There are a few forms of communication in this game, all of which are important, when utilized correctly. There are the (currently 4) types of chat, and the two different mail types.

Chat: A live room in which you can talk to other player online. They type of chat lets you know what players you will find there.

Beginners Chat: A free chat that can be used until the player leaves beginners protection. This is useful for asking for help.

World Chat: 0.36$ per text string, you will receive a few free speakers for this, but otherwise can’t chat here. It isn’t worth it anyway. The only two reasons to look here are:

1. You’re looking for an alliance or
2. You’re looking for alliance members

Alliance Chat: Only alliance chat can be seen here (and whispers). Alliance chat is in blue, and does show in world chat. Less spam.

Private Chat: A clear form of chat in which you can have a private discussion with other players. It is vital you learn how to do this early in the game.

Hint: How to whisper. 2 options:

1. Type a backslash (/) then name (/Arumen) (caps don’t matter)
2. Or left click there name and a small menu will appear. Select whisper.

The two forms of mail are private mail and mass message. Mass messaging (as of 5/18) is currently broken, but is supposed to, if you have a high enough rank, send a message to all the alliance members you have.

Private mail is a simple single person mail you send when the other player isn’t online. Good for talking to bullies, since you can get out more words.

Misinformation: a way to keep enemies off you is too lie. But, be careful. The enemy may have ways of telling you’re lying.

BAD LIES:

I have experienced a few of these;

“My cousin is at the top man, he can destroy your whole alliance” Killed this player. There is No player good enough to destroy an alliance with 4 million prestige. Sorry.

“My prestige is double yours” Anyone can check this. Many players don’t realize this. Type / and then the liars name. “/liepants” and then say “Hi” or something like that. Then right click the name and select check to see the number of cities and the prestige of the other player. Be careful whispering something insultive though. They may be two times your size. I was actually double his size.

“If you attack me too much, I will report you to Evony” Bullying isn’t reportable. I wouldn’t do it, but you are allowed to. Now, insulting another player, that’s against the rules.

There isn’t a good written lie in this game. The best way to lie is too kill all of the enemies spies and by having a high level informatics tech. If you do, your enemies will get nothing, and not consider attacking you.

Lord Arumen

Prestige and honor can be two confusing things. How do you earn them? What do they do? Well, in the simple form, nothing. But they show everything.

Prestige: Gained by building units and buildings, researching techs and killing NPC’s

Honor: Gained by killing more of the enemy than you lose. Must be another player

Wait… I lost Honor but won the fight… Honor is based on the resources that were transferred in the fight. This most often happens when you attack a city with a small amount of traps. Your men may be more valuable than the traps you took down, therefore resulting in a loss of honor.

WHAT! I just lost 11k honor because some jerk with three times my prestige destroyed my army! This isn’t all that unlikely. Honor isn’t really that important: Though fun to earn, it isn’t really a measure of ability so much as a measure of bullying.

Prestige is required for rank advancement and a quest requires prestige. This makes prestige more important than honor. There is no way to cheat for prestige. Some people say you can by building and rebuilding cottages. This wastes 700 goods and gets 1 prestige.  It’s almost as fast to just make warriors. Warriors also generate 1 prestige per make, but it’s not at all cheating. Warriors are a staple to the fighting force. Feel free to build as many as you want, or as few as you want.

This is the player scale for ability:

20k or less prestige: Beginner

21k — 30k prestige: Learner

31k — 40k prestige: Low Player

41k — 50k prestige: Average player

51k — 70k prestige: Advanced player

71k — 100k prestige: Threat Player

101k–200k prestige: Power Player

201k and up prestige: Player Lord

Of course, any of these ranks could be an inactive player, but the further you move up the spectrum, the less likely.

Hint: Judge peoples cities by their prestige, their armies by their honor

How to quickly earn prestige: Be active. There isn’t any way to really speed your prestige. Make sure you are building and researching things in all of your cities. Also, make sure you are always producing troops and wall defenses, and those troops are attacking valleys. Of course, attacking valleys doesn’t result in much prestige, but the rank advancement and medals will help you.

Honor scale: (only applies to 50k prestige and up)

% of honor compared to prestige:

0% honor = hasn’t fought/been fought or lost big

1-9% honor = probably attacked an inactive, or lost honor recently.

10-20% honor = average player

50% honor = fighter

80% honor = champion

100% honor = warlord

150% and up (some over 1000% honor) = war god

But in truth, there are a lot of war gods. Just make sure you don’t get in there way.

Lord Arumen

Loyalty is a very important part about this game. You will see that it is the small number next to tax rate. It will probably say “80/0” unless you have a tax rate higher than 20%. So what happens when you lose loyalty? You lose people. You then lose gold. If you lose enough people you lose goods. A simple slide to doom. Fortunately, loyalty is easily recovered. All you must do is go to your town hall, go to comfort, and select Praying or Disaster Relief.

Hint: Disaster relief is cheap and costs food. Prayer is expensive and costs gold. Which one is a smart idea? Disaster DUH! (Prayer is only for emergencies.)

So how do you lose loyalty anyway? Well there are 3 different ways:

Over Taxation: You’ve taxed your people more than they want (and they want 0). Its no big deal to only have 75% or even 50% of your max population, so long as the jobs get done.

Getting Attacked: When you lose a defense, the enemies damage you town’s loyalty. If it is too low, they steal it.

Levees: Fairly useless late in the game, levees are the opposite of comforting. Levees deal 20 damage to loyalty that automatically comes back slowly.

Public Grievance: This is damage to loyalty that doesn’t repair on its own. You have to use disaster relief for this one (That quickly fixes public grievance, a whole 15 points)

Comforting and levying can only be done once every 15 minutes.

Lord Arumen

Something that many players want to learn how to do is how to adequately defend themselves. Here is the how to on defending yourself:

Hint: Looking weak. Don’t look like a target till you are strong enough to defeat your enemies. Keep your town hall below lvl 7 and upgrade everything else.

Traps are only one time use

Machinery: this tech requires a lvl 9 academy. It allows your traps to have a higher survival rate, important to have traps actually be useful.

Note: Traps are also known as “fortified units”. It is sometimes difficult to tell what the game designers meant by certain phrases.

Another good way to defend is through exploitation of armies of archers and swords. These units are the best defenders and must be employed as such. But in all likelihood, you will lose battles in Evony. When attacking, you only lose honor. But when defending, you lose something much more important. Loyalty.

Opening the gates: Go to your rally point and select open the gates. This will send your army to fight the opposing ones. It may be advisable to not open the gates, in case of a larger attack, but it is up to the player’s judgment.

Lord Arumen

]]> http://hods.com/evony/defending-yourself/feed/ 0 http://hods.com/evony/buying-things-speaking/ http://hods.com/evony/buying-things-speaking/#comments Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:38:30 +0000 Hods http://hods.com/evony/?p=365

A question in this game occurs on whether or not it is indeed, “Free Forever.” Well, there isn’t a single thing in the game you need to buy. I’d say on average, players who buy are 20% more successful (Prestige wise) than others. I advocate supporting UMGE for this great game, but           don’t ever feel pressure to buy anything.

Cents: Just to clarify for you new players, 1 game cent is 10 cents, so its 1 USD = 10 game cents.

Speakers: In world chat, you need speakers to talk. (They cost $$$) I personally have no issue with that, because the scum going on in world chat isn’t worth reading anyway. Alliance chat is free though.

Hint: Whisper! When you have a question or want to join an alliance, left click the speaker’s name. Then click whisper. These private messages are very nice. There is even a private channel.

I hope after reading this you will feel inclined to help others on this game too. When you are on world chat and you see a noob falling behind, whisper him the answer to his question. Maybe even suggest this guide.

Lord Arumen

Phacts: Pseudo or fake facts.

A lot of faulty information surrounds combat.

Walls: At some point in the game when you attack walls, you may notice that while the enemy has no defenders, you lost your men. This usually happens because of small contingents of archer only forces fail to break the wall.

Rumors/Common Questions:

Did those Abatis kill my men? No. Abatis only kill Calvary (and Cataphracts). If you lost a fight on a wall, you failed to break its durability.

Do I have to stock my archer’s towers with men? Archers Towers cost no food and require no archers. They are, however, about as powerful as 4 archers.

What happens if I run out of food? Your men will die until you reach a balance. This most often happens when you build a bunch of men over night and forget about the fact they must be fed.

Catapults are going to KILL ME! You actually can’t lose any buildings in any attack, except if you lose a city.

The simulator at the rally point said I would win… but I didn’t. When you attack a valley, assume it has tech equal to its level. For example, a lvl 4 valley has lvl 4 archery, lvl 4 compass, lvl 4 iron working, etc. But you can also assume it only has an academy equal to that level: lvl 1 at valley lvl 1, so no archers. Attacking lvl 3 or lower valleys will cause the least casualties, while lvl 4 have a huge leap in damage.

The reason the rally point doesn’t work: it doesn’t take tech into account.

How can I improve my chances in combat? Well you have three things to take into account:

Tech:  If you have a high attack tech, you will deal more damage. A high ranged tech will improve archer range (an extremely important advantage)

Hero: Your heroes attack will improve your army (% improved is = to number. Example: Hero with 54 attack increases attack to 154% of normal)

Items:  These will improve your army a lot:

Corselet:  An armor improver. This improves your army’s armor by 10% for a time (24 hours or 1 week, depending on which one it is) ex. Swordsman has 385 armor (-38.5% damage)

War Horn: An attack improver. This improves your army’s attack by 10% for a time (24 hours or 1 week, depending on which one it is) ex. Pike man has 185 attack (185 possible damage)

War Ensign: Allows a 25% increase to max number of troops sent in one battle. Useful late in the game. (125,000 troops at lvl 10)

Penicillin: Adds 30% to the cure rate, this allows a total of 40% of all attacking troops to be recovered at least, near 70% of all defenders.

Hint: Wait… Recover troops? After a battle you can go to your rally point and select the cure troops button. A certain number of your men may be healed for a price.

These questions are constantly posted all over the forum and have now been answered.

Lord Arumen

Soon after getting your town hall to level three, you will want to build your second city. First, find a flat on the map. Click it to check two things. If someone owns it and what level is it. If someone owns it look for another. You don’t want a possible enemy. If no one owns it, check its level. 4 or higher? Unless you have around 300 men now, leave that alone too. (200 men probably could take a lvl 4, but why bother risking your men?) Send around 150 men to capture a lvl 3 and 100 or so to capture a two or one.

So how do I make a second city? Well, you need a flat. As far as I know, flat level in no way affects the city based on it. Then you need 250 workers. (The lord’s package provides these). Once you have a choice flat and your workers, you need 10,000 of EVERY resource, including gold. You also need to do the quest PROMOTION and under that, KNIGHT. The lords package will give you the necessary medals for this.

Medals: Very important in Evony, these are required for rank advancement. You can gain these, with a 40% success rate, by attacking valleys. Certain valleys yield certain medals more frequently. (See charts section, posted later)

A second city can fulfill many purposes:

1. A Barracks: Make 80% farms and 9-16 barracks
2. A (insert resource here) camp: Make 80% one good
3. A Second city: Don’t focus on anything
4. An Army Hopper:  80% farms, lvl 9-10 rally point, lvl 5-6 feasting hall
5. A Fortress: Even goods, high level wall, tons of traps

It’s advisable that by your third city you have at least one barrack city.

City Planning: While the location of buildings doesn’t matter, what you make does:  There are 11 buildings that you can only have one of (not including the Town hall) and there are 32 building spots. There are three buildings you can make multiples of: Barracks, Cottages, and Warehouses. Of the 11 buildings, a few become useless later in the game. Forge: You only need 1, maybe 2. You can destroy it in any other city after you build a workshop. The Inn: You only need one high level one; your other cities can be reinforced with a hero that they can use. So the first city you make has 21 spots for 3 buildings. A perfectly balanced city would have 7 of each, but that’s stupid (No offense). You should have, for balance, 12 cottages, 2 warehouses, and 6 barracks. Less barracks and more cottages is fine for a warrior factory.

Hint: Capturing Cities, this saves a lot of time and effort, and can be fairly easy. But who know what this noob you just stole from has. You may have gotten worse than if you had just built your own city. But probably not.

Lord Arumen

One of the most important things to do is to get in a good alliance. Without one, you are in trouble. Once you do get into one, you may get anywhere from 200 to 1000 prestige upon joining. But what makes a good alliance? 3 main points:

Locality: Are you close to them? If not can you teleport to them?

Teleport: There are two types of teleportation items. The regular teleport is sort of random. You do get to choose which state so you have about a 1 in 500 chance of being near an ally. The second type is advanced teleport. This lets you choose the exact location to teleport to.

Activity: Are the players active? If not, just leave. You want an active alliance.

Honor code: Are the players like you? Do they share your beliefs? It may make it hard to stay in the alliance if they don’t.

Should you make your own alliance? No. Not unless it’s within the first week or two of the server. A new alliance to late in the server will simply fail.

Enemies: Well, where you have 100 allies, you may have thousands of enemies. Fortunately, many of these players (90%) will listen to an honest plea for them to stop. The last 10% will stop at nothing to get under your skin. These players often attack new players (like you). How to stop them?

Alliance: A powerful alliance will deter most attacks

Truce Treaty: This item stops enemy attacks temporarily.

Truce Agreement: This will put you under a 12hour beginner’s protection-like state. Very useful, but you can’t use it again for 12hours afterwards.

Warehouse it up: Yes I said that these where bad, but not useless. Warehousing up is building that up warehouses and making sure you spend all your goods. This is perhaps the best way to deter these attacks, as long as you only have one city. Otherwise, the aggressor may just want your city.

Lord Arumen

An important thing to make sure you do in this game is to gather goods. There are a few ways to do this:

1. The gatherer approach. All players go through this. It is simply when you build lots of city things so you can increase flow of goods.

Hint: Important Numbers:  1800 is 1 good/2 seconds, 3600 is 1:1 goods: seconds and 36000 is 10 per second.

1. The raiders approach: This is simply when you steal all the goods you need. An excellent approach that yields a lot of goods, I don’t do this myself.
2. The gold approach: You gather as much gold as possible through any means and then you have a high level marketplace. Why is this good? Well, when you have a decent inflow of your own goods, you can prowl the market for deals. This will allow you to get a lot of goods per gold.  (I’ve seen iron and food hit .01 on the market)
3. The lumber approach: This is the only good an entire economy can be based off. Extremely valuable and tradable, a lumber city can generate up to 4 times as much as any other city.

Each individual city may be based off one of these economies, and I have personally tested all of them. Raiding yields the most danger, but the lumber economy is a gigantic lure.

More on Economy:

City Plots: These are where you build your resource buildings.

Hint: High Level vs. Many. It’s always good to have one high level building rather than 10 low level buildings. But you still want to fill up your city spots. It is advisable to leave two or three spots open, in case you really need a resource

Market: This is where players trade goods. Wood will be the highest price, iron the lowest price.

Warehouses: A lvl 9 warehouse with lvl 9 storage tech is good, but otherwise warehouses are really very bad. I’d build one only for the quest and for the prestige by making the tech.

Rally Point: This is an economic building in the fact that goods transports count as troop movement. Make sure this is a high enough level.

Resource buff:  If you go to your items (remember where that is?) and open up produce, you will see a few items. These will temporarily increase how much you produce for a certain amount of time. Some last one day, other 7. These buffs DO stack if you use more than one. New Players: It is advisable you wait till you have a 36000 production in what you want to buff first.

Hint: Types of resource buffs: There is the item, as described above. In addition, your Mayor’s POLITICS level will affect it positively.  (Bonus % = hero politics). All cities also have a 100 base production. The technology plus is from the agriculture tech, etc. The valley plus is what was described in the taking over valley section. The basic production is how much your city plots produce.

Lord Arumen