Evony Gameplay guides

Evony Age I

Basic Evony gameplay

All about barbarian farming (NPC)

Combat 101 (Player versus player)

Getting Medals (Old and New Servers)

Evony Age II

Changes since Age I and what to do about them

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Basic Evony gameplay

So, you're new to the game and not sure what you should be doing. You've started at the right place, first let's go over a checklist of things you should have already done. If you haven't now is the time to fix it.

1. Gift Packages - You get free packages, one when you start and a second at TH L3. DO NOT forget to pick these up, they can be found in quests. There is some free stuff in there.
Wealth of nations can be handy early game.
There are enough medals inside to get knight for free.

2. Politics Mayor - Everyone city NEEDS a politics mayor. Even if it has only 50 pol it's better than 0. Without except you need to get a politics mayor in every city. More on heroes found in the heroes section below.

4. Read the Combat Guide - Here:

5. Read the Barbarian Guide - Here:

6. Improve from your mistakes and come back stronger and eventually you'll find yourself as "One of the best" so to speak.


How to build your city:
Here are some examples of very developed cities.

City


Resource


You will need a lvl 5 farm for a stable, that eventually you can tear down like these pictures:  I now build 3 solid rows of saw mills or 3 solid rows of iron. At the town level I've started building only 8 cottages, and replacing the rest with barracks.Many ancillary buildings can be removed once techs are complete, as pictured.

If you dont know what buildings are required for each technology etc. I suggest you use the startup script provided in the Forevony^™.Net setup file.

To reiterate: Some buildings can be destroyed once you no longer need them.

Warehouse: I don't build any of these, some people like one. They increase overall capacity I suppose.
Also seem to make that last 1% tough to break when attacking, uproven though.

Stable: Once you're at relief station level 8 (9 has no effect) you can destroy your stable UNLESS you plan to get to RS 10, or you're using that stable to research horseback riding. (or capture and convert a level ten barbarian as pictured)

Forge: Needed only to build and upgrade the workshop, or research Military Science. Once you no longer need to upgrade warehouse or research Military Science in a city, you can remove the forge.

Workshop: Once walls are maxed (9-10) you no longer need this unless using it to research Metal Casting.

Inn: Some cities can go without an inn, once your Feasting Hall is 9-10 you can destroy the inn and use scouts to move heroes from other cities.

Population
Population is the life force of your empire. Most importantly population offers taxes, works fields, and is used to train troops. There is no such thing as too much population, remember that idle population is actually required.

Note that while there's no such thing as too much population, there is such a thing as too many cottages. 10 cotts at level ten are a lovely combo of population and barracks amounts, but its up to the user. More cotts gives you a great timespan between retraning troops. Plan your cottages or your life accordingly.

Population=MaxPop*(Loyalty/100)*(Loyalty/100)
What that means is, you will fill a percentage of your maximum population equal to your loyalty. If you want more population increase your max or loyalty.

Loyalty=100-Taxes
So if you're taxes are 25%, your loyalty will move toward 75. Loyalty changes at a rate of 1 point per 6 minutes.

Population grows at a rate of 5% of your max per 6 minutes. Each point of taxes reduces this growth, so that at 100% you have no growth.
Take an hour to regen fully at 0% taxes

Idle population is NOT a bad thing. Idle population is used to create troops, as well as the tax and if you need to, levy. There is no reason not to have idle population, so long as you don't have too many cottages.many cottages.

One trick to increase your idle population for queuing troops is to go to your TH and set production to 0, this will take people off your fields so you can queue troops. Once finished, DO NOT forget to set them back to 100, you'll have a negative idle pop, but this is fine your population will return over time.

Easy Money
Gold is essential, everyone needs it because not only does it buy resources on the market, but it's used in HUGE amounts for research.

Early on your only option is the tax trick.

First get your population as high as you can, set taxes to like 5% or something.

Once your loyalty is 90+ (and your population is stable) switch taxes to 100%

Then use the disaster relief comforting every time your loyalty is below 95. Set your Forevony^™ timer to 15 mins for this purpose. Once you hit 100 loyalty switch to every half an hour.

DO NOT forget to change it when logging off, it should never be more than 50% if you're not using disaster relief.

As time goes on you'll be able to start farming barbarians, this is the #1 source of gold but requires ballistae and transports to do successfully.

More on that can be found here: Barbarian farming

Valleys
To capture a valley attack it, you can attack valleys even while under protection. Once you do capture a valley, recall your troops ASAP as they eat a significantly increased amount of food. You do not need to do anything with the valley, it is working as long as your flag is on it. To view it's payout, click on your town hall, go to the production tab, and look under valley plus.

Idle is the normal status, this means they're working fine.

You can capture a number of valleys equal to the level of your town hall, and each city captures it's own valleys. If you want to abandon a valley, you can either click on it and click enter, or you can go to the town hall in the city that owns the valley, go to the valley tab.

You can also click on a valley and check the lord entry. If the valley is owned you can often attack with only 1 scout to take it over. Because of the HUGE food cost of keep troops in a valley most people don't keep any there, so you can take even a level 10 valley from a player with just 1 scout.

Heroes

If you have a level 1 inn, you can hire the hero there, dismiss it, then check the inn again. The inn should have a new hero, saving you hero huntings. This can be repeated until you find a hero with 60+ base in the stat you need.

You can destroy the inn and rebuild if low on gold, with the same effect

I would suggest only investing heavily in heroes with over 60 base in at least 1 stat.

Politics decreases build time on structures and wall fortifications and increases your per hour income rates. Every town should have a Politics hero ASAP and it should be mayor.
Every point of politics increases hourly resources by 1% of the base.
Every point of politics has a small effect on building times.

Attack increases damage dealt when attacking, however when set as mayor attack decreases training time.

Intelligence improves scouting reports when used to scout, however when set as mayor intelligence decreases research waits.

Just change the hero, start the research or training you need, then change back to a pol hero. You'll save hours in the long run, especially when training archers and ballistae.

Scouting

Informatics tech should be at LEAST the same level as the valley, or one level higher than the city you are scouting to get good tech. Send no less than 10 scouts per level of the target.

Few 1 - 24
Pack 25 - 49
Lots 50 - 99
Horde 100 - 249
Throng 250 - 499
Swarm 500 - 999
Zounds 1000-2499
Legion 2500 - 4999
Bulk 5000 - 9999
Giga >10,000

Here's a tip DONT send troops with your scouts
you send archers with scouts, and lose the fight. They Just Vanish, no report, nothing

Also, you can avoid being scouted by building a large number of scouts and leaving your gates open (in the rally spot) when scouted, your scouts will fight the enemy scouts, if you have enough you'll kill them all off and the enemy will get no report.

Combat

The most important factors in combat is range and numbers. This is why units like archers and ballistae are the best units. Never skimp on archery tech, the difference one level can make is insane. PvP combat is covered here: combat
NPC (Barbs) covered here: Barbarian farming

Please feel free to reply with more things, I'll organize things for easier access as I can.

I've seen this chart floating around and figured I'd post it in places people could find it easily. Here is a useful range chart: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rL6q4KqQ0MIrWozNF_Idu4g

Also this site is great resource: http://www.evonypedia.com there is a lot of info to be found, however some of it is inaccurate (for instance you can no longer throw warriors at high lvl barbs for prestige only low level ones)

Guides for Evony:

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All about barbarian farming (NPC)

Barbarians are easily the best source of gold.
They restock every 8 hours, with troops fulling forming in 1 hour.

How to create a barbarian city.

First, capture a level 1-5 flat, the barbarian city will be the same level as the flat that you capture. Build a rally point and REINFORCE (do not transport) all your workers, and all the resources (you'll have to reduce food by a couple points or it won't let you send, since you'll be losing it) to your nearby city.

Then go to a different city and abandon.

Yay a barbarian to call your own.

It takes about 8 hours to fill with resources.

Remember that Barbs don't attack.

How to attack a barbarian city.

Attacking low lvl NPC cities is done for resource, gold and hero experience.
This is done with ballistas and transports to achieve 0 losses.
The maximum level you can hit without loss is a level 5.
Level 6 or greater will have Defensive Trebuchets, these will cause you to always suffer losses.

All barbs have Archer Towers, and owing to the odd way Evony calculates the movements of mechanical units (Ballistae) you need a specific combination of levels in two technologies:

Archery and Horseback Riding (HBR).

RED = Massive losses

Blue = Smalls losses

Green = No Losses

Archery 08 / HBR 03
Archery 08 / HBR 04
Archery 08 / HBR 05
Archery 08 / HBR 06
Archery 08 / HBR 07
Archery 08 / HBR 08
Archery 08 / HBR 09

Archery 09 / HBR 01
Archery 09 / HBR 02 (use over 575 ballistae)
Archery 09 / HBR 03
Archery 09 / HBR 05
Archery 09 / HBR 06
Archery 09 / HBR 07
Archery 09 / HBR 08
Archery 09 / HBR 09

Archery 10 / HBR 00
Archery 10 / HBR 05
Archery 10 / HBR 06
Archery 10 / HBR 07
Archery 10 / HBR 08
Archery 10 / HBR 09
Archery 10 / HBR 10

Do Not attack Level 5 Barbs with less than 8 archery.

Cross reference: http://www.evonypedia.com/evony/npc/npc-ballistae-farming-archery-and-hbr-levels

How many Ballistae do I need to send?

20 Ballistas = Level 1 NPC
50 Ballistas = Level 2 NPC
170 Ballistas = Level 3 NPC
250 Ballistas = Level 4 NPC
550 Ballistas = Level 5 NPC

Hero's Attack level:

The number above assume a hero of 100 attack, send more if your hero's attack value is lower to be safe.

How many Transports do I need to send?

This is linked to your logistics technology level, the higher that is, the more you can carry.

It is also linked to distance, the further you travel, the less you can carry back.

In general once you hit Logistics 10 the amount of ballistae and tranpsports will be similar.

When you march from your Rally point the load capacity is displayed at the bottom of the march screen, allow the following amounts to be available as load.

Put simply add more transports until you can carry:

215k for a Level 1 NPC
355k for a Level 2 NPC
1.2M for a Level 3 NPC
2.26M for a Level 4 NPC
4M for a Level 5 NPC

Other benefits of barbs:

Also, you can receive Mike's scripts from a barbarian attack. I've seen this chart floating around and figured I'd post it in places people could find it easily. Here is a useful range chart: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rL6q4KqQ0MIrWozNF_Idu4g

Additional NPC Info:

A barb city will also immediately regenerate approx 18% of all lost wall units each time some are destroyed. Example: if you destroyed 1000 towers and hit it again 1 second later 180 towers will be back. barbarians up to level 5 with no losses.

This link is useful for determining how many ballistae you need.

http://www.evonypedia.com/evony/npc/npcs-vs-ballistae
Also http://theevonywiki.com/index.php/NPC
NOTE: This link has a table at the bottom for how many transports to send.
Try checking both, some of the information looks out-dated.

Important read. While it technically only applies to L10 barbarians, the ideas it covers explains a bit about combat and the way it's calculated. These basic principles can be used throughout the game:
http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=25702

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Combat 101 (Player versus player)

Attacking players is likely the most profitable exercise in the game. For raw gold Barbs are great, not to mention reliable. But some players can be looted for millions of resources, fueling your war engine even further. The most important thing about attacking players though is how to do it safely, it's important to minimize losses.

I have a lack of targets.
First, you can obviously teleport to find more. Failing that though targets that take 2-3 hours to march to may not be ideal, but an idle army is bringing in far less resources than one marching for 4-6 hours.

First we talk about the types of fortifications. Understanding how best to defend yourself is the first step to take. With the exception of Archer Towers, all fortifications fire once and must be rebuilt. For this reason, ATs (Archer Towers) are considered the only real defensive option.

Traps : Recommended number: 100-1000. Traps will only kill infantry and mounted units, all mech units walk right past them. To best destroy traps, send a number of warriors with nothing else and they'll set off the traps for a nice little gain in honor. One thing to keep in mind though is that you should always have at least 1. Combat starts at the highest range of units in a fight, traps have a range of 5000 trumping anything else in the game (abatis do as well I believe). This is crucial to higher combat, this thread explains it best: http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=25702

Abatis: Recommended number: 0-100. These only kill cavalry and cataphracts, don't send them and you're fine.

Archer Towers: Recommended number: Fill your walls with these. Archer towers kill everything, and as seen in this thread: http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=25702 they are quite terrifying as defensive machines. Archery research and the level of your walls play a major part in the range of your ATs, a useful chart can be found here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rL6q4KqQ0MIrWozNF_Idu4g . You can never have enough archer towers, so don't ask how many you should have, just build more when you can afford them. A decent rule of thumb is that archers kill ATs at about 4:1. So, take your ATs, multiply by 4, that's how many archers minimum it would take to kill your defenses. Are you comfortable with that number?

Rolling Logs: Recommended number: 0-100. As far as I know these only trigger on infantry, though it's possible they'll hit mounted units as well. In either case I don't build more than the quest requirement. One could call them "adv traps", but without the low cost and range bonuses. Build them if you like.

Defensive Trebuchet: Recommended number: 0-100. These are theoretically the best defense against ballistae and catapults. With a huge range and enormous damage the DT should be the best defensive option against mechanical units. However, due to the DT firing on anything, including warriors, and the fact that unlike ATs, a DT must be rebuilt after firing, these actually suck. Unless they are fixed, I wouldn't build more than 100.

How do I counter those things?

Traps: Traps are best countered with warriors. It's not a good idea to send higher cost units such as archers against traps. Most players are going to have 100-500 traps, a wave of warriors hitting a target before your main attack can help to limit losses of higher units. Though in most cases I just send warriors with my main attack force.

Abatis: The only thing these will kill are mounted units. There is no other way to clear abatis. I believe you can still conquer a city with abatis in it so I wouldn't worry too much.

Archer Towers: These are the most common defense, and also the best. The most effective way to counter ATs is to first outrange them. The chart here can help with that: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rL6q4KqQ0MIrWozNF_Idu4g . But rather than calculate all of those details it's quite simple. If you have equal archery to your enemy about 4x archers will kill the ATs 1:1. In most cases an "optimal" number is 10x archers, as this will keep loses to being almost negligible. Ballistae and catapults also work well but I don't have exact numbers on what to send. I prefer no less than 4x ballistae, but this can still result in losses (may have been a range issue).

Rolling Logs: Much like traps, if the enemy has a number of rolling logs I believe a wave or two of warriors is the most efficient counter. Though ballistae leave them untriggered.

Defensive Trebuchet: Another defense best countered by warriors and nothing else. Hopefully these are fixed at some point.

Unit types

Infantry

Workers: Workers are used to transport resources and build new cities. That's it. Many people ask if they should just destroy them and the answer is no. As infantry they set of all anti infantry forts, however they are more expensive than warriors and should be used only to increase capacity. These are excellent for sending with warriors/archers to loot players. Workers are also faster than transports.

Warrior: The cheapest and in many cases most built unit in the game. Though slow by infantry standards warriors low cost makes them the premier meatshield. Build them often and build name, just don't forget to save money for archers.

Scouts: Scouts have the obvious use of scouting. However, their quick speed makes them effective for stealing valleys from players (as most players leave valleys undefended, allowing only 1 scout to capture it). In large number their speed can be used to attack low level valleys or player cities, though the low attack of the scouts ensures that you will have losses. In most cases scouts cannot break through player walls. I like scouts to send heroes to other cities quickly.

Pikemen: Though technically sturdier than a warrior, and with higher attack, the increased cost of the pikeman makes them less useful overall. One common trick though is to send 1 with every warrior/archer attack. This 1 unit causes enemy attackers to "pause" for a round to engage the pikeman, leaving the archers with more time to shoot.

Swordsman: With higher defense but lower attack than the pikeman, a swordsman falls into much the same category. Send 1 with warrior/archer attacks to give extra time to the archers to fire. Some players like to build a decent number of swordsman and leave gates open so they act as defensive agents.

Archers: As many of you already know this is likely the most over-powered unit in the game. Archers can take out valley L1-4 with no losses, and can do similar on higher valleys with warrior support, and minimal losses. Archers are where a good portion of your unit training budget will be going.

Mounted

Cavalry: Seemingly useless the cavalry in this game have a death wish. Rarely do you see a mixed attack have any cavalry return. Instead, it's best to use them to attack undefended cities, or at least cities with no ATs. Cavalry are however excellent at reducing loyalty as well as transporting resources, due to their speed. I like to keep a couple thousand on hand in most cities for just such uses.

Cataphracts: Good in defence, good in attack, a really high life value (1000 life = hard to kill).
They can take out a few hundred thousand archers no problem if the defending layers are removed.
Warning: They eat like horses!

Mechanical

Transports: Pretty straight forward. These units carry lots of shit, much like workers on wheels. They're slow however and can be cumbersome to build compared to workers. These are a must for barb farming however as they allow you to slip past the traps.

Ballistae: As most of you know these are the second most overpowered unit in the game. These archers on wheels are the tanks of the game. Build many as they will be used to break more powerful targets. Also used in barb farming.

Battering Rams: Someone needs to get back to me on these. I scrap them all. Their short range and slow speed makes them bloody useless in my opinion. Worst unit ever. I did try them out, built 125k and rammed them into a heavily defended city. I was not impressed with the results to be honest. Your milage may vary.

Catapults: Catapults are much like ballistae on range steroids. Try to work toward these. Not everyone is required to have them however as they require 2 script items to build. One for a barracks and one for workshop. They are excellent for clearing away pesky layers when going for a cataphract (or ram) archer wipeout.


Scouting
It's imperative that you scout any target with more than half your prestige, even less it's suggested to scout ahead as you don't want to run the risk of sending everything you have, and having them all die.
The scout report needs to contain at least fortifications. Once you know what they have there you can attack.

Any more information is just icing, though if you are going for resources consider if the plunder is worth the possible losses before attacking.

As I understand it, if you scout and there are scouts listed as being in the city, the gates are closed. If you scout and there is a fight it's likely the gates are open. This isn't an exact science and it's best to assume they are always open, though most of the time gates are closed (which means the enemy units won't attack, only his forts will.

How do you capture a city?
Capturing a city requires that you have a city slot available. Let's say you're Baronet and have only 2 cities, you could them capture a city from a player. However if you're Baronet and already have 3 cities, you cannot capture unless you abandon one, or increase your title.

You can also never capture someone's last city, in most cases it's best to just farm these anyways.

To actually capture a city you need to reduce it's loyalty to 0. This can be tricky when attacking over greater distances but the general idea is always the same.

First you need to break the fortifications with a real attack. Once the city is basically defenseless you can start to send small waves of units to attack the city.
Every attack reduces loyalty by 1-5 points, the number of troops increases the amount. The trick is to hit the city as fast as possible, which is where cavs come in.

Scouts are no longer an option for cities with walls, but can be used against startup cities with no walls.

Just spam the city with attacks, once loyalty reaches 15 it will continue to drop by one loyalty every 6 mins.
Sending the od atack at this point never hurt.
Your target may have 0% tax which seems to be a factor.

Once the city reaches 6 loyalty STOP.

The attack that reduces loyalty to 5 will cause the gates to automatically open.

If you're sending small waves you'll lose the units that open the gates.

At this point just be sure that you can kill the people within the city to continue reducing loyalty.

Once loyalty reaches 0 you'll receive a "Name city" popup and it'll be yours. Most cities suck since so many players have no idea what they're doing.

You mentioned a "real attack" what is that?

An attack with enough power to kill the defenses and plunder the city. In most cases this will consist of warriors and archers, possibly with the swords and pike escort.

From there a "real attack" may include warriors or transports to carry back plunder, or ballistae or catapults for extra firing power.

In many cases I simply attack a target with however many warriors I have on hand (usually about the same as the number of archers, though sometimes as few as half the number of archers) and 10 times more archers than the enemy has ATs, as explained above.


Building an "outpost" city.
This strategy involves building a city next door to an enemy, but it requires a great deal of attention to detail as getting 1-2 things wrong can cost you your entire army.

This strategy really only works to conquer if you have 2 city slots available (one for outpost one for target) however it can still be used to destroy a strong player over a great distance.

First: Find a city you want to conquer and locate a flat of reasonable level as close to it as you want. I like 1 mile away though if you're trying to be sneaky about it starting it off screen from your target may not be a bad idea.

Second: Conquer the flat and build a city on it. You're going to need to transport resources to it. I haven't worked out the exact numbers yet.

Third: Start building. The exact order to build in may vary but here's what you need:

Academy Level 4 (L6 with medicine)
If you attack or are attacked before this is L4 you can completely destroy yourself as you need this for archery.

Walls Level 3
You'll need Ironmine 3, Forge 2, and Workshop 1 to start walls. If you plan to be there long enough to be attacked (and you will likely be attacked) walls are a must.

Rally spot Level whatever
Obviously you need this to attack. Depending on how many attack heroes you plan to use this should be 1-2 levels higher so you can ship resources back home.
It also determines the maximum troops you can send per wave (10k * the rally level per wave).

Feasting hall Level whatever
Your inn only needs to be L1, since you can just reinforce heroes to the outpost. Just don't forget the gold.

Fourth: Once the buildings have come up nicely you're ready to ship your troops over. Remember that you'll need obscene amounts of food to feed your armies until you can start plundering it, same with gold for your heroes.

Fifth: just start attacking stuff.

This is a very loose guide on how to do.
If you can't fill in the gaps,I suggest not trying this.

Honor
This belongs here since you get it from PvP combat.
It seems to be calculated as:
Kill more in resources than you lose, (against players).
This includes forts and all, give you honor and vice versa.

Your prestige compared with the enemy may also affect it.

What if I lose everything? Or anything for that matter?
It's important to remember that the more you send the less you lose. This is why 10x is suggested over 4x against ATs etc. Should you lose men, however, your only real option is to rebuild.

If you have gold you can check the medic camp.
The medic camp can be found at the rally spot.

Be sure to check it EVERY TIME you lose a significant amount of troops. I wouldn't bother spending the gold on just warriors, but archers and whatnot are very much worth it.

How do I keep a large army?
I've heard 2 reasons people can't keep a large army (Hundred of thousands of warriors and archers, and in time ballistae, cataphracts, rams, etc.).

First: Building soldiers uses your idle population, that's what it's there for. This population regenerates with normal population growth rules. One trick if you don't have enough idle pop, is to set your production rates in your TH to 0, queue the units you need, then set the number back to 100. DO NOT FORGET, this is worse than forgetting taxes. This will leave you short of population, but they'll regenerate like normal (remember that taxes reduce population growth).

Second: You don't actually need farms to feed your people.

I had only L5-6 farms in my cities, and not very many of them (about 1/2 lumber and 2x stone and iron), instead I kept my food up by either buying it on the market, or farming NPC (barbarians), often both methods.

Lately, I have not been building any farms at all.

A large army is your greatest source of income. You want to build it as big as you can maintain, and lose as few men as possible.

How exactly does combat work?
Combat takes place in rounds. Each round units move foward based on their speed. When they hit something they can attack, they stop moving for that round and attack. This is where the 1 sword and 1 pike come in.

Units can only attack once per round, which is why it's important to buy time for the archers to kill things before they are face to face with an enemy.

When attacking a city you must destroy the troops, AND deal enough damage to take down the walls within 100 rounds or combat will default to the defender. What this means is, sending units like workers, scouts, or transports (units with negligible attack) will often result in a loss. Best to send at least the troops required to take down the walls, even if all fortifications are broken.

I am unsure if units will continue to move forward once within range. For instance, if archers come up on a city and can attack the archer towers, I am unsure if they would stop and fire from there possibly avoiding being hit entirely. Or if they would continue to move forward each round.

The site Evocalc suggests that they do keep moving. The mechanics of moving in combat are why cavs are the first to die. Their speeds makes them the first to run into the enemy.

If you have a first grasp of combat mechanics it becomes very difficult for a city to be taken from you when you are online. If you are really good: Near impossible.