Hej, actually I'm updating this Walkthrough towards 1.5. It seems like the numbercrunching in the end is basically the same with 1.2.3. - More to come.


Hej everyone,

this guide is for everyone who wants to know something about EmpireTV Tycoon. Especially about a fast walkthrough and some basic number chrunching. I'm sorry for my mediocre english skills. I'm thankful for every constructive criticism helping me to improve my knowledge.

Ahead lies:
- First run guide
- Fast pace movie making
- Advertisment managment
- When to buy upgrades
- Expert run guide
- Got any Achievment?
- (Spoiling) Who watches what?
- (Spoiling) Best movie maker

So for eveyone new to the game - Welcome! You made the right decission to come here. Enjoy the game. To make the first steps not to frustrating you can finde here some hints needed to stay an successful Channel Manager.

First of all, this game has a quickly rising learning curve. So my tipps are somehow to get oriented.

• Their are three Channels you can chosse, blue, green and red. Even the elevetor can sometimes disadvantage the red channel in general it is completely indifferent which color of channel you use.
  
  
• Far more important is, what topic your channel should have.
  
  
• Either you choose "Generalist" or you choose "any other topic".
  
  
• For now it is enough to know, that beginners should choose Fantasy or Sports also a good choice are Sci-fi or Action.
  
  
• Just to know, this game is mostly realtime managment. Somehow you can Pause with space or by going to the Menue via esc. Don't be afraid you got plenty of time to manage everything.

Run!



At the very first step you go to the elevator and towards the Cellar where you find the archive. There you sell all your movies rated 4.2 and below. You find your movies in the right window which pop-up if you click on the movie-buy-and-sell-guy. Then sort the movies in the left window by their rating and see if you can exchange some of them with some of yours being worse rated. You should not buy movies below 5.0 rating. Dont invest more than 200.000 of your money. Avoid movies with 3 Blocks unless you know what you are doing.




Afterwards you get to your Office. This is your main place where you Choose you Programm while aranging your news, movies and advertisment. Here you also find your Statistic-Board and your news-desk.

Now be aware that the game pre-arranged some news, movies and advertisment for you. Unfortunately this pre-arrangement is often pretty poor.

Take your time and learn something about the first audience coming up. You see them on your schedule on the left desk at your office floor. You can find out about their preferences during the time they watch some movies. (if you cant wait to find out you can see their preferences later in this guide)

If you are happy with your arrangment watch your audience in the main screen watch your channel. Their will pop-up little smilies telling you wether they:

• love (green smiley)
  
• like (blue smiley)
  
• dislike (yellow/orange smiley)
  
• hate (red smiley)

your choosen movie. Take advantage of the other channels and see what the same audience thinks about their movies (unless its the same topic as yours, then the audiences reaction is of course the same).


After getting your first impressions and seeing your channel starting on his first day walk a little bit around and get comfortable with your new surrounding. Every Channel has 3 floors. All are arrange in the same way.

• 1st floor is the office
  
• 2nd floor is the staff "lounge"
  
• 3rd floor is your movie studio

Inbetween the Channels their are some Additional Rooms.

• Cellar: Movie archive
  
• Basement: Entrance Hall
  
• 1st - 3rd floor: Blue Channel
  
• 4th floor: Technology Area
  
• 5th - 7th floor: Green Channel
  
• 8th floor: Marketing Agency
  
• 9th - 11th floor: Red Channel
  
• 12th floor: Restaurant (Money lender like Mafia)

Most important are Marketing Agency and Movie Archive. The Technology Area is always important when you reach your reputation-goals.

For now check it out. Get yourself comfortable and if you are interested dive deeper into this guide to get more information how everything works.

After you entered into the game and got the basics up and running and you are still not bankruptcy then the movie making gets essential part of your every days work.


After buying the studio from the technology area in the 4th floor and hiring some screenwriter on your staff floor you should start to let the screenwriter write scripts in a row.

As long as the topic of the next "Roskars" (so the next Oscar) is unknown the writer should work its numbers up. So the topic with the lowest number gets a new script. In the beginning even average scripts can increase a topics level.

Try not to focus on any topic unless it is for the Roskars. So level the topics up evenly. Any topics on 2, then 3 then 4 etc.

Fast pace leveling will get stuck around lvl 7 to 8, this is the point when only very good scripts or masterpieces will increase the topic lvl. Don't get frustrated just keep writing scripts.

In the beginning (first 4-5 days) it is not bad to have and use a script beeing lower then very good and equal or higher then average. Important is the outcome. Discard anything below average anytime.

After topics reaching something around lvl 4 to 5, discard average scripts as well.

After topics reaching something around lvl 6 to 7, discard good scripts as well.


The first Roskar-Movie on day 2 should have an rating 6.2 or above to have a very good chance to win several awards.

On day 4 the Roskars get tougher but still 6.7+ should do some nice award wining. (with some experience it is possible to have an movie rating of 7.5+ guaranteeing several Roskars to win, if not all)

Every Roskar awarding needs an higher number untill the movies reach 9+ rating, then it will do to have an 9.5+ rating to have a high chance to win the Roskars and some additional categories.

Roskar wining is essentiell as every trophy won means the reputation goes into your pocket and not towards your opponents.

There are always 6 (1 times 2 und 4 times 1) Reputaition to win. The price money changes. So the first Roscars having less and the higher Roskars having 1.2 Million (500k for the Beste Movie).


Don't buy actor-uprades to early (so not in the moment you gain access of them) The first upgrade on 75 reputation should be bought not earlier than possesing 100 reputation. The old actors are frankly good enough until then. Same counts for any further upgrade. Wait until you reach the next reputation level of your actors otherwise your choice gets to small and your movies will get stucked or fail in rating.

There is not much further to say about actors, wether they understand each other or not or wether they have an excellent performance or not seems to be random.


In the beginning of the game always choose to make a TV Film with one block. It is cheapest and fastest to develop.

The price for an movie production depends on the quality of the script so be aware that a masterpiece script in the beginning will cost 50.000 to make an TV Film, while an average script only will take 25.000.

Later in game try to produce one standard Film (two blocks) and one TV series (10 episodes) for any topic. Giving you an good argument for nearly any situation on your Channel schedule.


As the lowest A+ number for any movie feature is 4 start out to give any feature an 4. Then distribute the other points as will and try to learn from the reports afterwards. (for those who are more lazy, you will find a chart with the A+ rating for all topics on the end of this Walkthrough)

Obviously, the lower the grade in the report the more points are missing in the corresponding feature.

Highest points are 10.

Try to think logical what feature might be most important to one movie topic (however not every point distribution makes fully sense)

Failing an advertisment can hurt badly on your way win the game so manage them careful. In some other guide it was advised to poses no more then two audience linked advertisments and two without audience linkage. I support this advise with some exception.


There are some seven amounts of advertisment not any amount has both types of advertisment.
(NLA - Non-linked advertisment or ALA - Audience-linked advertisment)


lowest
NLA - Alabama Fried Wings
ALA - none
meager
NLA - none
ALA - All Topics
low
NLA - Menta Spice
ALA - none
slight
NLA - Panucci's Pizza
ALA - none
medium
NLA - Oceanic Airplanes
ALA - All Topics
high
NLA - Airdancer
ALA - none
highest
NLA - Saul Attorney Services
ALA - All Topics

The Advertisment from lowest to slight could generally be posessed without fearing any harm (remind no more than two ALAs at a time).

It is whatsoever also possible to possess three of four NLAs from lowest to medium at a time but should not be more and no high or highest. This and two ALAs are managable.

All advertisment from high to highest should be managed with caution. One should be able to know beforehand where the blocks could be placed. Especially in early game they should only be taken, while there is a single audience to be served and there is the best movie for this audience and at least some valuable news-block.

Later in game the audience shouldn't hate your channel, that makes it really difficult to finish the highest ALAs.

On the 4th Floor some can find the technology area. Doc Brown has there some important upgrades. Depending on the difficulty level there is an different need of reputation that unlocks those developments.


renew-upgrades
In the beginning it is not worth to buy the renew-options, not for the movie-trader nor the advertisment-trader. It is rather expensive to renew the lists and usually it happens often that one won't find what is needed. There is a pretty high chance that even after three rerolls the wished item is not found.

It should be taken as a challenge to work without the renew-upgrades (at least in early and midgame) and is a good way to learn more about the audience and how to manage advertisment.

Studio-upgrade
Other way around with the studio-upgrade. It is important to start your movie production and should be unlocked as soon as possible.

Actors-upgrade
From the moment a new actor-room-upgrade will be unlocked don't buy it instantly. Wait until your reputation reached as high as the next actors would be available. Upgrading early might trap you with only two actors to choose between, what means either you are stuck with your movie production or your movies will be crap.

Movie-archive-upgrade
Always buy those upgrades as fast as possible and instantly go into the archive und exchange some of your older movies with higher rated ones (as you did on the beginning of the game).

Audience-upgrade
The Audience-upgrade is the most important one but also somehow challenging. One thing about EmpireTV Tyconn needs to be known. For balance reasons the developers decided, that the opponents get this upgrade some times after you bought it, even they did not reach the needed reputation to buy it. This works proper for me. However some people advice to stall the upgrade as late as possible. I don't agree. Even if they catch up, you gain at least some steps where you can a) win nearly any audience with any movie b) you can gain some easy cash. I tell you how.

• If you are not the first one to reach the upgrade, then buy it instantly and don't care for anything else. You won't get any advantage and only try to diminish any damage from loosing further reputation.
  
  
• If you are in slight advance of your opponents then buy the upgrade instantly and don't care for anything else. At least take a look if you can possibly start one further advertisment-campaign in the exact hour you're channel is located in.
  
  
• If you have some 15+ reputation in advance, don't buy the upgrade yet. Instead try to find out if you can start two to three new advertisments. Important is, that at least one block must have been succesfully broadcasted. Only then you won't lose your advertisment-campaigns after buying the upgrade. After the upgrade you have some easy to fulfill add-campaigns that you can't lose and they still bring a decent amount of money. Moreover you buy yourself some time where you can concentrate on other things to get working.

Take care that you're opponents don't buy the upgrade beforehand. You will in any case lose important reputation, it's not worth the risk.

After buying the upgrade several things will happen:

• You lose all advertisment campaigns, that have not at least been successfully broadcasted once.
  
• Any started advertisment campaign can be finished under the old conditions.
  
• New advertisment campaigns are related to the new audience numbers.
  
• Your audience will be boosted from the next hour on.

So here comes a small gathering of somethings I recognised during the expert run.

• Don't worry for taking the red channel the disadvantage is minor and if your first run was a success you know how to diminish the use of the elevator. And in the end if you win you gain two more steam achievments.
  
• Take the generalist topic for your channel. You will need any percentage point and can't risk beeing bound to one audience group. Furthermore the advantage of choosing a special topic is less than in normal game mode.
  
• You're opponents stick to your heels. I never got more then 10 to 25 reputation ahead of them. Especially in early- and mid-game opponents get one advantage after the other so try to survive them and you can win.
  
• You need to know from the very first minute how every audience work.
  
• Don't miss any Roskar, every point you get is a loss for the opponents.
  
• Don't miss to upgrade the marketing manager as soon as possible, It nearly lost me the game, because I missed it and in late game you dont have any time to upgrade an MM for 28 hours. And the 20% News-Advantage is worth its money.
  
• Use your one audience kickout wisely.
  
• Do it like the AI, send 2 or sometimes also 3 block movies with crappy 1st block but winning 2nd or 3rd.
  
• Don't try winning any hour, the AI is cheating on you so you won't anyways. I had an higher rated Drama for women-only audience but both opponents send not so good rated comedy and won against me. With an remarkable edge ahead.
  
• I would recommend following staff in this order: 1. screenwriter 2. marketing manager 3. production assistant 4. community manager.
  
• Don't ... never ... ever buy piracy stuff.
  
• Buy and sell faster movies in and out, you will need the highest rating possible. Anyways keep your movie production up and working.

Ask me if you have further questions.

I missed two achievments so far. The 10-Rating-Achievment because it depends heavily on luck. And the hidden Achievment. I didn't got any clue for it.

For any further Achievments, they are pretty self-explaining. But if you have some question how to gain access of one of them, don't hesitate to ask andd I will add it to this guide.

40 Million viewer
For now I will only give one spoiler for the 40 Million viewer Achievment, because it was a little bit troubling for me.

There are sundry ways to get this achievment. I took an pretty unusual one. First I made an masterpiece documentary with 15 Episodes and a rating of 9.7. It won me the Roskars which means every time it will be broadcasted I got some 4 Million additional viewers. While I was to lazy to send it day by day I took one Roskar-free day and broadcasted it twelve times. Pretty wasting time but as I didn't had any open advertisment and had enough money I doesn't bother for it. There was not even a stop in the movie production. Finally I waited the next two days to find the audience group needed for documentary in the prime time. I added an 20% additional News spot and finally got the achievement.
This is quite constructed with a little instinct some can do this without loosing a day ;-)

Here you can find the list what audience loves, likes, dislikes or hates which topics.

Effective 01/12/16

Here you can find my list, how A+-Production works. Somehow some points need to be mentioned.

• Having an complete A+ rating gives a 9.5 excellent rating.
  
• The other 0.5 Points are somehow depending on investing some additional points and having luck. My Sci-fi rating gave me once 10.0 points but retrying it did not repeat this outcome instead it was 9.6 the next time.