I've been bouncing around for just a day in the game. I've not found anything that shows how to engage in combat when I'm ready. Any help would be appreciated.

http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/War_Room ... This might help a bit. After that its just spy , attack, rinse, repeat .

click warroom, type country number in proper field, select attack type, choose units to send and press attack button.

ofc it helps to spy your target before attacking to know what's target's defense so you send proper amount of military units on attack so you won't give target free land when target retals your hit.

Okay...

Is there a listing of Player numbers somewhere or do you just randomly type numbers in, spy, and attack?

earthgraphs.com
or eestats.com has player numbers

If you attack a human player, they will likely hit you back, but the game has bots that are easily attackable. I'd always suggest joining a clan if you're on alliance or ffa server and they will be able to help differentiate between bots and real players. Most clan sites have a seperate "bot list" that will help weed out the bots from real players.

For attacking, troops are worth .5, jets worth 1 = turrets worth 1, and tanks are worth 2. So if a player has 1000 troops, 1000 turrets and 1000 tanks, you will need 1000 troops 1000 jets and 1000 tanks + about 5% to make sure the hit goes through. But you could also use 3500 jets, or 7000 troops, or 1750 tanks. If the player has weapons tech, is a dictator or has allies that will increase the break further.

Good luck.

scores page is 1 place to look potential targets.

Thank you all for your help and advice. :)

I went to eestats and found that the tournament server is not listed, which is where I am at. Looking into that now I am.

if you want to attack then check scores-page to look targets like post above yours suggests. other option is to get land by batchexploring.