I’m sure over the last week or so you have seen the Evony ads everywhere, I know I have, there’s probably one showing right now. Well after seeing them a million times or so I decided what the hell, I’m not playing any MMO right now, so I’ll go check it out.
Evony is a free 2 play browser based MMORTS game where you slowly build up your city and try to expand your territory. The game starts you off with a empty town with only a Town Hall and it’s your job to build it up into a striving city, build an army and conquer additional lands. Everytime you do anything in the game, build a structure, research a new technology, march your army, a timer shows up showing how long it will take. So for instance creating a Barracks might take 5 mins, but every additional level will take longer and longer. Currently my barracks is at lev5 so the next upgrade for me will take 1 hr 29 mins. Evony Account.
City Building
Evony restricts construction to 1 building per city, so even if you have the resources you cannot construct or upgrade more than 1 building at a time. I’m actually a big fan of this system as it no longer depends on how long you play the game, instead it’s how often you play. Checking up on the progress a few times a day gets you much more than someone sitting there for 2 hrs straight. There is no building queue, so you need to manually select and build or upgrade each structure yourself.
Each territory you own is split into two parts, the town and the city. The town is made up of all residential, business and military building, such as the Town Hall, Market, Barracks, Academy, etc, and is protected by the castle walls. The city is outside the protective walls and contains your resource buildings, farms, lumber mills, quarrys and iron mines.
It basically works like any other RTS game you’ve ever played. You gather resources to construct or upgrade buildings, research technology, and to build an army.
City & Hero Management
Apart from just gathering resources and building/upgrading things, there is also city management. It doesn’t get too complicated and you can learn everything you need to know in about 5-10 mins. City Management deals with your tax rate, making sure your population remains loyal and assigning a mayor to your city.
Once you have created an Inn, you can hire a Hero unit who can either lead your army or become a Mayor. Each Hero unit has 3 stats, politcs, attack and intelligence. A hero with higher politcs means your cities resource production will be higher where as a higher attack means your army will have a higher attack rating. Intelligence shortens the time it takes to research a new technology. So you can see that some hero’s are better suited as a Mayor than as a General.
Once you have a Hero and army, they will start to eat up resources as well. A hero must be paid a monthly fee and an army will need to eat so you’ll start losing food resources. If you’re army is outside attacking you will lose food twice as fast, so you always want to make sure to return your troops as fast as possible once they have completed their mission.
As your city grows you will also gain Prestige points which is basically a rating of how well your cities are compared to other players. You also have a Rank and Title, the higher the rank and title the more cities you can control.
Combat
Once you have created an army you’re ready to attack, however it’s important to scout the area first to find out the strenght of your opponent. Once you have scouted the area, you’ll find out exactly how many and what type of troops are located there. If you feel confident, you can then attack.
In the below image, I am attacking a open field to receive a bonus of 7% to my stone production for as long as I hold that field.
As fun as attacking people and NPCs is, the combat system is completely f*cked up and makes zero scense to the point that it almost ruins the entire game. Allow me to explain.
Yesterday I attacked the same location twice because I was farming for reward medals. Medals are used to reward your hero or for promotion quests, which I’ll get into more later. Here is the defending armys strenght on both attacks.
Enemy Army
142 Warriors (very weak unit)
32 Archers
48 Pikemen
On my first attack I had:
Attack 1
115 archers
I won the fight, but lost 65 archers.
Attack 2
25 Swordmen
20 Pikemen
115 Archers
The results? I lost not only 65 archers, but all my swordmen and pikemen. WTF?! That makes no sense, how could a smaller army of only archers do better? After a few more attacks I realized that melee units are 100% useless, they will only increase your casualties and waste your resources so I have been building archer only armies since.
I’ve also read on the Evony forums that there are major balance issues when attacking castle walls. As far as I’m concerned the combat system is sh*t and needs to be completly redone.
Special Items & Medals
Evony use the microtransaction business model to make money, so there are many items you can buy, for real money, that will help you along in the game. Items can range from things that subtract from build times, ranging from 15 min to 8 hrs to 30% reduction in build times. Other items will boost production or combat effectiveness for a certain amount of time. There are also medals that you gain from conquering land, these medals can be used to either boost your hero stats or to promote yourself via Promotion Quests.
Quests
There are quests in Evony, however they are progress only quests. For example, your Town Hall reaches lev 5 or you obtained 10,000 prestige points. I like to think of them as achievments instead of quests.
Conclusion
After a few days of playing I can say I’m enjoying this game a lot more than I thought I was going to. Working infront of a computer all day, it gives me something enjoyable to do and doesn’t really take much time to play. I have a dual monitor setup so I have Evony on one screen and can see when the timers run out so I can pick what I’m going to do next. This is not a time-sink type of game, it’s sort of like checking your e-mail or Facebook a few times a day, 2-3 mins and you’re good to go. But they do have to fix the combat system, it’s retarded and can destroy the game if it’s not fixed in a resonable amount of time.
Great review, thanks. Does the game have RMT or anything to compensate for it being F2P?
I’ve been curious about the game, seeing so many ads for it all over the place.
Is the game interface/play screen in JavaScript? Flash or Java?
Is it vs other players or vs the computer?
No theres no real market trading, which kinda sucks.
The play screen is in flash
Its has both PvP and PvE. Basically when you start out you get 7 days of protection after that any other player can attack you, so its more PvP than PvE.
I guess you lost your melee fighters because of wall defense such as traps which kill almost all of them instantly. whereas archers are easily able to get their arrows through…
I’m not too sure..its just a theory….
Cool review.
I’ve seen that ad all over the place and was wondering WTF it was.
It reminds me of the one site Nation States, where you make your government and such, and then dictate. But that’s all text based.
I do like how its casual, with micro play time.
Sucks that the combat seems like such crap.
I’ve been playing Evony for about 2-3 weeks now, and there are some severe problems with their servers. Getting kicked off the server with a connection error is common, time out errors on login are routine, and slow server response is the status quo.
Customer service and the developers have said nothing to the community as to why servers are performing so badly ( I assume it is the rapid growth they are experiencing ). The forum mods seem unable to give proper community support, and certainly wield the ban-hammer with ease.
The ToS and EULA are pretty nasty as well, they strip just about any rights from the player. No refunds, cancellation without warning or reason. It’s a pretty icky shrink wrap EULA as well, you agree to it fully by making an account.
I have had some problems understanding parts of the game. There was a bonus package that I didn’t know how to work until about my fourth day. There are guide books that I still have no idea how to read.
One of the things I wonder about is all the computer time, programming changes, and advertising — what is the business side that pays the bills. Is it some college psychology or programming course project that keeps it going?
I get the impression that the Evony creators make money because of the impatience of the players. You can purchase game tokens, which can then be used to speed up various builds etc. In theory, it suggests that someone with money could overcome the clock, and emerge from the 7 day “protection” period seriously amped, gunned up, and ready to rumble with alll the goodies available.
The imbalanced battle system doesn’t sound promising.
And I suspect some confusion of players results from some of the worst English I have ever encountered on a web site!
Think about it. I am an archer, while you have a sword or pike. I can kill you long before you get anywhere close to me. You’ll never even see my face.
Archers were the most expensive combatants a King had at his disposal because of this ability. They trained constantly, while infantry were pretty much just conscripts who were gathered up when needed.
Am currently in top 300 of server 1 of evony. I have played for a month. The game has a very severe financial model, meaning that it plays on your impatience to make you spend money to speed things up, so people who spend lots become much more powerful than “free” players. The game is well designed to a point – it was having terrible growth issues a few weeks ago, but new servers and bug fixes have improved it. Rules are adapted to try and make the game more fair. On the whole the game appears like a static version of AOE2 but really it is a game of accumulation and there are many strategies to get ahead. I know of people who were so impatient they spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on the game.
My advice would be to play on one of the more recently launched servers, and to enter the game with a specific spending budget (maybe its zero) so you do not go overboard, as the psychological impetus is very strong and it uses paypal so payment is very easy. Perhaps too easy.
Great Evony review. In answer to the other questions. Range in evony is definitely important. If you’ve got enough range on your archers or ballista then you can outrange the enemy and hit them first. This is why archery technology is very important. If your archery is even 1 level above your enemies then your archers get first hit
Thanks for finally filling me in on what this game is all about. These Evony ads pop up on every gaming site on the web.
who’s the background actress that shown at the cover of this game..????
I have played for almost 2 weeks and I still haven’t found out the importance of swordsmen and cavalry, etc. Archers are given way too much power. IMO they should have several different types of archers or something instead of just being able to increase your archery level.
thunderror
but i fail to see the point in making melee units that consume resources if they are just going to die anyway. it just seems very poorly thought out, which isnt too uncommon in this recent uproar of mmo games they keep advertising. i think ill pass. thanks for the review/ heads up.
I don’t care about the game, but what knockers on that girl.
Why your ccombat situation was uneffective is because archers can shoot oncoming enemy’s before they get there…if you have soo many that you can get to them before they kill all of your army then that’s progress….archers vs archers mainly matter on what the level of the technology archery (each research increases range by 5%) is highest
it’s not the combat it’s your enemy…archers are effective aginst small numbers
So is the combat real time? Can you control your army? Or is it like any PHP games where you issue orders, and the battles are resolved automatically?
If it’s like PHP games, then I suppose combat would be resolved based on “stacks”. That’s always a weird system for me, and I never liked it.
Has anybody else noticed that the English in the game is very very poor?
That, combined with the clear incentive to buy your way through the game makes me think that this game is clearly an Indian/Chinese knock-off just looking to garner the bucks.
How do you even know that your opponents are real people and not just robot-npcs?
You don’t control the army, everything is resolved behind the scening in the coding.
some of u (johann for example) have the stupidest ideas ive ever heard– u know that your opponents are real cause some of them send u angry @$#%ing messages after you attack them– or they are your friends in real life- this games combat system is quite fair- if you are going to resort to infantry then u will need to hav large numbers of them– it only makes sense that it takes a large amount of poorly trained troops(eg. warriors) to defeat a small amount of well trained troops(eg. archers)….. ive got a great idea…. play the game instead of trying to act smart about somthing you have absolutely no information on
oh yeah cavalry are extremely useful for raids— and in case u havent noticed they move really fast so u dont have to wait for them– swordsman are actually fairly useful against archers due to their armor
It’s a great game and you probably lost all people because of traps if you scout a city but don’t pay attention to the traps you can lose massive amount troops you also mentioned nothing about honor which gain by attacking and conquering city.But you got everything else right.
Its interesting to see both sides of the Evony gaming debate. Some loving the new graphics, good gameplay and step up from the old basic ‘web based free games’ – as opposed to the others saying that UMGE / Wowmine have developed a ‘cash grab’ style game that forces the serious gamer to purchase coins (a la WoW) type setup.
My view, Evony has really set a new standard for free online games (and while delays in attacks can be frustrating) at a base level – things are pretty good and most younger MMORPG gamers should enjoy things.
When attacking, the battle is divided into ’rounds’ where the troops with the longest range kill the infantry. It’s really quite simple once you research it. Look it up on the Evony wiki, it’s very helpful.
yea archers are cheap and good but catapults will walk right over them im in the top ten in server 4
I see what this game is now…but why do the ads have to look so…INAPPROPRIATE!?
I might play this game…still considering. :D
Yep Evony ads are everywhere, there’s one where the lady looks like she’s having an orgasm or something. I plan to check it out sooner or later………..maybe later..
sorry jon, but the fact is that i dont like the indians or the chinese and i will never play any games made by them. they suck our money into their country and make us poorer and them richer.
what happens if you dont play for a week or 2
Thanks for the comments; I for one don’t wish to play a game (or anything else) that doesn’t take care with language.
Too complicated for this type of game, and the interface is completely unintuitive.
Play Travian or Tribalwars if you want a similar but simpler and less dumbed down games
And wtf is there a picture of your character’s face? WHO CARES?
Mike, thanks for posting your review. Your content is good. However, the grammar and spelling systems are sh*t and need to be completely redone.
I tried to stick it out for a few weeks, in my opinion it’s a really crummy game, and it amazes me that people will actually play and enjoy something like this.
Firstly, it’s a blatant rip-off of Tribal Wars. I’m not that much of a fan of TB either but at least it’s reasonably simple and straightforward. Evony has tried to improve on TB by adding a host of bells and whistles, for example instead of just having a single farm to upgrade, you have potentially dozens of fields to turn into farms, but how does this improve gameplay? The answer is, it doesn’t. It’s just more work for the player. Likewise, instead of one barracks you can build a number of them in any city, but again, this is just more work. I finally just got tired of having to endlessly queue up troop and infra builds, it became a bore. And then as others have observed the combat system is atrocious, so you can spend weeks building up your troops and then lose everything in one attack or defence.
Two additional ways they have tried to “improve” upon TB is (a) to not allow a player’s last city to be conquered, and (b) to allow players to teleport their cities away from an impending attack. I guess they figured this would keep people playing longer as they could keep all their infrastructure and not have to start again as in TB, but the end result is that it robs the attacker of the satisfaction of defeating an opponent.
The other problem is the horrendous expense of the game if you are foolish enough to waste money on it. You get practically nothing for your money. A lousy 15-minute building speedup will cost you 50c, in a game where it takes literally weeks to build up your infrastructure, it’s not hard to imagine how much money you could throw away. And indeed, many people have impulsively thrown away hundreds of dollars in just a few days of gameplay. TB by contrast just charges a flat fee of $5 a month for some modest enhancements to the user interface – a much more ethical method of charging customers.
I tried this game for the first time. Annoying – spent most of my time waiting around and chatting with idiots. After a while I couldn’t even chat as that cost $$. Too do anything in a timely manner you need to pay $$.
How do these guyz make money if it’s free ? And the massive spending they put on advertising this game on every website ?????
I’m curious about where all the hot uber-cleaveged women come into this. Cuz judging by the ads they seem to be the main selling point of this game.
Looks like Evony is just a money grabbing scam. Chinese gold farmers go first party. I have gathered the information together here: http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/10/dont-play-evony/
What the hell does this girl have to do with anything?!
All I can say is that I am really pleased with the cleavage in the adds. If they would add that to the cities and other in game activities, I would think about investing my time.
Ugh..well, sure its a DECENT game..but also a rip off of some games, too…I enjoyed it for a bit, but what really annoys me are the ads, thats pretty much the only reason the game has a ton of players, mostly little kids who notice the ads and think its some sort of porn game, “Play secretly”? Seriously..Whenever I go to World chat in the game, I see people saying things like WhERe ArE THE GIRLS IN TGAME!?!?! And other stupid things like that, so basically, over 50% of the people playing the game are perverted little kids.
“Johann
July 10th, 2009 at 3:00 am
sorry jon, but the fact is that i dont like the indians or the chinese and i will never play any games made by them. they suck our money into their country and make us poorer and them richer.”
Actually johann, our politicians and major companies jump at the chance to pour money into indian and asian nations. Cheaper labor, fewer labor laws, plus government tax incentives for outsourcing… If you MUST blame anyone it should be your own country they are the ones responsible.
Here’s our take on their spam abuse and their new drastic action against their members (after we complained that day) : http://www.mmogrindhouse.com/game-news/bizarre/do-you-have-what-it-takes-to-be-the-next-spam-queen/
That game really freakin sucks after all the stupid adds ive seen i actually go to there site to findout i couldnt do any piece of darn crud that horse pitute of a game. no matter what that games has got crash. The thought of playing to earn money so you chat to others. in that worl chatting cost wat piece of F******* sh** is that. You and All of uss can tear this game down or build it better. i wasted my email address on that stupid game. Oh yea and i dare them to send ads to my email. ohhhhhh yeah, and they’ll pay for it.
Yeah, those women sure get you interested, and I’m not into games. Sex sells. So I ask myself, if it’s “free forever” then how do they make money? Hmmmm. I almost tried it but then my suspicious side took over.
No way.
Johann,
If that’s what you think about India and China then you have no idea what you’re talking about and are wholly unqualified to speak on the subject.
It’s hard to know where to begin with such an ignorant and xenophobic statement but I recommend taking a basic economics class. The Chinese and Indians are invaluable trading partners that provide, as Putin mentioned, some very essential resources for the health of the US economy. What do you think would happen if China was not there to prop up the US dollar by buying US treasury notes and holding so much US currency in reserve?
Please try and educate yourself and refrain from such idiotic racist rants on subjects you know nothing of.
I have played this game now for three weeks. In that time the servers have gone down twice. The first time, while allegedly no one could get on, one of my cities was raided 39 times. This not only destroyed my stocks but also the loyalty reduced to alarming levels to the point I almost lost this particular city. Basically I believe I was cheated.
This was raised with the support, but as most players say support never replies, I wasnt surprised when I didnt get a response and still havent.
Today all servers have gone down again. Most of the day people have been in the forum complaining and Evony has said absolutely nothing. No apology. No notice when things will be back up.
On Evony forum there has been quite a bit of talk about people cheating. I do not know one way or the other, but some players do seem to have inordinately large, unachievable and unsustainable armies. Imagine a newby having 2k of archers defending their city, to be attacked by 100k!!!!!
In some ways it is an addictive game, but with it built on a cr*ppy infrastructure/servers, with zero customer support and lopsided gameplay, there must be better free to play games out there.
Evony 2/10
look the infantry units are great when attacking enemy citys becuase they can carry much more resources back than cav and Archers, they are also important so u can send workers to pillage the city u are attacking
been on three weeks and im doin amazing still haveny found a challenge everything is level eight and i have spent no money!!!! patience and strategy if ur worried about build time research Construction it works really good later all!!!!!!!!!!
Johann
July 10th, 2009 at 3:00 am
sorry jon, but the fact is that i dont like the indians or the chinese and i will never play any games made by them. they suck our money into their country and make us poorer and them richer.”
JOHANN, you are IGNORANT like all racists . yeah, blame smart people for you being stupid . chinese and indians are SMART that is why the world is courting them. its not just cheap labor. cheap labor can be had in many countries .
why don’t you go back to school and learn Math, then you too may get a decebt job. oh that’s right I forgot: you go to school to go on field trips and other useless nonsense while thirld world countries schools actually TEACH .