[UPDATE, April 12, 2012: This hack appears to be patched now. Try the new
Survival Mode Hack.]
This is the most popular E&A hack. I'm sure Zynga has known how it works for a long time, which is why I don't hesitate in publishing it. Why they haven't fixed it for so long is another story I'll get into some other day.
It's the reason you see Chimera and Cerberus units lining the streets everywhere. It's the reason Poseidon USV and Kraken clones litter the seas of so many empires. It's the reason the honest and the ignorant fear to enter World Domination (or are too disgusted to do so).
This is the answer for all those people who keep asking what codes are for.
This is the Depot Hack!
The essence of the hack is to transform a military unit into some other item in the game. It's most common for this other item to be a more powerful military unit, especially one of the Tier 8 units. However, that's not the only possibility. Units can also be transformed into buildings, decorations, trees, and other items.
There are many variations to this hack. I will present just one basic approach using Cheat Engine. There will be an article in the future on how to do a similar hack using Charles Proxy.
Item Codes
First, you need to understand that every item in the game has an item code that uniquely identifies it. This item code consists of 3 or 4 letters or numbers. All the letters come before the numbers.
For instance:
- Cadet Soldiers - U01
- Tactical ATV - SU03
- Support Craft - US15
- Starfire - SU05
A restriction with the Cheat Engine approach is that you can only transform units with codes of length 3 into items that also have codes of length 3. Similarly, you can only transform units with codes of length 4 into items with codes of length 4. Most high-level units have codes of length 4, so to get these units, you need to start with units that also have codes of length 4.
Depots
As a prerequisite for this hack, you must own at least one depot with enough free space to hold your newly created units (or just one free space if you don't mind moving things out as needed). For convenience, you should own all three types of depots: Army Depots, Naval Depots, and Air Depots.
A drawback of this is that you won't be able to easily put newly created units that are queued in military buildings directly into your inventory. If you want to do that, you can sell the units to a trusted neighbor and buy them back.
Military Production Buildings
You need a source of units for the hack to transform. It's most convenient to use units that are cheap and quick to build. For the Cheat Engine approach, it is convenient to use the following buildings to produce the following units as a source for the hack:
- Barracks I - Cadet Soldiers (U01) -- use only to get items with codes of length 3
- Experimental Barracks - Tactical ATV (SU03)
- Experimental Shipyard - Support Craft (US15)
- Experimental Hangar - Starfire (SU05)
Step 1 - Preparation
As an example, I will demonstrate how to create a Poseidon USV from a Support Craft. You should have at least one Experimental Shipyard and at least one Naval Depot.
Build a Support Craft in a Naval Depot. Do this for as many depots as you want units to transform. Wait until the units are built. DO NOT click on the Experimental Shipyards yet.
Step 2 - Set Up Cheat Engine
Set up Cheat Engine by using the button in the upper left to select the process belonging to your browser. For most browsers, you select the process that has a similar name to the browser's name. Firefox is an exception. For Firefox, select the process that contains the phrase "plugin-container". In the image below, you can see that I selected the process "00001DF4-plugin-container.exe".
Step 3 - Transform Code
Next, change the "Value Type" to "Text". In the "Text" field, enter "US15" (this is the code for a Support Craft) WITH quotation marks. Hit "New Scan" then "First Scan". The results will show up in the box on the left side.
Highlight all the results (select the first one, hold down shift, then either press the "End" key or keep hitting "Page Down"). Hit the red arrow button to move the results to the bottom box. Highlight all the results in the bottom box (select one of the entries by left-click and then hit Ctrl-A). Hit the Enter key. In the pop-up, enter "US91" (this is the code for a Poseidon USV) WITH quotation marks.
Note: Whenever I do this particular search, I usually get exactly one result, which makes things a bit easier. You may or may not get just one result like I do. Using quotation marks in the search narrows down the results a lot.
This is what Cheat Engine looks like after you've done all this:
Step 4 - Transform Unit
Click on one of the Experimental Shipyards. Click on one of your Naval Depots. You might see a brief message pop up. It might say "+1 Support Craft" or "+1 Poseidon USV". You might not see any message at all.
If you check inside your Naval Depot, you might see one of two images:
If you see the Poseidon USV image, you're good to go! It's recommended and tactful to keep such units inside your depots.
If you see the Support Craft image with "102" Strength, you may have to refresh your game to see it transformed into a Poseidon USV.
If you see a Support Craft image with its regular Strength of 85, then you probably did something wrong (unless this is a working variation I haven't seen before).
Repeat this step with all the other Support Crafts you've built that you want to transform.
DO NOT try to build more Support Crafts immediately, as that will force your game to refresh.
Step 5 - Refresh or Transform Code Back
If you want, you can refresh your game to reset everything except the units you've just transformed. If you want to stay in your game and build more Support Crafts immediately, you can just go back to Cheat Engine and change the "US91" back to "US15". Do this before transforming other types of units.
Other Considerations
Generally, players transform Support Crafts into other naval units, Tactical ATV's into other land units, and Starfire's into other air units. You don't really have to do this. For instance, you can transform a Support Craft into a naval, land, or air unit, but you do have to place it into a naval depot.
In fact, you can transform into non-military units as well! This is a great way of getting decors that cost Empire Points (e.g., Recycling Centers) or that are currently unavailable (Dragon Statues, Orange Trees, etc.). It is also a good way to bypass the outrageous scaling costs of resource buildings such as Oil Well III's, Lumber Mill III's, and Ore Mine III's. If you build decors or resource buildings and want to place them, just click on them within their depot and place them.
Keep in mind, however, that many decors and building have codes of length 3. For these, you will have to produce units that have codes with length 3. The most convenient units to use are Cadet Soldiers (U01).
One way to get many Coins is to use the Depot Hack to create Engineering Offices (BC02). Once an Engineering Office is in your Depot, place it somewhere in your empire and then sell it. Each one you sell gives you 150,000 Coins.
This method, as it is, does not work for consumable items such as Power-ups and Energy packs. You can do the transformation and place them into your depots. The problem is that they get stuck there. As far as I know, you cannot move them to your inventory or even use them.
Check my other pages, especially the tabs near the top, for codes.
