bonus Villages

Realm of Empires started in 2008. We regularly have veterans coming back after years of absence. Sometimes they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years. We've compiled a guide designed to help veterans get up to speed on all the change.

In this post: Legendary Bonus Villages. See here for full summary of change.

Legendary Bonus Villages

Legendary Bonus Villages, are a rare set of bonus villages that have significant power boost but have equally significant defensive penalty.

Presence of these villages, creates a lot of new tactical options because while you can easily take such a village from someone, killing a lot of their troops in the process if they choose to defend it, you will have an equally hard time defending it yourself!

Unlike with other bonus villages, you are also unable to change them to a different type, so if you capture it, be prepared to defend it....or, perhaps, not even bother defending them?

Dark General explains:

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Summary

Realm of Empires started in 2008 with Realm 1. We regularly have veterans, those who played a long time ago, come back after years of absence. Sometimes we hear that they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years.

This guide tries to help veterans by itemizing changes that occurred over the years.

Here is a summary of changes

Game Play changes

• Morale - mechanics for people with less time to play
• Legendary Bonus Villages 
• Research Changes
• End Game - win conditions and tournament-like play
• Clan change freeze 
• Speed Realms
• Late in realm start boost

 Changes to parameters and settings

1. Servant usage balance - Building speed up
2. Servant usage balance - Gift cap reduction
3. Servant usage balance - Yay boost usage limitation
4. Servant usage balance - Free speedups, spells, troops
5. Handicap reductions
6. Losing a governor on attack refunds part of the cost

New Features

• Clan Claim System - Claiming a village now is a visual process via the map
• Target System - Easy support calling, easy attack target assignment 
• Attack presets - easy one click rebel-raiding and attacking
• Free rewards - free speedups, spells, troops, silver
• Vacation Mode - earn vacation days based on your global XP
• Weekend Mode - protect your empire for 2 days in a week
• Throne Room - game wide chat and your full game history
• New Chat - fully functional chat system with groups, 1on1 chats etc
• Troop movement visualization - visualize battlefield by seeing troops moving on the map 
• Premium Avatars 
• Playing anonymously - start fresh on a realm without old grudges kicking in 

What had changed? A guide for veterans - Morale

Realm of Empires started in 2008 with Realm 1. We regularly have veterans, those who played a long time ago, come back after years of absence. Sometimes we hear that they have a hard time navigating through all the changes that were made over the years.

This guide tries to help veterans by itemizing changes that occurred over the years.

MORALE

Morale mechanic, was introduced for those players, who felt they could not spend enough time in front of the game to compete with player that had more, sometimes all day to spend playing.

It basically gives you a set of "points" that you can use in a day, and each attack takes certain amount of points. Effectively, this means that once you use up your points, you cannot attack and must wait.

Because we know not all players like this, we have realms that do not have this new mechanic, and some that do.

Realm with this mechanic, are labeled as "1 hour per day" or "30 minutes per day" and indicate how many points you get. A 30 minutes per day realm, means that, roughly, if you spend 30 minutes playing on a realm, you will be just as competitive as a person who spends 10 hours, attack wise.

Realm with morale are typically called "Veteran" realms, realms without morale, are typically called "Veteran-insane" realms.

The effect on the game play are significant, and you have to adjust your play style to it.

The following videos explain the reasoning behind this mechanic, and explain how to use it

• Dev log 15
• Dev log 16
• Dev log 17 part 1 and  Dev log 17 part 2 
• bonus-only morale Dev Log 19