Airborne Empire: Beginner’s Guide – Essential Tips for New Players

by Fernando Diaz / Game Guides, Slider, Tips & Tricks / 13 Jan 2025

Future sky-lords! You’re diving into Airborne Empire, developed by the folks over at The Wandering Band LLC, a game where you’re not just building a city, you’re building one that flies… Think of it like a steampunk airship crossed with a city builder. You’ll be up in the clouds, but don’t get too comfy – you still gotta get your hands dirty with resources from the ground. The good news is the game’s got some tutorials to get you started, so let’s break down the basics from what they’re showing us.

First Steps – Getting Off the Ground (and Back Down Again):

Hangar is Your Best Friend: Seriously, the absolute first thing you need to slap down is a Hangar. This isn’t optional. It’s how your people get down to the surface to grab the stuff you need. Think of it as your floating city’s connection to the real world. They use planes, which is pretty cool.

Point and Click for Resources: Once that Hangar is built, look around for a Forest. It’ll probably be nearby. Give it a good Left Click, and then tell some of your folks to head down and grab some of that wood. You’ll be needing a lot of it.

Building Your Sky-High Home – Keep it Connected and Balanced:

Paths are Your Lifeline: Imagine Paths as the roads and walkways within your city. Every building must be connected to your Town Center using these. No path, no deliveries, no happy citizens. They also make your buildings more stable, apparently.

Don’t Be a Leaning Tower: Pay attention to Tilt when you’re building. If you pile too much weight on one side, your whole kingdom will literally tip. This will annoy your people and slow things down. Think about balance!

Lift is Your Friend: Your Town Center can only lift so much stuff. To build bigger, you’ll need buildings that generate Lift. These are special – while other buildings add weight, Lift buildings push your kingdom up. Keep an eye on this to expand.

Moving Around and Seeing the World:

Left Click to Interact: Use your Left Mouse Button to select things – buildings, resources, whatever you want to mess with.

Spin the Camera: Hold down the Right Mouse Button and move your mouse to rotate your view. You can also use the Q and E keys for this.

Move Your View: Use the W, A, S, D keys to move the camera around. You can also hold the Middle Mouse Button and move your mouse to pan.

Lost Your Way? Press C to instantly center the camera back on your Town Center. There’s also a “Center” button at the bottom if you prefer clicking.

Take Your City for a Trip!: This is where it gets interesting. You can actually move your entire kingdom. Just Right Click anywhere on the land below, and you’ll start moving in that direction. Getting closer to resources makes gathering them faster, so move strategically!

Your People and What They Do:

Keep an Eye on Your Population: The top bar shows you how many people have joined you and how many you have space for. Every person needs a spot in a house.

Automatic Builders: If you have people who aren’t assigned to a specific job, they’ll automatically start building any constructions that are queued up. Handy!

Idle Hands: If you have people with no jobs and nothing to build, they’ll show up in the “idle worker” count. Get them working!

Making Your City Smarter and Bigger:

Research is Key: Want to build anything beyond the basic stuff? You’ll need to research new buildings at an Academy. Gotta get those sky-building blueprints!

Recruiting New Citizens: Need more people? Look for Taverns in cities or small settlements on the ground. You can find potential new inhabitants there.

Housing and Coin Needed: You’ll need to have enough housing for any new folks, and you’ll probably need some Coin to convince them to join your flying city.

Getting Around Faster:

Buildings Add Drag: The more you build, the more drag you create, which slows your kingdom down.

Propulsion to the Rescue: Build Propulsion buildings to counteract that drag and get your speed back up.

Upgrade for Speed: You can also make your city move faster by upgrading your Town Center.

Interface Tips and Tricks:

Top Bar Insights: Hover your mouse over the stuff on the top bar. You’ll see information panels with more details about your kingdom.

Shortcut Clicks: Some of those top bar panels have bullet points. You can hover over them and click as shortcuts. For example, in the inhabitants dropdown, you can highlight where someone works or click to select their workplace.

Keeping Everyone Healthy and Safe:

Building Colors!: You can find new building paints at abandoned settlements to customize your buildings’ colors. Select a building, hit the paint button (looks like a palette), and choose your color. You can apply it to one building, all of that type, or everything.

Clinics for the Sick and Injured: Your people can get sick or injured (from working in the dark or pirate attacks!). Build Clinics. They’ll recover faster if they have a bed there. More Clinics mean a healthier population.

Light Up the Night: Nighttime is dangerous in the sky! People walking on unlit paths or working in the dark can get hurt. Build Street Lamps to keep things illuminated.

Defending Your Floating Empire:

Defense Towers for Close Encounters: Defense Towers are good for dealing with pirates that get too close.

Cannons for Long Range: For enemies further away (including those on the ground!), you’ll need more firepower like Cannons. You’ll activate them from the weapons bar at the bottom or by using their hotkey.

Manual Aiming Required: Most weapons need you to aim and fire them yourself. Get ready to take aim!

Pirates are a Threat: Pirates can attack at any time! Their planes will damage your buildings and injure your people. Defense Towers are your main defense against them. They might have other ways to attack as you head north.

Beware the Freeze: Some enemies can freeze your important buildings like Lift, Propulsion, and Combat buildings, temporarily stopping them from working. Be careful in combat against these foes!

Fernando Diaz

Fernando is doing what he always did, sharing his honest opinions about games whenever he can. The difference is now he is writing and not talking about it.
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