Just wanted to remind everyone that the alpha test of Imperial Ages will end tomorrow, so we have a few days to get everything ready for the official launch Monday, March 24. We’re comfortable enough with the current version of the game and the major bugs that are solved to call it a Beta version.

If you log in right now you can see the improved upper part of the page that will be part of the beta. The building queue has also been implemented and you can see what you are currently building in the left sidebar. You can build a resource and a normal building at the same time.

The ingame alliance forums are also up, but will go through a major redesign in the near future, probably after the beta is launched. I’m talking about graphics and functionality.

The VIP system will not be in place when we launch the beta, but it will be finished in the coming weeks, and those that will want to use the comfort features of the VIP package will be able to pay for a 3 month subscription through PayPal. We’re looking at something like $7.99 right now for the 3 month VIP package. The game can be played easily even without the VIP, this is a free game after all, but the VIP will give you some options like no ads, the ability to have a logo or banner in the player profile, an extra building in the queue and so on. We’re hoping to make it well worth those few dollars if you decide to pay and support the game.

I for one will work on the game manual in the next few days and hopefully have it finished by Monday, though the Easter feast, drinking and recovery period will make it a bit hard.

The new upper part allows for less scrolling and you can also see the new game logo in the upper left corner.

Those with large armies will have a small problem here, as troops didn’t consume any gold until now. So in around 24 hours from now, all troops will consume gold, and if you don’t have enough gold in the village, troops will begin to die once the treasury is empty.

In the next 24 hours those with big armies will need to either send the troops in other villages when they’re not using them so they consume the gold from there or upgrade the gold fields in villages with armies.

If you don’t take some kind of action to save your troops you’re going to lose them as they will leave if they’re not paid. Sorry for this, but this is an alpha server and we need to test the new version and prepare for the official launch (in a few weeks we hope).

That’s it for now, the new version will be up in a few hours. Please let us know in the comments what you think about the new look when it goes live.

What’s new:

• most of the bugs reported so far have been fixed (we hope),
• grammatical errors fixed (most of them),
• the battle should be more stable,
• the general can recover from injuries,
• loyalty regeneration for cities,
• you can click on a city on the map and send resources from that window
• player/village profile
• you can click on a soldier icon in the camping ground and see its stats

Also, the map is much smaller. The first version was 401×401 squares, and this one is 51×51, so it’s easier to get to other players.

If you see bugs, please report them in the forums or at the Report a bug page, linked from the game.

Report bugs: www.imperialages.com/forums

Latest announcements: www.imperialages.com/blog

Well, it’s been a pretty cool ride so far. 38 players registered in these first 12 hours of the alpha test, with an average of 50-60 page views each.

First thing that made us laugh our ass off, we opened registrations and the server was sending the wrong activation links. Talk about irony. Worked perfectly for us, so no idea what the problem is yet. We took the activation out for now, so people could register.

The game is in speed round mode right now, which means that everything happens 33 times faster then normal. So you’ll see more resources coming your way then what the sidebar is reporting, buildings and units are trained very fast, and all attacks take 1 minute to reach the enemy.

Until I finish the tutorial, you can download the xls files (need Excel) for the building tree and the game units, with costs, attack, defense values, and so on.

Here are the download links (left click to download):

Download Game Building Tree – Excel File

Download Units Details – Excel File

If you don’t have Microsoft Office and Excel, you can download a free Excel Viewer here.

Most reported problems so far:

• login/registration pages don’t display right on Linux
• some people have problems using Opera because it uses the cache, and doesn’t always take the latest version of the images from the server
• messages page is not done yet, so it gives an error and everyone thinks its a bug. Nope, it’s just missing.
• spelling errors. We’ll fix them in the next few days, because it bothers people, though it’s the smallest of our problems right now.

www.imperialages.net is the location of the alpha test for Imperial Ages

Please keep in mind that this is a test and there is a lot of small and big stuff that needs adjusted, repaired or added. Use the Imperial Ages Forums or the Report a bug feature in the game to report any bugs, ask questions or give some extra ideas of what you’d like to see.

You can contact me at alex@imperialages.com with any questions.

Right now you can mostly do buildings and troops. All the buildings take about 5 minutes to complete for each level, because the times aren’t done yet.

Enjoy, and please let us know what you think and what you’d like improved in the game for the final version. This is the reason of the alpha test after all. Knowing what you like and what you don’t, finding all the bugs, correcting grammatical errors that we might’ve overlooked.

Update:

If you have problems with the account activation, please leave a comment below with the username and we’ll activate it manually. It seems that there is a problem but we can’t replicate it yet.

We took out the mail activation until we can fix it.

Also, the login/registration looks horrible on Linux. Hopefully we’ll fix it in the next few days.