Unification Wars Guide - Ministers

If you have been following this series on Unification Wars online game so far and trying it out in the game, you would probably have sorted out your system structure and economy. This article is about ministers that you will be hiring and using in the quest for domination of the universe.

Free account players on Unification Wars are limited to only two ministers at any one time. Typically players have one minister that is trained to maximum level for the economic trait for their empire generally referred to as the economy minster and a second minister that is solely used for fighting and is usually referred to as the war minister. Paid account players may hire up to a maximum of eight ministers at any one time. If you purchase an additional paid project the minister's large office, you may hire up to ten ministers at any one time.

Free account players
As free account holders only have two vacancies for ministers, the combination an economy minister and a war minister can be built along two schools of thought.

First, a more economy driven approach would be an economy minister with 1 main economy trait and 1-2 secondary economic traits and a war minister that suits your style. The war minister will be discussed later in the article. Assuming like most players in the game, tax is your main form of income, your economy minister should have tax as main economic trait. Secondary economic trait or traits would depend on individual habits. Some would choose to have miner or excavator, or both. Others with the luxury of a Parthenon as the main system may opt to have a tax and farmer combination. The balance of the slots in my opinion should be filled with defensive military traits. There is no point in wasting slot on other traits such as publicly loyal since you only need it once to get up the loyalty of all your systems up to 5000 and after that, maintaining loyalty is not too troublesome. If you do want to do that, my suggestion is to make a publicly loyal minister up to about level 100 on publicly loyal, get loyalty on all systems up to maximum, and then sack that minister and get on with your real one. Suggested defensive traits for this minister are Defensive and Fearful.

The second school of thought fits a more combative style of play that does not really want to bother with secondary sources of income. The economy minister is one with a primary economic trait and three defensive traits. This would serve as your economic-cum-defensive minister. At the same time, on days when you do miss damage protection expiry times, this minister will make a big difference. Suggested defensive traits for this minister are Defensive, Fear and Fearful or Anticipation.

Paid account players
With the luxury of 8 slots for ministers, I would suggest the following configuration.

1. A main economy minister commonly tax with three defensive traits
2. An excavator minister with three defensive traits
3. A balanced war minister
4. An offensive war minister
5. The remaining four ministers made up of defensive ministers.
   

This is the logic behind this. Eventually, most players will focus on economic specialization and as your empire grows, artifacts begin to play a bigger role in game play. This is where an excavator minister would begin to help matters. Furthermore, in my opinion, one of the biggest factors in determining victory in a battle is the two ministers on both sides. It is this interplay that will determine the big win or a horrible loss for the attacker and likewise, a successful or failed defence for the defender. Why have so many defensive ministers, you may ask. One of the more common ways of winning is to deplete a fed's outpost reinforcements by making suicide attacks on outer systems to destroy defending outpost fleet so that the hapless empire is left with no protective cover from fed mates. The use of defensive ministers deployed in these outers help reduce outpost fleet loss and makes it easier for online fed mates to rebuild reinforcements much more quickly.

War ministers
This will be covered in a separate article to be published later but for now, we can make simple generalizations which would be helpful as a start for most beginning players. The following are samples of ministers for consideration.

Defensive minister - Defensive, Fear, Fearful, Anticipation giving hull +50%, damage -35%, enemy damage -30%, enemy hull +10%

Balanced minister - Warmonger, Aggressive, Anticipation, Foresight giving damage +30%, hull -10%, enemy damage -10%, enemy hull -10%

Suiciding minister - Warmonger, Aggressive, Suicidal, Insult giving damage +60%, hull -35%, enemy damage +10%, enemy hull -20%

Naturally, there are many combinations and it is worthwhile to experiment with various combinations to see the effect. What you must be aware is that the war minister that you use affects the basefleet that you use to battle with. As such, you must consider the characteristics of the ships that you are using and use an appropriate war minister to either amplify your fleet's strengths or balance out your fleet's weaknesses. Once done, the other variable at play then becomes the opposing fleet and the enemy commanding war minister.

Note: This is a revised post from my original article published in Tinker's Sojourn