Farm & Food Cities:

We believe Farm specialized cities to be the 3^rd best type of specific cities. Lumber and Iron cities are more strategic, but Farm cities are more effective than stone cities.

Pro:

- You can support a larger army without having negative food production.

Con:

- If your farms cannot support that large army, then you will have negative food production and no means of getting more food. Since you used up all your resource field slots, you cannot produce other resources to make gold.

Sawmill & Lumber Cities:

We believe Lumber cities to be the 1^st best type of specific cities. This means that this is a better city than food, stone, or iron.

Pro:

- Due to the high prices of lumber in the market, you can usually sell 1 lumber for twice the amount of food. Therefore, you can support a twice as large army as that of a Food city. In addition to that, lumber is a necessity for researching technologies, constructing buildings, training troops, and building fortified units. In essence, lumber is the most important resource in the Evony.

Con:

- You have to wait 30 minutes for resources to transport to your city through the market.

Quarry & Stone Cities:

We believe Stone cities to be the 4^th best type of specific cities. This means that this is the worst city to have and that food, lumber, and iron are all better options.

Pro:

- You can have a huge amount of stone to build fortifications and construct buildings.

Con:

- Stone is the least valuable resource and therefore is fairly worthless. The average trade rate is 100 stone for 1 food, 500 stone for 1 lumber and iron. The prices speak for themselves.

Ironmine & Iron Cities:

We believe Iron cities to be the 2^nd best type of specific cities. It was tough to decide which was more effective – iron or lumber cities. Iron is definitely a good city to have. Why is Iron worse than Lumber? Yes, we are aware that lumber and iron prices are virtually equal, so it boiled down to one thing: Ironmines take longer to build than Sawmills. That is the only reason.

Pro:

- Due to the high prices of iron in the market, you can usually sell 1 iron for twice the amount of food. Therefore, you can support a twice as large army as that of a Food city. In addition to that, iron is a necessity for researching technologies, constructing buildings, training troops, and building fortified units. Iron is equal in prices to that of lumber.

Con:

- You have to wait 30 minutes for resources to transport to your city through the market.

Sending a bunch of your troops to reinforce an ally’s city will leave them there to fight and defend the city. The owner of the city may not control your army and you may recall your troops at any time. Food will be consumed on the owner’s part as if your army were his/hers.

You have to select the “allow troops of allied members to garrison your current city” option in the embassy to allow your alliance teammates to support you.

The higher the level, the more troops you can dispatch at a time.

Level 1 you may send 10,000 units to attack a target.

Level 5 you may send 50,000 units to attack a target.

Level 10 you may send 100,000 units to attack a target.

You get the point.

What does opening my gate do?

The “Open Gate’” feature determines whether your army adds its strength to the city defenses, or stays safely in barracks to leave the wall defenses to take on an attack unaided.

If you open the gate, your army will help defend your city but you also risk losing the troops.

If you close the gate, your troops will stay put as an opponent attacks you, but you have no way of losing your army save losing your city.

What is the Medic Camp?

In your Rally Spot you will find a button that says Medic Camp. This holds all of the troops that have been wounded in your recent battles. You may heal your wounded troops for a certain gold fee, or else they will eventually all die.

Your army is a crucial part of this game. While I personally used a very small army the first few months, it all depends on your play style. I categorize war into three different play styles:

1. Diplomatic: Small armies, a lot of talking to other players. Most people will stop attacking you, for a few days at least, if you ask them (as long as you’re far smaller than them.) Your army will only be for raiding inactive and very weak players.
2. War Lord: Build up large armies consisting of only warriors and archers. As of the point this was written, archers are the “God” unit that in large numbers beat anything. WIth the new patch though, Ballistae and Trebuchets are more important, so consider making them.
3. Defensive: Build up large armies of swords and archers. More expensive but a very good offensive force when need be. Also, your walls will be filled with mostly Archers Towers (Which I will talk about later)

The best units to build in this game are: Archers, Warriors, and Swords. But why is this?

Archers: Ranged infantry, and they are the “God” unit. Enough of these can kill any unit, since they do 60 damage to infantry and have a range of 1260 (since they require archery 1 to build). That gives them 5 shots on the fastest infantry.

Warriors: Cost only 230 goods and carry 20. They take a mere 30 seconds to build and become a screaming axe of death when they get to about 70k in size.

Swords: Cost wise, Swords are the best unit in the game. And they are worth it, but only with archers as backup. Else they will be mowed down all the same by the opposing archers.

Other Units:

Workers: Weak and pitiful, they carry a lot. Also, 250 are required for a new city.

Scouts: Worst fighters, besides Transporters and Workers, a scout army is a VERY important thing to have. You will kill off enemy scouts and prevent them from gaining full knowledge. Do reduced damage to walls, or none at all.

Pike men: Fast and with a 50% bonus versus Calvary, they look like a good choice. And if you mass them they are. But don’t rely on them.

Calvary: Powerful against archers in en masse, these units die quickly to abati.

Hint: When you attack a city and your force dies and you all you see are abati, they DIDN’T get killed by them. The units failed to break through the wall. Unless those units are calvary

Cataphracts: Extremely powerful, a legion of these would be the most destructive force in the game. It would also be impossible to support. They cost 36 food each.

Transporters: Hold 5000 goods, but move very slow. Transporters are a necessity for sieges, allowing you to steal a lot of the enemy’s goods.

Ballista: These weirdly target archers first. Good against archers, but often killed by other things soon afterwards.

Ram: Powerful durability wreckers. Use to smash through high level walls.

Catapults:  Powerful ranged units. Can kill towers easily without being hit. Super expensive and extensive to build.

Now what’s important: Don’t mix units of the same type. Send armies of one kind of melee, archers, and siege. Warriors, Pikes, and Swords sounds like it should work the best, but fails too, unless you are trying to use the meat shield method, upon which this works.

Following these basic combat rules should lead you to victory on the field.

Lord Arumen

You will truly be beginning when you have gotten your good production up to 1800 per hour. That’s a decent 1 per 2 seconds, so you should see a steady flow.

Then you need to have a level (lvl) 2 rally point, lvl 1 inn, lvl 1 feasting hall, lvl 1 wall, lvl 1 academy, lvl 2 forge, lvl 1 workshop, 4 lvl 2 cottages. This will let you do a lot more. First, you probably have a decent amount of gold (10,000 or so). Go to the academy. Click on Agricultural Tech and get it. That will increase your food production. Do the same for Lumbering tech. This is for wood.

Hint: Running low on supplies? Click BUY under your recourses. This is EXTREMELY useful early in the game, and much better than buying amulets.

YOUR ARMY

Next we need an army.

Get your barracks to level two. Train 2 warriors in groups of 50 or so. That will give you roughly 100 men. You may not have enough for this, so train in smaller groups. If you’re lucky, you will get a junior battalion.

Junior Battalion: 100-250 free warriors and 100-250 free workers. Useful at the very beginning, not so much after that.

With this force, you should be able to take over a lvl one valley. But first we need a hero. Upgrade the feasting hall to lvl 2. (You should have a Mayor by now. If not, get a hero with high politics and intelligence and appoint him as mayor. The you will still need a second hero)

Hint: Make Sure you choose a hero with high attack for your general and high politics and intelligence for your mayor

For your first valley take anything (a forest would be most useful at this point) and with this valley you will increase your production of a certain good. Flats don’t increase production; instead they are able to be turned into cities.

ACADEMY

After taking your first flat, go to your academy. Level it up to lvl 2 (Use a beginners instruction for instantaneous build). Then research Informatics. Speed up is free on this (The only tech on which it is)

Informatics: A lot of new layers are confused on this. This tech is ONLY useful at levels two and up. Otherwise, it does nothing but give you scouts. If your tech level of this is one higher than a valley your scouting, you can see what TYPE of unit is there. If it is two levels higher you can see TYPE AND NUMBER. This is one of the most useful abilities in the game.

Then research military science. This will increase unit production speed. This will help later in the game more than now, but you need military science to build a lot of other units.

TOWN HALL:

We want this up next. You should have it to level 2 by the time you read this. That’s good. Click upgrade on the next one. OH dear! The time for building is probably around 50 minutes. Don’t worry; we can get two quests done by this: Use Primary Plans. These will speed up research or build time by an hour. This will instantly complete the town hall, while finishing two quests. Get the rewards in the quest tab, then go back to the present. You will now be able to receive the Lord’s Package. Open it up like the newbie’s package.

This will put you on your way to being a great lord. Things to note: DON’T go to a lvl 5 town hall, there are many things to improve in your city. Going to a lvl 5 Town Hall will end your safety early, which will hurt you.

Lord Arumen

Workers: Workers are meant to transfer bulk resources. They are very weak and cannot defend themselves well. Thankfully though, they can carry a lot of load. In addition, you need 250 to construct a new city.

Scouts: Scouts are the weakest of all the cavalry units. Scouts are very important to have however, because you need them to scout out enemy cities and valleys. Scouts also are the only units that can destroy your opponents’ scouts when he/she scouts you.

Pike-men: Pike-men are very fast and are the ideal unit to destroy enemy cavalry units. However, due to the fact that other units are just as effective, few players use Pike-men in bulk.

Archers: Without a doubt, the most intimidating army is one that consists of a large amount of Archers. Archers are by far the most valuable unit. Why? I have explained the importance of range in a past article. To read more on why range and archers are your top priority, please click HERE.

Cavalry: Cavalry are swift and speedy. If you have a lot of them, you can take out archers, swordsmen, warriors, and virtually anything in your path. Their biggest weakness is Abatis.

Cataphracts: Cataphracts are a terror when you have them in great multitude. Of course, everything has a catch. Cataphracts would destroy everyone in your path if you had enough of them, however, they are extremely difficult to support. With a cost of 36 food per Cataphract, anyone who can maintain a large army of them has to be very actively plundering.

Transporters: Transporters are Workers that are beefed up. They are slower but have a load of 5,000 which is very important when you are plundering or putting a city under siege.

Ballista: Ballista are expensive, take a long time to create, and are pretty slow, but are worth it if you make enough of them. They are one of the only units that can effectively take out archers.

Battering Rams: These are powerful durability wreckers. They are used to smash through enemy walls and defenses.

Catapults: These are the strongest ranged units. If your archery technology is high enough, you can take out enemy archer towers without even being hit once. Catapults are also the most expensive to build, not to mention they take a very long time to build.

I will go into more detail on battle strategies in later articles.