Empires & Allies portrays a military cartoon world composed mostly of archipelagos with each player beginning with one island, and being able to expand to up to four other islands. Each archipelago represents an "empire" or militarized island nation, with a "world alliance" that the player can optionally enter, but by doing so forfeits an ability to attack other sovereign nations. The player's task is to recover their island nation's glory and defeat the main villain, "The Raven," and his commanders, who each have covered a separate archipelago that the player must island hop until the end of the "chain" which is the island that "The Raven" resides on.