As a brand new player, a strategy build up game can be pretty daunting in the beginning, but it doesn't have to be. This guide will help you clear some of the fog.
Despite whatever ads brought you to Evony, it's essential to understand that Evony is not a puzzle game. Evony is a Player vs Player strategy/war game that is intended to be played for years and is based around city building and war.
There are two major parts to the game, PvP (player vs player) and PvE (player vs event) or commonly called by players "monster hunters" or "farmers". PvP players are fighting players who gain achievements by killing other players' troops. PvE players are players that participate mostly in the game's events for rank rewards and killing event monsters. Some players are a combination of both.
Deciding early on what kind of player you are with the basics I've outlined, will give your game play and building focus and direction. You can build from the beginning as the type of player you see yourself as.
Getting Started
You will be dropped into a new server at random but it may not be the newest server. You can check once you're out of the tutorials which server you're in by going to the map view, then world map and finally the server list. If you want to change to the newest server, you can use the migrate token but it has to be used before you reach level 6, the same level that allows you to join or create an alliance. It's better for your own game play and experience to start on the game's newest server so it's recommended to check before investing too much into your city and moving to the newest server first, when the game allows you to.
The game's tutorial literally only covers basic building. It does nothing to educate on PvP or monster killing beyond killing Fenrirs. There isn't any information available in the game about monster buffs or game mechanics for PvP. Many experienced players share information based on what they've learned by experimentation. Experienced players will tell you the tutorials can be skipped by clicking ten times quickly but if you're brand new, it's a good idea to watch them to at least get the basics down, just bare in mind the tutorials don't cover a lot of the overall game.
The puzzles have no usefulness to the overall game other than some minor rewards when you beat them. You can get Cleopatra as a general, but that's the only decent reward. You don't have to participate in them at all if you don't want to.
The game will give you Spartacus as a general for free but he's not worth keeping once you have better generals. Temporarily, he can be used in the early game but save your General experience points that you earn for better Generals and don't enhance or cultivate him. You can sell him for gold when you have better generals. More information on Generals later in this article.
You'll notice on the top of the Settings menu the game has its own clock by which most events are scheduled. This clock is not local and the time in every server is the same. Server resets every day at 0800 server time, which is 3 AM EST. It's crucial to know what time server reset is in your local time for bubbling during PvP events and when other events start and end.
Building Your City
If you can afford to, buy one 7 day speed up a week with gems and save them for large builds. If not, collect and save them. They will be needed the most for; Keep, Wall, Troop Training Centers, Academy.
Every building in the city has its own function but the prison, for example, is optional. You'll never be required to level it in order to advance so if you're a strictly PvE player, save yourself the resources and don't bother with building it. If you decide later on to be a PvP player, you can always build it then.
The number of resource tiles you have for each resource is also optional, although at least one of each is required. Beyond that is your choice but as a beginner, choose to build the most tiles for the resource you will need the most according to what troops you will build the most of. PvP players build more range, ground and siege while PvE players build more mounted.
Mounted - Ore
Ground - Food
Range - Lumber
Siege - Stone
Keep all city building levels even with your Keep. If not, you'll fall behind and catching up might become overwhelming and more difficult. You could get stopped from advancing by allowing certain buildings to get behind.
If you stockpile resources from the beginning, upgrading will be a little easier at higher levels but even then, don't do too much at once and end up out of essentials like resources and gold.
In the early stages of the game, it is easy to reach a point where you think you have plenty of certain things; resources, gems, speed ups, resource stones, material, gold. Trust me when I say, that is never the case. You will always need everything because everything gets more expensive, the higher you get. Every opportunity there is to gain any of those things, use them.
Research
Research in the academy will make your city more functional, strengthen your troops and improve your performance in the game. Completing research can be the difference between whether or not you get wounded troops when killing a monster or not. Completing research costs time, like everything else in the game but also gold, a form of game currency.
The further down the trees you get, the more it will cost and when you begin the advanced military research, it will cost you research stones as well which you can run out of quickly if you aren't careful. The key to not running out of either is to not complete research faster than you can get the resources they require. A good rule of thumb is to let them run and not speed them up. Overnight or while you're not in game is a great time to do this. If you need to complete research for a daily task, complete one with speed ups that doesn't require any research stones and is cheap on gold, then let another one run until the next day and only speed it up for the next day's daily activities if it won't finish on its own in time.
Gold
Gold is a secondary game currency used mostly to do research, cultivate generals, buy Generals from the Tavern, enhance Generals, upgrade General gear and much later in the game, build T14s.
How to get gold:
•Occupy subordinate cities.
•Kill Bayar Knights.
•Kill Vikings (an alliance event every Monday-Wednesday).
•Complete daily activities.
•Sell Art Collections (at higher levels, once you have completed the sets three times, indicated by the three stars at above each collection in the Art Museum).
•Buy Packs.
Gems
Gems are the main game currency and can be obtained through various events like Crazy Eggs, Daily Activities, King's Path, Login Rewards without spending a dime. They can also be harvested on the world map if you're not a spender.
They'll be needed more at higher levels than lower and you'll use them the most on things like refinements on good gear at the higher levels (more on that later), the first dragon if you want it, General's specialties and Truce Agreements to protect your city from attack all of which are pretty costly so don't spend on anything you don't have to, like speeding up a building upgrade and always have some on hand. They're easier to get for spenders but if you're not a spender, they're a precious commodity.
Resources
There are two elements in the game that are about to become your best friend. The first is resources (the second, I'll get to later). It is important to your own progress to be gathering at every opportunity that you have. Whenever you're not in game and sometimes while you are in game. It's a good idea to gather with a couple of marches (after you've unlocked five) and leave three available to join and run boss rallies with.
Growth will take longer for non-spenders than it will for spenders so it's vital to non-spenders to not be wasteful with resources of any kind, conservative with what they have, gathering at all possible opportunities and to be in the largest alliances (top 5-10 depending on the server).
Monster Killing
The reasonable number of wounded to accept on a monster (and rally regularly) is about 1,500 but 0 is the number to reach, always. 0 wounded is ideal. So even if you're getting just the 1,500, check research to see if your mounted HP is finished (military tree) check your General gear, make sure it's the right gear for the monster you're killing and check if you're using the right tier and number of troops to kill that particular monster.
Another is to understand that the power differential between monster levels is steep and event monsters are harder to kill than others. You'll find you can kill a Junior Cerberus with more ease than a Level 3 Warlord or Golem, and most definitely a Junior Hydra despite the power amounts being close.
Only mounted troops are used to kill a monster but when joining a rally, it's better to use a single archer. Archers don't fight because mounted kills the monster before archers get a turn so they don't return wounded (usually, but it happens pretty rarely).
Which monsters you can kill and how much wounded you take depends on several factors:
•Tier of troops sent to attack.
•Number of troops being sent.
•General and their buffs.
•General's gear and enhancements.
•General's skill books.
•Mounted troop research.
Some articles will give estimates of what tier of troops and a number of them will kill certain monsters but these don't account for anything else of the above named factors and after testing in the game, they are usually not accurate.
The best way to find out what you monsters is learning from experienced players in your alliance and run your own experiments.
Truce Agreements, Commonly Known as Bubbles
This is that second best friend you're about to gain that I mentioned before. Truce Agreements are the shield that protect your city from PvP attacks and will be used regularly during weekly and bi weekly PvP events (KE, SvS) or daily, but that depends on how your server is set up. They come in intervals of 8 hours, 24 hours, 3 days and 7 days. PvP players will juxtapose between 8 and 24 hour "bubbles" between game play periods during PvP weekends while PvE players will use the 3 day bubbles for the entire duration.
You will need to bubbled every weekend either for one PvP event or another but they all occur server wide on weekends. The starting day and time is the only difference.
SvS begins at 00:00 server time on Friday evening (EST time zone) and lasts exactly 48 hours. So if you live in the US for example, SvS begins at 7 PM EST on Friday. Your server may continue KE after or choose not to, but that will depend on your server and how it is set up by the alliance leaders.
KE begins at server reset on Saturday (3 AM EST time zone) and ends at server reset on Tuesday for the first 60 days of the server and then changes to work with SvS every other weekend to a schedule of Thursday at server reset until Monday at server reset.
Troops
There are four troop types in the game:
•Ground
•Range
•Mounted
•Siege
The game mechanics for troops are designed in a rock, paper, scissors style in which: ground beats range, range beats mounted, mounted beats ground, siege beats all of them but are fragile and expensive to repair and for this reason are typically used by players only for gathering but they are designed to be defensive troops They are the only troops that cost gems to repair.
Range are the most popular PvP troops, followed by ground. Mounted are used as PvE troops while siege is predominantly used for gathering although big spenders will use them that don't mind the repair bill for siege bombs and in city defense. However, any of these four troop types can be used in PvP.
You'll start the game with tier 1 troops or as they are called by players, T1s, and max at T15. The tiers are represented by Roman Numerals.
T1s are obviously weak troops that won't do anything for you at the very beginning and therefore not a lot of them are needed at this stage but you can come back to them later and build only what you need for layers. You also can't build more than 100 at a time at the beginning whereas at higher levels, you'll be able to build significantly more at a time.
Layering is a two prong system of building troops; one for attack, the other for defense. While the builds have some similarities, they are significantly different. One is meant for troops being sent out to attack others, the other is meant to remain in your city to defend and the number of them are drastically different as well. Layering either for attack or defense however, takes time and won't be built nor useful until you've reached higher levels, like level 30 for example.
New tiers of troops are unlocked at levels: 1, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 35 and 40.
Blazons
When you collect replicas of blazons you already have, they can be used to level the matching blazon. The higher the level of the blazon, the more that is needed to achieve the next level.
The blazons also have preset slots for quick changing in and out between sets during PvP.
Generals
You'll find that there are multiple color option frames for Generals:
•Gold
•Purple
•Blue
•Green
•White
Right off the bat, the blue, green and white are not valuable and their cost will reflect that (under 1 mil in gold). They have poor buffs, and don't amount to much long term against the better generals defined as Epic and Historic.
There are two sets of the gold and purple frame generals. Ones with gold helmets in the corner and ones without. The ones without are also not worth anything but might seem valuable because of the rise in cost to buy them with gold in the tavern.
The two types of generals that have the gold crowns are Epic and Historic, as mentioned above, although it is only the Historic generals that are really worth cultivating and leveling because they are the best ones but Epic generals can be used as place holders until better ones are obtained. Epic Generals have a gold crown and a purple frame. The Historic Generals have the gold crown and gold frame.
The gold crown will be in four places (if buying from the tavern). The first is above the pink dot that represents that general in the row of the generals offered. The second is the gold helmet next to the name of the general (again if buying out of the tavern). Both of these are pictured above.
The third is in the top left corner of the General's frame. The last is in the banner, next to their name. Checking all of them will save you the trouble of buying an ineffective general.
Only Epic and Historic Generals will have a gold preset buff as well. A preset buff is a default increase in a General's troop stats before they have skill books added to them.
You can get new Generals in a few different ways:
•Packs - the most obvious but sometimes there's also events that give the chance to get good Generals and they usually involve buying packs as well, occasionally not though.
•Tavern - using gems to refresh through the general options to find good ones. Quality of generals in the tavern rises, the higher the tavern level gets. Also where you can see all of the Historic and Epic generals in the game by using the Portraits button.
•Relics - will give General fragments you can collect until you have 30 to compose the general.
•Wheel of Fortune - although there are only a very few select generals in the wheel and they aren't good quality.
•The Great General Chest - refreshes for free every two days to give you General fragments and some other rewards but if daily activities are completed every day, you'll get to open it twice every other day.
•Battlefield Shop - purchased with badges earned in the event.
The generals have different functions in the game. There are several areas of the game you will use generals in:
Subordinate Cities
It's best to use a general in a subordinate city as the Mayor that has that role in their preset buff. Which general you place in your subordinate city will be greatly determined by how you plan to use the subordinate city. Some have buffs for gold production, construction and troop training speed.
Duty Officer
Some buildings in your city will have the ability to assign a duty officer that will give various buffs depending on the building. You'll need a general with a certain number of points in Attack and Defense to become a duty officer but if you continue to level them, they can become higher level duty officers and the buffs increase. The duty officer levels are: Junior, Medium, Senior, Special and Super.
Barrack buildings for example will add additional training speed percentages and capacity for training troops but if a general with the corresponding duty officer role in their preset buff is placed there, there will be additional buffs added as well, such as another increase in training speed.
Gathering
Some generals are designed for gathering and these generals are best used for only that. They either bring back a greater amount of resources than other generals or gather faster. Generals with troop load increases bring back extra resources from cities during attacks but it's recommended to use these as assistant generals, not main. The higher level the general and better the troops are plus the addition of good general gear, the faster you'll be able to gather resources. Generals can make the difference between spending 8 hours in a tile and spending 4-5 hours instead.
Wall Defense
You will need a wall general to defend your city that works well with the troop type you have the most of and will buff troops that will be sent to attack your dominant troops.
For example, if you were mounted troop heavy, you would more than likely be attacked by an enemy with range after being scouted. So you would need a defense general that would give buffs for both mounted and also the ground troops you have, because ground can counter range. But this only works if ground troops were in your city at the time of the attack.
The Main Defense General will be the one that holds the dragon or spiritual beast. If it is assigned to the Assistant Defense General, it will turn gray, therefore rendered inactive. However, if the assistant General's buff requires a dragon for all or part of their buff and they have one assigned, they will still need it to gain the particular buff that is associated with the dragon. Above is an example of a general with a requirement for a dragon to gain certain buffs.
Monster Killing
The General that is used to kill monsters must be a mounted General with a good percentage, 25% minimum, of Mounted Attack and Defense at least, HP also if possible in order to kill high level monsters. Some of the good mounted Generals that are specific to killing monsters also have a double drop percentage rate, but not all of them. Not every mounted general is designed by the game for monsters but any mounted general can be used as a monster killer. The Mounted Generals that don't mention monsters in their preset buff are meant for Mounted PvP but that doesn't make them any less quality against monsters.
PvP
When it comes to PvP Generals, there are six types a General could be categorized as. This is the same for Defense as well.
Range PvP - General leads an army of only range troops.
Ground PvP - General leads an army of only ground troops.
Mounted PvP - General leads an army of only mounted troops.
Siege PvP - General leads an army of only siege troops.
Mixed Troop Type PvP - General leads an army of mixed troop types.
All Troop PvP - General leads an army of all troop types.
The troops that they are assigned to lead should match their strongest buff but don't have to only have buffs for just one troop type. The majority of the Historic Generals have buffs for multiple troop types but one that is stronger than the rest and that will define what kind of troops they should lead and what kind of General they are. A General with a buff of 30% range attack and 15% in ground HP is a range General, for example.
Assistant General
An assistant general is one that is an addition to your march or wall defense and can give additional buffs and power but only if the generals work well together. In order for generals to work well together, you first have to identify pairs whose preset buffs complement one another and then the assistant needs to be built to be an assistant General, not like a main General. Any general can be an assistant but In order for a Main General to have an assistant, they must be at least level 20.
When a Main General is paired with an Assistant General, only the Main General's; gear, dragon, ascensions will be in effect, not the Assistant's.
Similarly, General skill books do not stack. However, if the Main General and Assistant General have different preset buffs and/or skill books, those will work for both. This is helpful to know so you don't overly develop an Assistant General and invest more than necessary.
So the main General should have as their skill books; Attack, Defense and HP for the troop type they have the strongest buff for, but an assistant should have skills like; march speed, march size, range bonus, luck, monster's respect, etc., depending on the General's role in your city.
If you want to see if two generals' skill books are working while they are paired, you can check by placing them on your wall as Main Defense General and Assistant General. If any skill books are gray, that means they aren't working and will need to be fixed. If they remain in color, they're working.
Two examples are pictured above. Notice in the first picture, all of the skill books and the preset buff are in color on the assistant General and the only gray area is the Leadership, Attack, Defense and Politics stats are gray but in the second photo, one skill and the preset buff are gray.
The first picture is of a range and a mounted general. The second picture is of two range generals.
This tells us what is gained from an assistant general is preset buff if it is not similar to the Main General (because buffs don't stack), and the skill books if not duplicates of the main General's skill books.
Assistant Generals are used in attack marches, both PvP and PvE, rally joining, against common monsters, reinforcing and gathering and Wall Defense. There is no assistant General option for Subordinate Cities or Duty Officers.
Cultivating
Cultivating your general will increase their stats in areas that will benefit them most for their role. If a General's role is PvP, you'd want to raise their Attack and Defense stats more than their Leadership and Politics. Duty Officers would need the same to meet the game's criteria for Junior Officer and up.
A gathering General would need more focus on raising Politics and a Subordinate City General would need more focus on raising both Leadership and Politics, but every general needs all of them raised ultimately.
You'll spend gold on individual cultivations but gems can be spent on 10 cultivations at a time.
Some players believe in avoiding red numbers altogether but that's not necessary because cultivation is a process and the points are often a trade off. One cultivation may give results of -1 for Attack but the next is +2.
Again, what the role of the General you're cultivating matters here extensively. It's acceptable to confirm the -1 Attack for a gathering General but wouldn't be for Subordinate City, PvP General or Duty Officer but that doesn't mean to never accept red numbers either.
Cultivating with gems allows you to choose which areas you want to increase on top of the number of times you cultivate.
Your generals can gain an additional 500 points through cultivation but as the general reaches over 100 points and other, higher numbers, the price of cultivating rises and at 300 points, you won't be able to use gold to cultivate anymore and will be required to use gems to reach 500.
Enhancing
There are certain levels you'll be able to enhance your general (adding a star) that will strengthen your general and add power to them, which costs gold and medals. Medals are obtained mostly through monster rallies.
Regular enhancement will be at:
Level 5, 10, 14, 18, 22.
As the star number increases, so does the cost of gold and medals. Save these for your best generals first. After level 22, the process of regular enhancement ends and turns into ascension.
Ascension
Ascension differs from enhancement because you're not just increasing the general's level star, they are gaining additional buffs and the cost is not gold and medals, it's also Blood of Ares and the same General's fragments. You need a certain number of them to get the first star. The process is much longer. Even getting to the first red star in ascension is broken into five stages. The higher you reach in the stages, the more of both Blood of Ares and fragments you'll need.
There will be a need for multiple copies of the same General in order to fully ascend a General. Each star that is ascended will unlock another set of buffs for that General until completion.
Gear
Every set of gear is a combination of a weapon, helmet, armor, leg armor, boots and a ring. The weapon will be your choice between a bow, a spear, an axe and a sword.
King's Gear and above have two sets; a Fearless set and Courageous set. For the King's Gear set, the Courageous set with the bow is the PvP set but for the Dragon set the Fearless set with the bow is the PvP set. The PvE set is the opposite one for both with the spear.
However, the individual pieces are interchangeable.
You'll gain low level blue gear for generals in the Wheel of Fortune but this gear isn't going to have any significant effect on your troops nor is it worth spending the resources on to build or enhance. It can be disassembled for materials to make better gear. For this reason, it's recommended not to build any gear below King's Gear and not level or refine any gear below Dragon gear. It's costly over time and not worth the minimal benefits. Save your resources for good gear. Good gear is defined as Dragon gear and above. It's costly, but the buffs are worth it.
Refinements
There should be a rhyme and reason to your refinements. Avoid letting them be random. What buffs you will want on a set of gear will depend greatly on the general that's wearing it. If you're refining gear for a mounted general, you would want to focus on buffs that will benefit that general; Mounted Attack, Mounted Defense and Mounted HP and out of six gear pieces, you should have two pieces for each of these buffs. That's how you make them organized and focused rather than all over the place. The rest of the buff options won't do anything for them.
There are two options in terms of numbers on refinements; flat stats and percentages. Continuing to use the same mounted general from the above example, you'd want the percentages for this general and as high as you can get. This will take multiple tries and locking in the high ones you get so you don't lose them when trying to get high percentages for the rest. Again, these also should be high.
How you plan to build your city will influence how you refine your General's gear. If you were to build a defensive "meatshield" of lower level troops, you would want your defense generals to have flat stats because flat stats benefit lower level troops. If you're not, the percentages are recommended. Having a combination of both is fine, but it's better to have one or the other. The examples above are both, just to show what they look like but they should be either flat stat or percentage on all gear of one general. You can refine your PvP Generals with percentages and your Defense Generals with flat stats in the case that you build the meat shield for defense. Flat stats only should be used for PvP Generals if lower level troops will be used in the marches they lead.
Once you have your flat stats set the way you want them, you'll refine them again many times over the course of your time playing to get higher numbers.
Joining an Alliance
You'll have the option at level 6 to join an alliance, create an alliance or remain a solo player. Joining an alliance is much better for your game play, growth and overall experience is far better than being solo for a number of reasons. The biggest being that you will grow and learn quicker and much easier. However, joining an alliance means you will be beholden to server rules.
When you join the game you'll probably see a bunch of alliances all over the place, but choosing an alliance that will be the right fit for you isn't as simple as just joining the first one you come across or even the top alliance. A lot of new players follow power or pick at random and for that reason, end up in alliances that are dead or are not teaching them anything because they are new themselves. The alliance you join will shape your experience so it's important to know what to look for and what to avoid in alliances and leaders.
Talk to the leader and the members before joining an alliance and make sure they will fit your goals and ambitions for the game and most of all, that they will be able to teach you the game and answer questions. Some leaders are experienced players from other servers, some are not. Joining an alliance with a leader who is learning themselves will end up as a case of the blind leading the blind and those alliances usually end up merging into a bigger alliance eventually.
Similarly, if you're new to the game, it's not a good idea to become a leader yourself because you won't be able to teach your members what you don't know either and it will negatively impact their game and yours. Joining an alliance that is a good fit is not only crucial benefitting your game play but to your experience as a whole of Evony. Evony is a game meant to be played for years and as a result, alliance members usually become good friends if the alliance environment is a positive one and stay long term for one another just as much, if not more than, the game itself.
Here's what to look for in a good alliance:
•Activity - The members in an alliance should be active daily before you consider joining them.
•Experienced Leaders - Have they played before on another server? How far in the game did they get? What was that experience like? Are they able to be accountable for their actions and words towards other people? Do they cooperate with other leaders and the rest of the server? How does the server as a whole feel about them? How do they speak to others outside the alliance
•Helpfulness and community among members - Are the members willing to help, teach and encourage small players?
•Alliance Total Power - Power isn't everything, but small alliances rarely succeed and usually end up merging into larger ones and long term, any alliance below the top 3 will be a hindrance on your own growth. The alliances you consider joining should be within the top 3 in power rank.
•Alliance to Alliance Relations - How is their relationship with the rest of the server? Do the leaders have diplomacy skills? Are they fair, kind to people outside of their own alliance?
As part of an alliance, it is your responsibility to contribute to your alliance in whatever ways you can. You don't have to be able to rally the huge, high level boss monsters to contribute. Rallying any boss monster you are capable of rallying without taking wounded is a good enough contribution. Every little bit helps. Every boss monster gives chests with rewards, even the lower level ones.
Another part of your contribution is reading and following alliance rules and instructions from leadership, teaching, supporting and protecting other members smaller than yourself, helping them to grow, donating to the alliance science and to the alliance so the alliance buildings can grow and most importantly, maintaining your bubble during PvP events. It is your responsibility to protect your progress and protecting yourself helps your alliance by not losing growth and not losing points during PvP events (where applicable). You can be kicked from your alliance for poor bubble discipline because losing troops, resources and points does not just cost you, it costs everyone, even more if your alliance members reinforce you with their own troops.
Leaving an Alliance
If an alliance isn't a good fit for you, you can always leave by asking a leader (R5 or R4) to kick you or alternatively, you can use the Leave Alliance button but if you leave rather than have yourself kicked, you will have a 12 hour cooldown to wait before you can join another alliance. Most seasoned players avoid using the leave button at all costs for this reason.
No Attack Policy (NAP)
A No Attack Policy or NAP is an agreement to not attack other players with who you have that agreement that only applies to alliances and their members. It's usually agreed upon between two alliances or is an agreement between all of or some of the alliances of a server not to attack one another. This agreement can be in effect all the time or during non Kill Event (KE) days.
Typically, when two alliances enter into a NAP, it's in effect all the time. It's an agreement that their players will never attack one another even during KE and if accidents happen, they will compensate. But a server wide NAP can be used in various ways such as weekdays (non KE days) and in special circumstances like in the case of a bad storm in a certain region or in preparation for a server's first Server Wars (SvS).
NAPs can also be issued to only a certain number of alliances and the rest live under Bubble or Burn (BoB), which means the alliances covered in the NAP cannot be attacked by anyone on the server but can attack any alliance that is outside of the NAP alliances. How NAP is issued heavily depends on your server and how it is set up by the alliance leaders.
The Monarch Competition
Make a plan for construction day in the Monarch event and stick to only upgrading what you can reasonably afford without going broke. It's easy to get caught up in competitiveness but it is costly. Remember, the Monarch competitions are every week so if you don't succeed this time, there's always another. Don't try to win at every stage. Set your sights on ones you can manage and are not costly like the monster killing event or the gathering event. Try to rank in those and stay within your limits on the others. Pace yourself. You will burn out quickly otherwise. It's better to end strong than start strong and die off part way.
Each stage is explained below:
City Development
Higher level buildings give the most points when upgraded so the higher you get, the more points you get and the less buildings you need to upgrade to rank. While the best game strategy is to keep all of your buildings level with your Keep or at least close, if you fall behind on any, it's the perfect day to catch them up because you're doing something you'll have to do eventually anyway and you get points and rewards for it. However, big upgrades need to be planned for because they cost a lot of resources (500+ mil a piece at K30 as an example and most other major buildings are at least 100+ mil at that same level) so don't try to do high level upgrading on a whim, plan ahead. Stock up on resources ahead of time and most importantly, don't rush to upgrade or push yourself to the point of breaking your resource inventory. Recovery is far too difficult (seriously, it's as hard to recover from loss of resources because of major upgrades as it is from a major attack). Have a decent amount more resources than what you need for the upgrades before starting them. Points are gained when buildings finish upgrading, not when they begin so it's a good idea to start them at the end of the previous week and then speed it up on City Development Day.
Power Increase
Increasing power means upgrading Monarch and Generals, researching power under military that involve any technology with the name attack in it, and building higher tier traps. You can add power by training troops and upgrading buildings but it's not advisable to do those because you will burn out on City Development and Troop Train stages. If you have the arsenal in your city ready to upgrade troops, upgrading troops will also increase power but not everyone has that and you will lose power before you gain it (you will lose the power that T10s have already added to your overall power when you turn them into T11s before the power catches up once you have around the same number of T11s you had of T10s). The arsenal is not available until Level 27.
PvP is the most effective and quickest way to level generals so to increase a general's level and power quickly, it's a common practice to level them on a sub city (referred to by players as sub rubbing). Blues and purples are the most ideal but you need layered siege to do this without losing any troops (I use 10k of every level up to T12 and 100k of T12s-T15s). Have more siege at home than what you send at a sub when leveling generals in case you lose some. Having to rebuild one march isn't as bad as having to rebuild all of your siege.
Since blues and purples won't be found on the map, you'll need to have one or borrow one from an alliance mate. The sub will have to be released first and you will have to have all of your sub slots filled or you will occupy it. Whoever releases the sub can always occupy a nearby white sub while leveling.
You will repeatedly attack the sub until the general(s) until they are even with your Monarch level. Prioritize your defense generals, attack generals and duty officers most for this kind of leveling. Less important generals can be leveled in sub cities and in monster rallies.
Monster Kill
Pretty self explanatory, kill as many monsters as you can in the 24 hours but the key to this event, unlike everything else in the game, is not power but level. The higher the level of monster, the more points, even if only small, common monsters. In fact, high level common monsters are worth more points than low level boss monsters. Suspend all rallies for the day in lieu of focusing on killing the common monsters. It's best to travel around the map, settle in the center of collections of monsters and send all your marches out to them. Speed is as good an ally as number of marches and level of monster. The closer you are to the monsters, the faster they will hit and return and you can move to the next group. Prepare to use a lot of teleports on those days. Hit as many as you can in your area but don't hit monsters too far from your current location. Nothing far than 30 seconds to a minute away. Stay within the levels of monsters that don't cause troop injury so you can stay focused on killing monsters and not jumping back and forth between killing monsters and healing troops. Healing and returning to the map eats time and will wear you out quickly.
Troop Train
The highest tier of troops you have will get you the most points. The more you can train at a time, the more points you will get per batch. Save your training speed ups all week (or longer if you can), and use them on troop training day. Only training the four troop types will count; Ground, Mounted, Range and Siege. Upgrading troops also does not count.
Gathering
Harvesting gems offers the most points but if you have a general with good gathering buffs you want to do the math on how much resources they will harvest in an hour versus how much gems you will harvest in an hour and see which is more. Sometimes you can earn more points from harvesting resources over gems. A Level 15 resource tile will give you more points than a Level 10 Gem mine. Don't count on being able to find a higher level Gem mine because they are harder to come by. You have the best chance of finding the best ones by starting a routine of setting your troops out to gather before you sleep/get offline for the night before the server turn over time (3 AM EST) so if the next event is in fact gathering, you're not fighting for high level gem mines or resources with your neighbors or having to go far from your location to gather. Know ahead of time which general is best for gathering, which ones have the best gathering buffs and use those to your advantage. Again, speed is important but the shorter the gather, the less your troops will bring back. Siege is the most ideal troop type for gathering because they can carry the most. Second is mounted but again, look at Generals and their buffs. There are specific resource buffs, specific troop type gathering buffs, and generalized gathering buffs for Generals. Know which of your Generals can do what to maximize your gathering. Queen Jindeok is the best gathering general, having five of her is the best case scenario but other gathering generals will do in the meantime. Watch your gathering times when setting gathering marches. You don't want any outside of the end of the event times. You can either set your gathering and plan to pull them in the last minutes of the event, set them for one gather each for an amount of time inside of the event or you can pull and reset throughout the day. You'll see yourself get points for this but not as many as you could get if you set longer gathers.
High level resource/gem mines are where you want to harvest from. They take longer, but you will get more.
A good technique for getting points before the end of the event is bookmarking the resource spot/gem mine and pulling troops home part way through the event and then resetting them there.
Maximize on gathering by setting all troops to gather and do not keep any out to rally. This can be a relaxed day for the alliance to bond and chat about other aspects of the game and prepare for the next event.
Kill Event (KE)
The higher the troops you kill, the more points you will get and you'll earn a rank in the stage based on the amount of points you gain. Unlike Server Wars there are no negative points for your own troops that are killed.
Unlike the other PvP events you'll encounter, damage dealt during KE is not easy to recover because it is more real than the rest. Troops will be killed and will have to be trained again, the cost of healing is at its highest as well involving resources and healing speed ups, whereas during PvP events like Server Wars and Battlefield, recovery is much easier and less costly.
During these events, it's a good idea to practice good sportsmanship because once your server qualifies for Server Wars (SvS) every alliance in your server will be your teammates as well as your alliance mates.
Your Server
Every server is different because every server has leaders that have a different idea of what is best for the server and how it should operate. The alliance leaders of the server should get together and decide on the rules of the server that everyone must follow in order for the server to unify and function properly but each one of them will have their own ideas of what is best for the server based on either their own experience in the game in other servers or on just their own ideas, thoughts, feelings and how their game play will be impacted based on what is being proposed.
The rules should reflect good sportsmanship and goodwill despite being in different alliances. Even at this stage before Server Wars begins, alliances shouldn't be enemies and should treat one another with dignity and respect because eventually, they will be on the same team and cultivating that kind of environment will make Server Wars easier to coordinate and win. It also creates a more pleasant game experience for everyone.
A server needs at least 10 strong, fighting PvP alliances to perform well in SvS. Every alliance should be made up of both PvP and PvE players because the relationship is symbiotic. PvE players rally monsters to create growth that PvP players need to earn achievements and rewards in PvP events for the alliance and to protect PvE players.
Server Types
Bubble or Burn
Bubble or Burn, also called BoB servers are not ideal for growing but usually have good bubble discipline because they are conditioned to bubble 24/7. The downside of this is these servers are usually hostile and make even participating in non PvP events unnecessarily difficult. Many players don't last on these servers long because the environment is not enjoyable. Competitive players on Youtube denounce these server types as toxic and don't recommend staying in them because the top players and alliances use their power against the smaller players and chase them off of the server or the game entirely.
All Alliance NAP
All alliance NAP servers start out well but usually stagnate after the first few months because power is divided among many, smaller alliances that don't merge into larger ones and this is detrimental to the the server because players in smaller alliances aren't growing quickly enough for their own game play or learning what they need to about the later parts of the game to make their own personal achievements. Smaller alliances are also usually not recognized for things like throne rotations or title holdings but this also depends on how your server handles thrones and titles because there are also different types of throne rotations as well.
Top 5 - 10 Alliance NAP
In these servers, alliances that are ranked in the top 5-10 are safe from being attacked while all alliances below the threshold are bubble or burn 24/7. This consolidates power into the top alliances that will be doing the majority of the heavy fighting during SvS and allows players from smaller alliances to grow and learn the game more effectively but poor bubble discipline will be a major setback for these alliances.
Server Categories
There are three main server types with two different categories they can fall under:
Continuous KE - KE servers hold KE every other weekend opposite Server Wars once they qualify. This includes KE after Server Wars until server reset. The players who participate take damage whether they are attacking or defending (if not bubbled) and have an expensive bill of recovery which sets back growth needed for Server Wars they could have gotten had they not participated. Alternatively, these servers can see better bubble discipline but it's not a guaranteed side effect of continuing KE. Your server alliance leaders should discuss other ways to cultivate good bubble discipline without harming the players of the server.
Non-KE - Some servers will completely end KE altogether once it is obvious that the server residence don't need practice anymore and it is hindering growth. These are non-KE servers, they benefit from substantially less hostility, more comradery, more participation in server events that KE would otherwise hinder and most importantly, growth. Some would argue that poor bubble discipline is a downside of suspending KE but there are assuredly other ways to enforce bubble discipline without the use of KE. Each alliance should have their own form of accountability for members such as demotion or expulsion for non compliance of alliance rules and instructions.
Server Rules
The rules of the server are created and agreed to by the alliance leaders but are issued by the server King. The server rules are created for the alliances. Individual Monarchs are not beholden to the rules and therefore are free to attack 24/7 which will make you a target for being plundered and make growth almost impossible because they will also be free to attack on resource tiles as well. The purpose is not to punish but to encourage individual Monarchs to join alliances so they can grow, learn the game and be productive members of the server. The game is not meant to be played solo, that's why thriving is difficult to do without an alliance or being a massive spender.
Consequences
A server can issue a Kill On Sight (KOS) on a player for breaking server rules but how each server handles KOSes will be different between servers and will be determined by the alliance leaders. A KOS player is essentially a public shunning from the rest of the server until the player is willing to make amends and abide by server rules or can be permanent, depending on the number of crimes, severity and how the alliance leaders decide to handle it.
Events
The Throne
The server throne can be handled in a variety of ways but will be decided on by the alliance leaders of the server how it is exchanged between alliances and how often. The throne can be a seat of power but does not have to be. It can just be a tool for unlocking Wonder 2. The power the throne has depends on the power it is given by the server and its alliance leaders.
The throne gives a set of buffs when it is held and unlocks the Glory wings on your castle (yellow) as well as the ability to unlock your second Wonder. This does not have to be chronologically. You can hold the throne twice and gain the ability to unlock your second Wonder even if you haven't unlocked the first yet.
While on the throne, you will gain the ability to send a King's Mail to the top 100 alliances leaders (R5s) and R4s, hand out titles to whoever you want or to those you're supposed to according to how your server decides titles are to be handed out, send packages that have rewards to whoever you want or whoever your server decides they are supposed to be handed out.
There are both positive and negative titles that can be given out. Negative titles have either just debuffs or a combination of buffs and debuffs and are normally given to those who just want to hold a title for the fame achievement or to rule breakers and KOS players.
Positive titles just have buffs and are usually handed out to players who have been good server members, helped the server in some way or embodied server unity but the criteria for a positive title will be determined by your server leaders and each server King.
To gain the throne the first time, you have to be able to kill all of the NPC troops that are guarding it. After that, there won't be any troops for any other turns.
The throne can only be taken during the Throne War once a week when it opens Saturday evenings (in the United States). This will coincide with both KE and SvS so your server will determine how it is handled during those events.
Similarly, not only will your own home server throne need to be fought for during SvS, but so can the enemy's throne.
The throne has to be held for five hours consecutively on both home and enemy server by anyone in the same alliance as the person who will hold it. The throne will be awarded to the R5 of the alliance that held it for the entire five hours.
Server vs Server Wars (SvS)
After a server is 60 days old and has had their first server King, a server qualifies to begin bi weekly participation in Server Wars (SvS) in which two servers are matched to compete in the week long Monarch Event before a weekend long War to fight for one another's Temples, Thrones kill enemy server monsters and one another's troops for points.
PvE players can collect fire spirits and Ares statues for points and kill server home monsters to prevent enemies from getting points from them.
PvP players that know how to ghost their troops and not lose points will be the primary fighters in the war.
Those that rank top 5 in gross points on each server will gain the ability to open their first Wonder and their Ares wings (white).
The game does not add negative to positive scores for a player so even if their negative scores are higher than their positive, they will still get their wings and the ability to open Wonder 1. The negative scores are shown on a separate board, however. The alliance leaders will determine how negative scores will factor into throne rotation.
Managing your own point losses is an important part of the event and your own game play. Experienced players in your alliance can teach you how. Thepoint of the event is to earn positive scores for your server to win as well as achieving personal accomplishments so if a player earns more negative than positive than it would have been better for the server that they not participate at all than to tank scores just to meet personal goals. Things like this can be major points of contention in a server so it's important to be a positive points contributor and learn how to protect your troops and build your attack and defense for best results.
Ghosting Troops
Ghosting troops is the method of "hiding" troops in Evony during PvP events. A player will start a boss rally for the maximum time period, 60 minutes, and fill the march with troops and a general and repeat until all of their troops are used or all of their march slots are filled.
Players usually send their main PvP first and then fill the rest with random troops. Hiding troops in this way puts them in a sort of limbo that allows them to both; not be attacked and to he recalled at a moment's notice if needed to port or use.
Large players will eventually reach a point where they have too many troops to ghost but ghosting a main PvP march or high level troops would still be useful to them because higher level troops are worth more points than lower.
Other tactics that are often used by bigger players are building defensive layers. Higher level troops target troops with the lowest HP so some players build defensive layers with a large amount of T1 troops but this isn't the only method.
Battlefields
Battlefield is three separate PvP events, all of which are similar with slight differences. Alliances go into battlefields as a group against an alliance from another server and battle for the most points. Points are gained by killing one another's troops; the higher level the troops, the more points are gained and occupying buildings.
Each building gives the alliance different buffs for holding the buildings. When the event ends, all your troops are healed once you come out. The cost of healing in the event is only speed ups which makes it great practice for new players in preparation for SvS. All Battlefields are 2 hours long.
Battlefield of Constantinople and Battlefield of Guagamela are held once a week on different days. Ranking in these events will earn you some castle decorations on top of event rewards.
Ghosting is extremely necessary for these events because there is no ability to bubble.
Battlefield of Constantinople (BoC)
In this event ghosting troops is your main line of defense but ghosting will have to be done on enemies.
Battlefield of Guagamela (BoG)
This event is the same as BoC except there are monsters that can be killed for points and ghosted on.
Battlefield of Chalons
This event has monsters and instead of two alliances going against one another, there are four alliances that battle.
Dragons
There are three dragons in the game that can be bought. The first is the red Celtic Demon which is considered a PvP dragon that can be unlocked at Pasture Level 26 and bought with 300,000 gems.
The second is the Jawzahr dragon which is newly released and can be unlocked at Pasture 26 and can be bought with a certain number of Frostwolf coins. Since this is a new dragon, this information on the number needed to buy the dragon is not yet available.
The last one is the purple Fafnir which is considered the defense dragon and can be unlocked at Pasture Level 30 and can be bought with 1,400 Dragon Stones, most of which can be obtained in Battle of Guagamela or better known as BoG.
The other, sacred dragons in the game are obtained through PvP achievements such as unlocking your Wonder 1, unlocking your Wonder 2, unlocking your Wonder 3, and reaching a certain ranking in All Stars Battlefield.
Wonder 1 is unlocked by reaching top five in SvS.
Wonder 2 is unlocked by being King of the server twice.
Wonder 3 is unlocked by ranking in the top 100 in BoC during one season.
