Empires & Allies: Zynga's island strategy game, playable again in your browser

What is Empires & Allies?

Empires & Allies is a military strategy game in which you turn a ruined island into a working base, produce resources and train an army that fights on three fronts: land, sea and air. Battles are turn-based, so what matters is which units you bring and when you use your powers, not how fast you can click.

When it launched, the game was described as social combat strategy: you built a nation of islands, recruited armies and could visit or invade your friends. That social idea survives in this edition through real allies you add from inside the game, although parts of it are still unfinished, as explained further down.

The three fronts map onto three buildings. The Barracks trains ground units, the Shipyard builds ships and the Hangar prepares aircraft. In total the game defines 15 unit classes: seven on land, four at sea and four in the air, from soldiers, artillery and tanks to gunboats, battleships, aircraft carriers, fighters, helicopters and bombers.

Where does Empires & Allies come from?

Empires & Allies was made by Zynga's Los Angeles studio, and it was the first game that studio released. It launched on Facebook worldwide on June 1, 2011, in 12 languages, and it ran on Flash Player.

On April 24, 2013, Zynga announced that it would shut the game down along with The Ville, Dream Zoo and Zynga City, and the original stopped working in June 2013. Facebook is mentioned here only to say where the original lived; this edition has no Facebook login.

In May 2015 Zynga also released a mobile game with the same name on the App Store and Google Play. It was a reboot and a different game from the Facebook one, and it is not what you play on this site.

What is this browser edition of Empires & Allies?

FB Games, an independent project, runs its own server for this edition. Playing is free, the game is in beta and you need an account of your own: a commander name, an email address and a password, plus an optional island name. Progress from the old Facebook game cannot be imported, because that game closed years before this edition existed.

You can play in Spanish or in English with the ES/EN button in the header. The game opens in the browser, with no Flash and nothing to install, and your island is saved to your account on the server, so you can continue from another computer. The beta label is honest: the game itself warns that bugs may appear.

Who are the characters and what is the story?

The main villain is the Raven. Around him the story brings in the Dark Alliance and a handful of characters you meet from the first minutes: Scarlett, the head of your advisors, who presents your ruined island in the tutorial, Sergeant Steele, whom you visit, and Captain Krunsch, whom you fight.

On paper the campaign is large. The game data defines two campaigns, 83 island groups and 549 battle islands (399 in the first campaign and 150 in the second), arranged into 17 episodes. Treat those figures as the size of the design: how much of it is polished and playable today is exactly what the beta is testing.

What does your island look like?

You manage coins, wood, oil and five metals (aluminum, copper, gold, iron and uranium), plus energy, which many actions spend. There is also a special currency called Empire Points; in this edition, supporters can receive them after a voluntary donation, and the details are in our private server guide.

The game data defines 115 building types, grouped into homes, military buildings, production buildings, civic buildings and a few special ones, plus 221 decorations. Not everything is for sale at once, and a new player only sees a fraction of it, because buildings unlock as you level up.

The civic buildings give an island its personality. You can have only one of each, from a Parliament early on to an Opera House, a Mint and even a Space Exploration Center much later. Production buildings such as the Lumber Mill, Oil Well and Ore Mine feed the economy, and houses supply population and coins.

How do levels and the social side work?

There are 85 player levels, and each one can unlock new buildings and units. Experience comes from missions and battles, and the amount you need grows steeply as you climb.

On the social side, the header has an Allies button for adding real players, there are four leaderboards, and a chat with three channels: global, Spanish and English. The limits and rules for all of that are covered in our private server guide.

What is still missing in the beta?

This is an unfinished edition, and it is better to know that before you start. The tutorial is incomplete, so it may stall or misbehave after its first stretch. Many windows still show a generic frame instead of their final artwork. Some features of the original are not implemented yet: gifts and energy requests between allies, the Domination mode and Deathmatch. No timed events are scheduled either.

Counts of buildings, units and quests in the game data describe what is defined, not what is already finished and playable. If you hit a bug, the in-game Support button opens a ticket, which is how fixes get prioritized.

Is FB Games the official Empires & Allies site?

No. Empires & Allies is an original Zynga game, and FB Games is an independent project with no affiliation to Zynga, Facebook or Meta and no endorsement from them. This is a browser edition made by fans.

To go further, our other Empires & Allies guides cover how to play, the private server, playing without Flash, mobile, downloads and games like it.