Empires & Allies Research Labs: Everything you need to know

Watching those drones soar over the Middle East these days will tell you one thing: an army is nothing without technology. We're going to guess that is why Zynga has introduced the Research Labs to Empires & Allies. (Or it just thought a new feature would be cool and interesting--take your pick.)

This brand new feature allows players to upgrade their existing units into forces to be reckoned with. You can probably already image that this will especially come in handy when dealing with low-level units like the Cadet Soldiers.

Research Lab Requirements:

•400 Population
•5,000 Coins
•500 Wood
•25 Iron




The Research Lab is introduced with a Goal that's relatively simple to follow, so we won't bore you with the details. And if your Empire doesn't produce Iron, you'll have to seek out a friend whose Empire does, and pay up. Once built, click on the Research Lab to open a menu that displays every unit you've unlocked. Each unit has to be upgraded separately, and the materials required to access those upgrade are only found through friends, so prepare to bug your buddies ... a lot.

While it does call for plenty of requests (perhaps too many), these upgrades will affect every unit in that class that you own and every unit of that class you build from then on. After acquiring the materials, the available upgrades are presented in a progression tree. You will have two choices to start, but to unlock the strongest upgrades you must pursue every path.



Each upgrade costs a bit of resources like Coins, Oil and, perhaps later on, Wood and Ore as well. These upgrades take time, too, as if you were harvesting a resource or creating a new unit. There are five upgrades in all for each unit, and they only affect units that are idle (and then on) when completed. With upgrades, it'll be even more of a challenge to keep up with the competition, so get to that research on the double.