The Story

The year is 2025. A few years ago, the greatest war the Earth had ever known had just come to an end. All that remained were small pockets of life scattered throughout the world. No goverments. No communications. No organized civilization. Since then, you have banded together a small group of survivors and put together a small country. Where others saw chaos, you saw opportunity, and now you want to be the leader of the most powerful country on the planet. However, during this same time, thousands of others have done the same in their area of the world and are now having the same thoughts in their heads. Your success will depend on mastery of every skill of rule -- economics, military development, diplomacy, and more. With an array of options and strategies at your disposal, can you prove stronger, more cunning -- and most importantly, smarter -- than all of your opponents?

The Goal

Earth is an empire based game of strategy and thought. As leader of a newly founded country, your goal is to ultimately become supreme to all others. Using everything from diplomacy to war, you must strive to build an empire both economically and militarily superior to all others. The ultimate aim? To become the most powerful country on the planet.

Through this all, you will compete against thousands of other players all vying to achieve the same goals. The only way you will succeed in achieving greatness will be through working with others and convincing them to help you get to where you want to be.

The Format

Earth is built around a simple interface that is completely run over the Web. You will need a form-capable browser (such as Netscape or Internet Explorer) to be able to play the game. The instructions here are meant to be only a simple guide -- the best (and only) way to really learn the game is to experiment.

Starting Out

First off, you will need to create a new player account. You may maintain one account on each of our major servers. Each server has several different games meant for different types of players to use -- you may join only one of these games on each server. Once you've created your account, enter the game and you'll come to the main menu and be able to start your game.

The Supreme Earth Authority

In order to facilitate the development of new countries and create some semblance of order throughout the world, each of the countries on Earth has come together and agreed to rules set for by the Supreme Earth Authority, an international body similar to the former United Nations.

The Main Menu

Each time you enter Earth: 2025, you'll be shown a basic status report, recent news about your country, and the main menu from which you can access all options within the game. It is divided into a series of lesser menus as listed below. If you have not played before, it is highly recommended that you view each of the menus to get a better feel for the game and what's available to you.
Purchasing Two key components of survival for any country are a solid military and plenty of food. While both can be produced, the Supreme Earth Authority also provides a market from which you can buy any of these items. However, this market is limited in size. Each country has a certain amount of goods available for purchase, and the SEA will slowly add more to your available purchase supply. The size of your market is dependent upon the total land in your country.

You must always pay maintenance to keep your military in good condition. As your empire grows larger, it becomes more expensive to maintain your army.

Construction While land is vital for any country, it is far more useful when used productively. From here, you can build a variety of structures on your land which will provide long-term benefits to your country.
Exploration Land is a necessity for the growth of any country. Your land can be used to build on as well as to house people. Note, however, that a large amount of land with little defense will make you an attractive target to other countries. This menu will let you spend time exploring for new lands.
Research As an alternative to pure expansion, making your current assets more productive is always helpful. Your research centers allow you to spend time researching new technologies which allow you to become deceptively strong without showing it publicly.
Generate Cash Any country will face occasional cash shortages. This option allows you to use turns for the sole purpose of earning money. It provides additional revenues over normal turns, but at the same time produces little of long-term value to a country.
Military Attacks To become the best, you will eventually need to challenge others. Peaceful expansion will take you only so far, and you'll visit the war room to take on potential future opponents.
Spy Operations Instead of using brute force, you can also challenge other countries using spies and terrorist activities. Successful terrorism leaves no trace of who attacked, but caught spies often can be easily identified.
Relations Vital to success in the long run is working with others. You can develop various military, technology, intelligence, and trade agreements with other countries from this menu.
Foreign Aid In a variety of situations, you may find yourself in a position of needing to send goods to another player In the form of foreign aid, you can send a small portion of your goods to players with whom you have formal alliances.
Public Market To facilitate trade between countries, the Supreme Earth Authority has set up a public market on which you can buy and sell a variety of goods. This market is often the cheapest way of making purchases and an excellent way to profit on unneeded supplies.
Country Status This will give you more detailed information about the status of your country than does the regular main menu. You should return here occasionally to see the growth of your country in detail.
News The news search options here allow you to see recent happenings throughout the world. This will consist mostly of attacks, as well as any other major occurrences affecting the players. Because of the high volume of attacks worldwide, you can narrow your search to only views news on countries in your interests.
Send & Read
Messages		 Communicating with other players is, of course, vital to you ability to compete and grow. These options will allow you to send messages to others, as well as read and reply to messages send by others.
Scores &
Top Players		 These option show you the top players of the land and your ranking amongst all of the countries on Earth. Hopefully, with solid management, each time you check these options, your ranking will rise.
Player Search When selecting players to interact with, you will always have the option of selecting from a list of players ranked near you and selecting by number. To make this process easier, the Player Search option allows to you find other players based on their number or name.
Country
Management		 How you want to run your country is up to you. You can select from a variety of different governmental regimes, each of which has its benefits and drawbacks. You can also control just how much of each type of military unit your industrial complexes produce from this option.
Preferences This menu allows you to control non-game-related options, such as your password or other preference settings. From here, you may also put your country in vacation mode if you cannot play for several days. While protecting you from attack, you also cannot enter the game or gain any turns during this time.
Delete Account If you choose to no longer play Earth: 2025, you may delete your account here. You may also choose to simply leave your account inactive and it will be eventually deleted. For security reasons, in order to delete your account, you will need to provide your real name as entered when initially creating your country.
Logout This option provides you a way of earning extra turns within Earth: 2025. Since turns are the most precious commodity available with the game, taking advantage of logging out will help you grow stronger much more quickly.

More detailed information:
Attack Types
Construction
Government Types
Purchases
Relations
Spy Operations
Technology

Other Important Topics
Turns Earth is organized in a turn-based system. Every hour, you will receive additional turns. However, at any one time, you cannot have more than 75 turns, so it is recommended you play your turns often. While some of the options you choose will not consume any turns, several (such as attacking or building on your land) will. Each turn you take will also result in you receiving additional tax revenues as well as your country naturally growing or shrinking, depending on your economic situation.
A Limited numberof turns above your maximum will be stored and then released at a rate of one additional turn per hour. However, there is also a maximum on stored turns; once you surpass this limit, extra turns will simply disappear. Therefore, it's important that you try to play at least once every day or two to keep from falling behind.
Food Each turn, your empty lands will be used as amateur farms to produce small amounts of food. Each turn, your people and military require basic amounts of food and money to survive, so you will need to make efficient use of your land and watch your food supplies to ensure there are no problems. You will also find that a small portion of your food reserves will spoil each turn, so a fresh store is always necessary. A significant lack of food could result in long-term damage to your economy and military effectiveness.
Oil A vital resource for any country, oil is necessary to make your Jets and Tanks function. Oil may be produced through Oil Rigs or bought on the Public Market, and is consumed by your military when attacking. Each barrel of Oil will support 10 Jets and/or Tanks in any single attack.
Protection In order to ensure that new players are not immediately killed off by larger, dominant countries, you will be under protected status for your first 100 turns. During this time, you may not attack or perform spy operations on other countries, and others cannot perform these actions on you.
GDI The GDI is an organized defense team in Earth: 2025 dedicated to protecting countries from attacks by relatively huge or tiny enemies. Any country is free to join the GDI, but will be required to pay a tax each turn to remain a member. In the Tournament, GDI is automatic and free to all members.
Logging Out To keep the server free for more players, we offer rewards for staying out of the game for at least 12 or 18 hours. By not logging in, you will receive 2 or 4 turns respectively, depending on how long you are logged out.
Networth Networth is a combination of many factors within your empire and indicates an overall level of strength. The major contributing factor is military, but also included is technology, people, land, and money.
Vacation Mode If you know you will be unable to play Earth for several days, you can set your country on vacation mode from the Change Settings menu. While on vacation, you receive no additional turns but are protected from attacks as well. You also must remain on vacation mode for at least 72 hours.