How to play Social Wars: from your first account to your first attack

How do you create your account and what do you start with?

Open wars.fbgamesweb.com and click Create my base. The form asks for a username (3 to 24 characters: lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores), an optional base name that other commanders will see, your commander (man or woman), an optional email and a password typed twice. The password needs at least 8 characters, and if it is shorter than 16 it must mix letters and numbers. Common passwords and ones containing your username are rejected. Save it somewhere safe and do not count on email recovery.

Press Sign up and you go straight into your base. A new account starts at level 1 with 2,000 of each resource, 5 cash, a Command Center, 16 Wall I and 2 Turret I. Storage holds 20,000 of each resource at first, and Silo (level 3), Silo II (level 15) and Silo III (level 28) raise that limit. Population starts at 20; House I, II and III add 3, 4 and 5 at levels 1, 6 and 19, up to a cap of 175.

What are your first goals, step by step?

Social Wars has no interactive tutorial. Instead it gives you goals: 134 guided objectives in a fixed order, five active at a time.

A sensible first ten minutes built from those goals (a suggested order, not a measured time): build a House I from BUILD, Buildings, Houses and place it on the map; build a Wood Factory; zoom in; train 2 workers at the Command Center; send a worker to the wood factory and select a working time; extract 3 gold; build a Gold Factory; build a Bazooka Academy and train 3 light bazookas; try the double click; and finally take on Rescue your comrades, where your soldiers fight to free hostages.

Which buildings do you need first?

The Codex lists 166 buildings, but a few matter right away. A House I costs 30 wood and a Wood Factory I costs 50 wood, both available at level 1. The four production factories (wood, gold, steel and oil) come in tiers I to IV, and the first tier of each unlocks at levels 1, 2, 4 and 5 respectively.

Factories need workers. You train Worker I to IV at the Command Center for 10 gold each, send them to a factory and pick a working time of 5 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours or 8 hours, with multipliers of ×0.25, ×1, ×2 and ×3. Choose the shift by how long you plan to be away.

How do you train troops in Social Wars?

Troops are trained in army buildings: 10 for soldiers, 8 for vehicles, 8 for aircraft, 7 special ones and 2 for siege units. The game data defines 308 units and the Codex shows 303, but only 128 can be trained in a building. The rest are enemies for missions, gifts and similar.

Some examples from the Codex, as attack and life: Soldier 8 and 50 for 30 gold and 60 steel at Academy I from level 1; Bazooka 10 and 50 for 75 gold and 150 steel at Bazooka Academy I; Machine Gun Jeep 12 and 150 for 150 gold and 300 oil at Jeep garage I from level 5.

Further up: Tank 18 and 300 for 175 gold and 350 steel at Tank Academy I (level 12); Helicopter 14 and 200 for 125 gold and 250 oil at Helicopter Hangar I (level 18); and the Demolition Tank, 20 and 575 for 500 gold and 1,000 steel, which needs level 50.

Which controls and shortcuts should you learn?

With the mouse, drag to move the map and use the wheel or the slider at the bottom right to zoom, from 0.15 to 1.4. Double-click to select units at once. The Daily Bonus is the bag on the left, and collections are in the crate at the bottom right.

On the keyboard, the arrow keys move the map and Space rotates a building while you place it. Ctrl plus 0 to 9 saves your selected units as a group, and 0 to 9 recalls it. While you type in the chat the shortcuts are off, and Esc takes you back to the game. The game pauses when its tab loses focus and resumes when you return.

When can you start missions and attacks?

Missions come first. The world missions are 22, plus a weekly one on Sundays. They open at level 4, each repeats every 4 hours and has three difficulty levels shown as stars. Rewards run from 1,500 to 24,000 gold, and the last four ask for level 40. Campaign chapters in your base come with a 4-hour wait between them: eight are scripted, and from chapter 9 they are simple chapters that pay out resources.

Bandits also visit you. From levels 10, 15 and 20, one, two and three groups appear and attack at 7, 14 and 21 minutes of play.

Attacks on other players start at level 8. You get 3 attacks every 6 hours, you cannot hit your own alliance, and the same rival is off limits for 4 hours. A rival under level 15 who is more than 5 levels below you on another island is treated as too weak. Spying needs the Recon center (level 7), with 3 spying actions every 24 hours. Only gold is stolen: up to 35% of the rival's gold, capped at 20,000, with a minimum of 25.

How do alliances, the market and bonuses work?

You can join an alliance at level 3; creating one needs level 5, an account at least 24 hours old and 5,000 gold. Market I, II and III (levels 5, 11 and 25) let you buy and sell wood, steel and oil for gold in lots of 100, 200 and 300, up to 20 trades every 20 hours. Prices rise as you buy, and you sell at 75%.

The Daily Bonus runs over 5 days: 100, 250, 500 and 1,000 gold, then on day five a hero of your choice out of three. Mondays add a bonus of 2,500 gold, a unit or 5 cash. To expand your land, the first 4 plots come included and the next costs 2,500 gold or 5 cash, rising from there; the game also swaps 5 cash for 2,500 gold.

What if something goes wrong?

If you see that your session has ended, the game pauses; log in again with the same account and changes that were not yet sent are saved. Sign-up and log-in have limits to protect accounts: in the live game, 10 registrations per network per hour and 5 failed log-in attempts, after which you are asked to wait. For anything else, open Support and tickets inside the game.