This guide also includes plenty of raw data such as Barbarian Attack Tables, Progression Charts, and a detailed World Map. However one of the biggest values are offered in the form of combat strategy, and the potential to attain extremely high rankings in prestige and honor!

Enjoy our latest video updates that are embedded right into your guide! We have included a six part video tutorial revealing the quickest way to top the charts in prestige. The tutorial will lead you through the setup of your empire and allow you to come out of beginners protection with a strong military, solid economy, and a huge lead in prestige.

Evony: The UnOfficial Strategy Guide includes:

Complete Buildings Complete building descriptions and tips on how build them up for maximum production! Want to know how to build that unbeatable army? Need a strategy for defeating each barbarian city with minimal or even no loses? Looking for tips on what units to build to become an offensive juggernaut? It’s all here! Any patch notes or new combat tactics added to the guide will be yours to download free.

Unit and Combat Strategy Find out what every unit statistic means and specific strategies for using them in combat, attacking with infantry or mechanical units, and general fighting tips.

Hero and Items details

This section examines and analyses every item in the game. If you’re unsure if a item is right for your city or hero, check out detailed explanations.

Promotion

A complete directory of medals and promotions organized into related categories.

The Basics

Learn about every feature in Evony. This section explains character setup, building new cities, and how to run tax rates and production.

War and Diplomacy

Understand the fundamental concepts of alliances, how to use your friends to your advantage and tricks to bring down even the strongest of opponents.

Barbarians

Everything you need to know about NPC cities including a detailed table on what units to send for victory!

Technologies

Learn how the technologies tie in with your units and city building techniques and which ones to research first.

Immediate Download

All our guides are available immediately after purchase. Get an edge on the competition!

Buy This Guide Now.

]]> http://www.evonymasters.com/2009/11/evony-strategy-guide-evony-book/feed/ 2 http://www.evonymasters.com/2009/11/reduce-evony-construction-research-or-recruitment-times/ http://www.evonymasters.com/2009/11/reduce-evony-construction-research-or-recruitment-times/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:34:13 +0000 admin http://www.evonymasters.com/?p=413 Overview

The time it takes for construction, research, or recruitment can be reduced in several ways. Using a certain item, assigning a hero as mayor, and researching various advancements are all ways to reduce the time needed for an action.

Reduce Construction Times

Heroes’ Politics attribute reduces initial construction time. (See Stats)
Research Construction to reduce initial construction time.
Click Speed Up and select one of the items to reduce the total Construction time.

Reduce Research Times

Heroes’ Intelligence attribute reduces initial Research time. (See Stats)
Click Speed Up and select one of these items to reduce the total research time.

Reduce Recruitment Times

A Hero’s Attack attribute reduces initial recruitment time. (See Stats)
Research Military Science to reduce the initial recruitment time.
Apply Napoleon’s Diary to a training group to reduce the initial recruitment time.
In the Barracks, click Speed Up and select one of these items to reduce the total recruitment time.

90) Attack a Level 10 Valley without scouting it first.
89) Attack a Level 1 City of a Player with 100k+ Prestige.
88) Levy Yourself for Iron.
87) Levy Yourself for Food.
86) Assume that since you’re attacking a lake, you’re only fighting ducks.
85) Build 1 Trap and 15 archer towers and go out of town for the weekend.
84) Wage a war when your opponent has 100,000 Honor and You’ve got 24.
83) Assume that NPC guides on the forums are accurate.
82) Assume that NPC guides on EvonyMasters are accurate after 1 week..
81) Build a Level 10 Farm

You don’t have high enough informatics technology, you’ll get inaccurate scout reports, and here is what the different terms mean.

Few: 1 – 24
Pack: 25 – 49
Lots: 50 – 99
Horde: 100 – 249
Throng: 250 – 499
Swarm: 500 – 999
Zounds: 1,000 – 2499
Legion: 2500 – 4999
Bulk: 5000 – 10000
Giga: 10000 and more

Just Starting Out

When you start a new account on an Evony server you will have 7 days of beginner protection. You better use these days wisely, especially if you’re on a server that has already been running for a while. You can also turn the protection off earlier by building a level 5 town hall, but then you better know what you’re doing.

Anyways, the game is pretty easy to learn by following the quests. Following the quests is definitely the way to go, as in most of them you will get really good rewards. Before you decide what quests to do next, look at the rewards, for some of them the reward is larger than what it costs to fulfil the objective of the quest, like building up the first levels of the town hall, so definitely try to do these quickly.

On a new server prices for resources tend to be very high, and cause of that you should focus mainly on resource production the first couple of days. Don’t build lots of cottages and raise taxes, only build enough so that you can get all your jobs filled. You’ll probably get enough money from the quests you do, and if not you can just sell some resources to make money. Watch the prices in the marketplace, as long as you get more than 1 gold for each resource you sell, don’t bother trying to make money with taxes.

If you start on a server that has already been running for a while, chances are prices for resources will be really low, somewhere in the 0.2 – 0.03 range, with lumber being most valuable. Extra lumber you can sell, and if you need more of the other resources you can buy them.

When it comes to what type of troops and defences you should build before your protection runs out, it depends a lot on your neighbourhood and how old the server is. If it’s a new server I’d just focus on warriors and archers to raid your neighbours with together with a good number of traps and archer towers. If the server have been running for a while and you have several large neighbours, some archer towers and traps won’t really matter to them, so then I’d just focus more on troops. And on a server that’s been running for a while it’s even more important to never have a lot of resources lying around. If big players don’t see resources when they scout you, they probably won’t attack you.

This is the end of this starting guide; hopefully you found some of it useful. If you’ve got questions or comments, feel free to post it here.
Troops to Build

You start out building warriors and archers, that’s it. Many people say that warriors suck, and yeah it’s true they are the weakest of the troops, but they are also way cheaper and faster to build. In the beginning you’d like to get troops quickly, and you don’t have 3 barracks in each village either like you will later, so that’s why you should focus on the warriors.

It’s also true that archers can kill warriors easily, with no losses if there are enough archers, but that’s why you’re building your own archers at the same time. Don’t ever leave your warriors alone with open gates or in a valley somewhere; always keep them together with the archers you’re building at the same time. 1 archer for every 10 warriors you build is a good ratio starting out. The archers will also be used for taking out all warrior, pike or sword armies in valleys with no losses.

Later on you can build other troops, but first get 100,000 warriors and 10,000 archers.
Taxes Taxes Taxes

The best tax rate when you’re not online and playing the game is 20%. Putting tax rate at 20% the population will be stable at 30% of maximum, and they will each pay 20-30% tax. The stable population number is your loyalty times your max population, and loyalty will be stable at 100% minus your tax rate. This is why it’s so dangerous to put tax rate at 100% and leave your computer for a long time, cause then both your loyalty and population will go down to 0, you will have riots and loose lots of resources.

When you’re planning to stay online for a few hours, first set the tax rate to 0% so that your population goes up. You can use population increase or disaster relief to speed this up. When loyalty and population is at 100% you set your tax rate to 100%. This will earn you a massive income; all you have to do to keep your population from going down is to use disaster relief every 15-20 minutes. If you run out of food, just buy it at the market, food is cheap compared to the entire fold you make using the method. This trick will keep loyalty at 100 even with 100% tax rate. Before you log off make sure you change tax rate back to 20%.
Making a New City

Building a new city in Evony is actually quite easy. First you need to have a high enough title, to build your second village you need to be a Knight. You get to that title by following the promotion quests, and you need the items in your beginner package. You find your package under the package symbol top left on your screen.

Then you need to conquer a flat, look around on the map for the lowest level flat you can find. The higher level flat the more troops you will need, so it’s best if you find a level 1 or 2 to build your second city on. Make sure you scout it first to check how many soldiers there are guarding it. Usually 200-300 warriors and 50-100 archers should do the job on a low level flat. You can only conquer as many flats as the level of your town hall, so make sure you haven’t conquered too many forests, lakes and such already.

When your troops arrive and win the battle you’ll see a flag on the flat, meaning you’ve conquered it. Now you need to have 250 workers ready, these workers you actually get from the beginner package, and you also need to have a rally point level 2. If you have all this there should be a build city button when you click on the flat. Click the button and also click yes to taking the reinforcements home. When the workers reach the flat you’ll have a new city!
Making Lots of Gold

To do this I would recommend having a minimum of two villages and one of them should be as close to a level 5 NPC villages as possible. The level 5 NPC village will have 450,000 gold in it when full, it regenerates all that gold in one hour, so to get the max from it you should be within half an hour from it with transports.

To plunder it I would like to have at least 70,000 warriors, so that you minimize losses. Depending on your hero and technology you will lose about 14,000 warriors in each attack. You should also use 1 pikeman, swordsman, archer, cavalry and cataphract for layering, else losses will be higher.

The reason you choose a level 5 NPC is all the gold it has compared to the number of fortifications and troops. The higher level NPC villages have a lot more troops compared to the gold they hold, and are not really worth plundering using warriors.

As you might have understood, the lower the wood prices the more profitable this strategy is. It also depends on food prices, as there are about 3 million foods in the NPC village in addition to the gold. There are also other resources, but only like 120,000 of each so those don’t matter much. As long as wood prices are lower than about 0.7 this strategy is profitable.

To rebuild warriors fast enough you need a lot of barracks, 2-3 in each village. It depends on how high level cottages you have; since you need to be able to get population fast enough to train warriors all the time. It’s also good with high level barracks so you can keep production running during night. Please leave some comments if you like this strategy!

Everyone Needs A Hero

Heroes are really important in Evony; they give you better production and faster building time and troop training as well as attack bonuses. In this guide I’ll take a look at hero management and what type of heroes you should look for.

There are three types of heroes, the politics hero, the attack hero and the intelligence hero. Don’t mix them, focus on one attribute for each hero and change back and forth between them as needed. Even a high level hero will only be decent at best if you try to make him master of everything.
Politics

The politics hero should be the first one you get when you start on a new server. Politics gives you faster building speed and higher resource production. You will have a politics hero as major of each of your villages; you only change to other heroes when you start science research or troop training.
Attack

This is the most important hero in my opinion, and you need a few heroes with high attack power. You send this hero with your troops on attacks as it gives you bonuses to the troop’s stats, and you also use this hero when you are starting the training of troops. You just go to your feasting hall, make this hero major, go to your barracks and start the troop training and then go back to feasting hall to switch back to the politics hero. When you’ve started the training with an attack hero as major, the troops will train much faster. The higher the attack, the faster the training is.

Intelligence

The least important hero I think, but still useful to have a few of them. You use these to accompany your troops on scouting missions. You also use them as major when starting on research projects, as it will lower the research time.

The other stats heroes have are loyalty, salary and level. Salary goes up with their level, but even high level heroes don’t earn that much. Loyalty goes down if you lose battles with your heroes, and the lower it is the higher the chance of losing them is, so make sure you increase this with medals if it drops too low.

Try to hire low level heroes with one of the attributes being really high, anything above 60 is good. The reason you want to hire a low level hero is that they level up much faster, and each time they level up you can increase their stats by one. Always increase their highest stat then.

Usually you want to have at least 3 heroes in each village, one attack, one politics and one intelligence. It’s also possible to send the heroes from village to village if you’d like. Your politics hero that is your major will level as you build things, but making him fight a few battles is a good way to speed up his levelling process. Feel free to leave questions or comments here.

Attack Barbs with No Casualties

Yes, it’s possible to attack barbarian NPC villages without any losses at all. You get a lot of experience for your hero when you’re doing this as well as lots of resources. I’ve done this with villages up to level 5 so far, but I will attack higher once I get enough troops to do so. Read on to figure out how.

What you need to do this successfully is ballistae; yes these wonderful siege weapons that are great at shooting down archer towers. You also need a lot of transporters if you want to get all the resources back home. How many you ballista’s you need depends on the level of the NPC village as well as your technology bonuses and hero attack bonus.

Here is a attack report from me attacking a level 5 NPC barbarian city. 600 ballista’s should be enough here as long as you have a hero with around 80 attack. I haven’t tested the minimum you need yet, but better safe than sorry.

I’d advise you to build a city real close to a level 5 or 6 NPC village so that you can raid it every hour you’re online. Doing this will make you a lot of resources as well as tons of experience for your hero. If you don’t have enough ballistae yet, keep building those level 9 barracks and train ballistae in them. I hope this tip was helpful, feel free to leave comments or questions.
Defending Against Experienced Players

When people try to take over your villages they often use lots of attacks with scouts to lower your loyalty quickly. Scouts are way faster than any other unit in the game, and once all your fortifications have been destroyed even one scout and a hero will succeed attacking you. When this happened to me today I tested out a strategy with building abates, and that worked out great.

The reason I chose to build abates is that they are quick to build, less than one minute with decent bonuses, and even one of them can kill lots of scouts. It’s only cavalry and cataphracts that can kill the abates, and if you keep building abates one at a time you basically stop them from scout spamming you. You force them to have to attack you with cavalry instead, and that buys you valuable time so that you can get reinforcements to your village.

At the same time as building these abates you raise loyalty and reduce grievance with disaster relief. If you happen to run out of food, which kind of sucks, you can use praying to raise loyalty instead if you have enough gold. If you run out of gold too you’re in trouble, but using my trick should make you last longer at least, hopefully long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Feel free to leave comments.
Conquering High Level Player Towns

Going to conquer a city in Evony I want it to be a city worth keeping. For me that is a city with high level buildings and several high level barracks. New players with low prestige usually don’t have villages like that, so when I try to conquer cities it is usually cities from high prestige active players. It can be very difficult to conquer a village from a high prestige active player, so I thought I’d explain how I do it.

You need to have high enough title to take two more villages to use this method. The first thing is to get a base close to the city you want to conquer, preferably less than 10 miles from it. What you do is to look for a low prestige hopefully inactive player with at least 2 villages that has one village close to the high level village you eventually want to have. If there are easier to get villages to choose from, choose the one with highest rally point and feasting hall.

You take this easy to get village using the normal method, first destroying fortifications and then scout spamming it. Scout spamming is attacking the village with 1 scout and 1 hero several times until the loyalty is below 15. When it’s below 15 keep attacking it now and then so that the public grievance remains high, it will drop to 5 in 1-2 hours. At 5 the gates will open and now you need to send your army to take out his troops. When his troops are gone you keep scout spamming it till loyally is 0 and then you get the village in your next attack.

Taking this first village might take you a long time if your other villages are far away, but if it’s an inactive player it doesn’t matter, he won’t be online to stop you from taking it anyways. The next village you’re going to take however is a high level one, from a high prestige player that might have an alliance watching over him, so here you need to be as fast as possible. That’s why you need this other village close to him as your base.

Now move your army to your newly conquered low level village, with enough food to feed them for a while. Hopefully it has a high level enough rally point for the troops you need to send out from it, if not you have to build it, preferably speed build as your new neighbour might notice what you’re doing if you spend too much time on this.. Also fill up the feasting hall with heroes.

Now it’s time to go after the high level village you wanted in the first place. You pretty much use the exact same method as you used to take the low level village; the difference now is that travel time is much shorter so you can do everything real fast. In addition to scout spamming you will now also use your whole army several times, so that you take away all his food and any troops he might be reinforced with.

If he happens to get online during your scout spamming, you have to use parts of your army to attack with instead of scouts, also scout him often too look for reinforcements. It’s very hard to conquer a village of a strong player who is online, but being real close to him with an army much larger than his, it is possible. Don’t give up, good luck!

level 10 archery
level 8 medicine
level 9 iron working
level 9 military tradition
level 6 horseback riding
level 8 logistics
103 attack hero

at my level of logistics, 1 transporter can hold 9000 goods which is where i got the math

level 1        100 ball    25 trans      215,000
level 2        200 ball    40 trans      355,000
level 3        300 ball    134 trans    1,200,000
level 4        400 ball    252 trans    2,260,000
level 5        500 ball    445 trans    3,990,000

Another thing to think about when deciding what your next move will be is that building allows you to gain prestige.  If your goal is to earn prestige, you can accumulate more by building.

Remember: If you do build, you can always abandon the city and then conquer another city, so its never a bad thing to have one while you’re searching for your next attack.

In one hour you will be a Lieutenant with 1400 prestige and four times your original resources (step 47). By step 60 you will be a Knight with 2100 Prestige and a lot of resources!

Let’s begin!

1. Click Quest button
Daily Quest tab, Get reward

2. Build Cottage level 2
Speed it up

3. Build Inn
Speed it up
Click City

4. Build Farm
Speed it up

5. Build Sawmill
Speed it up

6. Build Quarry
Speed it up

7. Build Ironmine
Speed it up
Turn in quest

8. Build Sawmill level 2
Speed it up

9. Build 3 Cottages level 2
Speed it up

10. Build Rally Spot
Speed it up

11. Build Barracks
Speed it up
Turn in quest

12. Build Feasting Hall
Wait for it to complete

The record for doing all this is 0:01:29

At this point you should have about 200 Prestige, 7300 Food, 3950 Lumber, 5750 Stone, 7300 Iron

While waiting

13. Do 10 push-ups because exercise is good for you!

14. Click Overview, Levy and choose Stone

15. Click Overview, Comforting and choose Praying
Turn in quest

16. Train 10 Workers in your Barracks

17. Click Overview and set the Production of all four resources to 100
Turn in quest

18. Click Overview and set the Tax Rate to 20%
Turn in quest

19. Click Overview and rename your city
Turn in quest

20. Click your portrait and change your flag
Turn in quest

21. Click the Wheel of Fortune (the roulette in the bottom-left corner), then
Apply
Turn in quest

22. When Feasting Hall finishes
Turn in quest

23. Recruit hero from Inn
Turn in quest

24. Appoint him mayor in Feasting Hall
Turn in quest

Note: Check the Inn periodically – if a hero with at least 10 higher Politics is available, replace your current hero with him. Higher politics reduces construction time and increases resource production!

25. Build Marketplace
Turn in quest

26. Train 10 Warriors in your Barracks

27. Build Town Hall level 2
Turn in quest

28. Levy Lumber
Comfort with Disaster Relief

29. Build Embassy
Turn in quest

30. Build Academy
Turn in quest

31. Research Lumbering

32. Build Warehouse
Turn in quest

33. Research Agriculture

34. Build Ironmine level 2
Speed it up

35. Build Ironmine level 3

36. Build Forge
Speed it up
Turn in quest

37. Build Forge level 2

38. Research Military Science

39. Build Workshop
Turn in quest

40. Build Quarry level 2
Speed it up

Note: If you get stuck, Levy the missing resource

41. Build Walls
Turn in quest

42. Build Beacon Tower
Turn in quest

43. Build Beacon Tower level 2
Turn in quest

44. Build Beacon Tower level 3
Turn in quest

45. Build Town Hall level 3
Turn in quest

46. Build Walls level 2
Turn in quest

47. Click Gift icon in top-left corner

Claim Newbies Package and Package for Lords

Click My Items, Chest tab
Open both packages by clicking Detail, then Apply
At this point you should be a Lieutenant with about 1400 Prestige, 20000 Food, 15000 Lumber, 20000 Stone, 25000 Iron

48. Build Farm level 3
Speed it up

49. Build 6 Sawmill level 3
Speed it up

50. Build 3 Quarry level 3
Speed it up

51. Build Academy level 2 when resources allow
Turn in quest

52. Research Masonry

53. Build Barracks level 2
Turn in quest

54. Research Mining

55. Build Academy level 3
Turn in quest

56. Research Informatics
Speed it up

57. Research Military Tradition

58. Train 10 Scouts in your Barracks

59. Build Barracks level 3
Turn in quest

60. Train 10 Pikemen

At this point you should be a Knight with about 2100 Prestige, 40000 Food, 15000 Lumber, 7500 Stone, 10000 Iron

61. Build Marketplace level 2
Maximize all your production squares with equal numbers of Sawmills, Quarrys, Farms and Ironmines.

62. Start buying and selling resources

13. Do 10 push-ups because exercise is good for you!

14. Click Overview, Levy and choose Stone

15. Click Overview, Comforting and choose Praying
Turn in quest

16. Train 10 Workers in your Barracks

17. Click Overview and set the Production of all four resources to 100
Turn in quest

18. Click Overview and set the Tax Rate to 20%
Turn in quest

19. Click Overview and rename your city
Turn in quest

20. Click your portrait and change your flag
Turn in quest

21. Click the Wheel of Fortune (the roulette in the bottom-left corner), then
Apply
Turn in quest

22. When Feasting Hall finishes
Turn in quest

23. Recruit hero from Inn
Turn in quest

24. Appoint him mayor in Feasting Hall
Turn in quest

Note: Check the Inn periodically – if a hero with at least 10 higher Politics is available, replace your current hero with him. Higher politics reduces construction time and increases resource production!

25. Build Marketplace
Turn in quest

26. Train 10 Warriors in your Barracks

27. Build Town Hall level 2
Turn in quest

28. Levy Lumber
Comfort with Disaster Relief

29. Build Embassy
Turn in quest

30. Build Academy
Turn in quest

31. Research Lumbering

32. Build Warehouse
Turn in quest

33. Research Agriculture

34. Build Ironmine level 2
Speed it up

35. Build Ironmine level 3

36. Build Forge
Speed it up
Turn in quest

37. Build Forge level 2

38. Research Military Science

39. Build Workshop
Turn in quest

40. Build Quarry level 2
Speed it up

Note: If you get stuck, Levy the missing resource

41. Build Walls
Turn in quest

42. Build Beacon Tower
Turn in quest

43. Build Beacon Tower level 2
Turn in quest

44. Build Beacon Tower level 3
Turn in quest

45. Build Town Hall level 3
Turn in quest

46. Build Walls level 2
Turn in quest

47. Click Gift icon in top-left corner

Claim Newbies Package and Package for Lords

Click My Items, Chest tab
Open both packages by clicking Detail, then Apply
At this point you should be a Lieutenant with about 1400 Prestige, 20000 Food, 15000 Lumber, 20000 Stone, 25000 Iron

48. Build Farm level 3
Speed it up

49. Build 6 Sawmill level 3
Speed it up

50. Build 3 Quarry level 3
Speed it up

51. Build Academy level 2 when resources allow
Turn in quest

52. Research Masonry

53. Build Barracks level 2
Turn in quest

54. Research Mining

55. Build Academy level 3
Turn in quest

56. Research Informatics
Speed it up

57. Research Military Tradition

58. Train 10 Scouts in your Barracks

59. Build Barracks level 3
Turn in quest

60. Train 10 Pikemen

At this point you should be a Knight with about 2100 Prestige, 40000 Food, 15000 Lumber, 7500 Stone, 10000 Iron

61. Build Marketplace level 2
Maximize all your production squares with equal numbers of Sawmills and Quarrys

62. Start buying and selling resources

At this point you will need to be careful you will need to make sure that your first city is all up and running before u keep going on this guide.

63. Create your second city

To see how, hover over the city icon in the bottom-right corner next to the Buy button

To conquer a Flat (where your new city will be), train an army of 200 warriors
Click Map and attack the closest level 1 or 2 Flat
In your second city

64. Build Rally Spot
Speed it up

65. Move your 250 workers back to your home city
Click Map
Select your home city
Click Reinforce
Send all workers home

66. When they return, go to your home city
Click Map

Select your new city

Click Transport
Select all your workers
Send equal amounts of lumber, stone and iron, resources your new city needs to grow
In your second city

Let’s start with the goal — by the end of your first week you want to have a highly-productive kingdom that is an unattractive target for other players to attack. I stress “unattractive” because (unless you’re spending a ton of money) you simply cannot make yourself anything like as strong as players who have been playing a long time. If they want to hit you and take your stuff, they can so the trick is making it not worth their while.

Early days: Focus on production

Civony is a game where economic investment pays high returns. You start off producing tiny amounts of basic goods but in a week you’ll be producing relatively vast amounts. Where you end up on the production curve will be determined largely by how quickly you move up it during those critical early days.

Meanwhile you have an incredibly powerful asset — beginner protection. Mightier than the tallest wall full of defenses, beginner protection means you are absolutely untouchable by other players while it lasts. Because of this, any resources you spend on defense are dead until the protection period ends. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build any — you’ll need troops to conquer valleys and you need to improve your wall to improve your town hall, for example — but building defenses should only be done as a means to building up production, not as an end in and of itself.

Do whatever you can to avoid running out of investment resources. Their unit-for-unit value is very high for you in the early days because whenever you run out you are losing time which is your true scarce resource. You should use each of your levies early on. You’ll recover from the discontent easily and with the quest bonus you get plenty of goods to make it worthwhile. (Later on the quest bonus will be trivial and levying won’t be particularly exciting as an option.)

You should also look at buying resources, with gold and/or game cents. (Even if you plan to play for free you begin with a small amount of money and one of your quests is to spend it.) One cent translates to 4,000 lumber. When you’re producing over a million lumber per hour that’s not much help but early on that could mean the difference between making your next investment and waiting an hour or more.

Don’t waste time. Again, it is your scarce resource — you have a lot to accomplish in your first week! You’ll notice that your outdoor buildings can be built up to level 2 or 3 (depending on the resource) with the “instant speedup” option, so start off using that. Then try to minimize your dead time as you build up your production engine.

Focus on Lumber more than the other resources — it’s more valuable to you in the early game and has a higher trade value on the marketplace (at least currently) so at the moment it’s almost strictly superior to the other goods.

Follow the quests in a balanced way. They are useful both because they provide you a reasonable guideline of how to develop and because the bonuses are often more than the cost, but think about how each one will affect your development. An easy beginner mistake to make is completing a quest and then getting to work on the next one right away. You almost never want to complete the next level of a particular quest immediately — there will be something easier and more rewarding elsewhere.

Joining an Alliance

As a medium-sized Civony fish (98K prestige as I write this) I can assure you that choosing the right alliance is critical. You’ll see a lot of advertisements for alliances on world chat and perhaps you’ve thought of forming your own. Don’t. There are currently over 2,700 alliances and you want to join one of the top ones.

The reason is simple — when I or someone like me looks at your kingdom as a potential raiding target, your defenses are unlikely to be a factor. You may feel proud of your level 6 walls with 500 archer towers and 1000 traps but that’s not going to cause me significant casualties if I decide to attack…and the more powerful players can knock past that with a sneeze.

Your best defense is membership in an alliance that we don’t want to fight with. If possible you should shoot for a top-200 alliance.

Let me give you an example. I just finished scouting someone with 15K prestige and found nearly three million in goods and gold and virtually no military defenses. Fortunately for him, he’s a member of the Knight alliance…so he gets a pass. Instead I’m attacking someone with just 600K resources and slightly better (but still irrelevant) military defenses…and no alliance.

Another advantage to joining a top alliance is that you’re very likely to find players that will give you resources to help you keep developing. It’s a simple matter of scale — fifty thousand resources is huge when you’re in early days but it’s a trivial gift from someone who has been playing even for just a couple of weeks.

So why should a top alliance want you? Your best bet is to show them that you’re the type of player they want, which probably means active and mature. Contact a nearby member of a powerful alliance (you can check using the search function under Alliance List) and email him or her. Send a respectful greeting, saying that you’re new in the game and that you’d appreciate any advice he or she has to offer. If you get a helpful response, email again to say thanks and then follow up a couple of days later to raise the prospect of joining their alliance. (Naturally you should read the blurb and find out whatever other information you can first — it may be that joining is impossible.)

Stress that you are an active player, because this translates to “I’m small now but I’m growing.” I was accepted into Legends (a top 100 alliance) with only 15K prestige, in part because I’d spoken with one of the more powerful lords and in part because I’d shown that I was active so they could see me becoming useful.

Once you’re in the alliance, make yourself known and useful. Talk on alliance chat, send goods to other alliance members to help them with key construction (when you can afford it) and offer whatever knowledge you can. Alliances can run out of room and will tend to kick smaller and inactive players if they need to.

Preparing for the end of beginner protection

During the final couple of days you want to make sure that you’re in a good position to come out on your own. Hopefully you’ve found a strong alliance, but either way you can reduce the risk of being attacked by understanding what makes you look attractive to a predator.

First, let me repeat — your defenses don’t actually impress me. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build them, but don’t ever think that they are really stopping anyone from hitting you. Arrow Towers and Traps are pretty much useless against ballistae, and the real predators in this game can happily throw thousands of troops at you if they want to.

The real defense is to be more trouble than you’re worth. That means being in a strong alliance if possible but it also means not keeping a huge stockpile of goods. Most of my targets have total goods in the millions, so if you’ve only got 200K total or less you’re probably not worth attacking. That means you only have to worry about other relatively new players, in which case your defenses are a more serious deterrent.

Another valuable thing is to look active. Even if you have half my prestige or less, you’re a less attractive enemy if I think you’re actively engaged in the game.

To reverse the perspective, I was recently scouted by a player considerably more powerful than I. (I knew because he only sent a couple of scouts and mine caught them — this is what happens when you scout a target with more scouts than you send.) I immediately emailed him to ask his intentions. Unsurprisingly, he was simply sending out scouts to look for attractive targets. He liked that I spoke with him directly rather than, as he put it, cowering like most others did, but in any case he knew that I was an active player and that made me less attractive. He hasn’t bothered me and in fact said that he’d pass on to his alliance not to attack me.

It’s sort of like the joke about the two hikers who come across an angry bear. As the bear looks at them, one of them puts on his track shoes and the other says, “That’s crazy, you can’t outrun a bear.” The first guy finishes tying his laces and says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear.” Your goal is to be a less tempting target than other cities. You can accomplish that by making yourself look like a painful target (alliance, active, defenses) and by looking like a low reward target (no stockpiling).

There are tricks to help, of course. You can hide goods and/or gold in the marketplace by making unattractive bids. For example, if lumber is currently selling for 0.24-0.25 gold, offer to buy a lot of it at 0.1. The gold to pay for your offer disappears and can’t be seen or taken from you by other players but you can get it back (minus the post fee) any time by canceling the bid. This is a particularly good thing to do when you sign off or if you need to accumulate a lot of resources for a particular upgrade. You can learn a lot of other tricks in the forums or by asking players in your alliance.

Total resource production rates depend on these factors:

1. Politics rating of your Castellan.
2. Researched technologies.
3. Level of your sawmills, farms, iron mines and quarries.
4. Number of resource fields you have.
5. Number of, and level of, valleys you own.
6. Application of productivity items.
7. Population
8. Number of cities you have.

It is VERY important to get all of these up as much as possible as soon as possible. The end of the 7 days protection is going to come very fast and you want to be in a position to have a decent army and excellent city defenses.

Castellan:
When you first start, it is important to get a Castellan with a high politics rating as soon as possible. The Castellan affects both construction time and resource production.

There are Quests for all of the steps required to obtain a Castellan, so you will come out ahead on resources by using the Quest.

Steps to obtain a Castellan:
First, build an Inn.
Second, build a Feasting Hall.
Upgrade the Inn to level 2.
Upgrade the Feasting Hall to level 2.
Unpack all the chests.
Do the Hero Recruitment Quest, this requires the use of the Hero Hunting item. After you use the Hero Hunting item, look to see what heroes are in your Inn.
Recruit the hero with the highest Politics rating.
Use the item that offers a position to a level 10-level 15 hero.
Go to the Feasting Hall and make the hero with the highest Politics rating the Castellan.

Researched Technologies.
You need to research all of the resource gathering technologies and the construction technology. To do this you need an academy. There is a quest to build an academy. Build the academy and then research Agriculture, Lumbering, Masonry, and Mining. This will cost gold, if you run low on gold look through the Quests and do any Quest that pays gold.

The Construction technology is very important as the level of your buildings increases. You need to research this technology as soon as possible. Unfortunately, to research this technology you need:
Level 2 Forge
Level 2 Workshop
Level 5 Lumbering
Level 2 Metal Casting
Level 5 Academy

To help with doing all the research you need to do you should build a second city and a second Academy as soon as possible. There is a quest for building a second city. When you unpacked the chests you obtained an army and workers. If your idle hero has good ratings for the attributes that help with warfare use this hero, if not use the hero hunting item and find a better hero for warfighting.

You will need 250 workers. The chest gave you some number less than 250 workers, 199 if I remember correctly. So, you need to build a barracks and recruit the remaining workers. You also need to recruit at least 20 scouts.

Constructing resource producing buildings and cottages
First thing, go to the Town Hall and set the tax rate to 0. You’ll change it later.

When constructing buildings construction time must be minimized. The Speed Up button provides free speed up of construction time for lower levels of most buildings. You want to have as many resource producing buildings as possible up and running and upgraded as high as possible using free speed up before you start having to wait for construction times longer than what is handled by the free speed up.

Go to the resource fields. Start with sawmill. Build a sawmill and upgrade it as many times as you can using the free speed up. This level varies depending on the building type. Next build a quarry. Next build an iron mine. You already have a level 5 farm. Each of these has a Quest, so be sure to collect the reward for the quest.

Now go to the town hall and change production to 100 on all resource types.

Now you need to build enough cottages to supply enough workers. You can build a cottage and upgrade it to level 3 using the free speed up for each upgrade, beyond level 3 the upgrade will take more than 5 minutes. Build enough cottages so that you have a population limit at least twice as large as the number of workers required to run all of your resource buildings.

Keep going back and forth between building resource producing buildings and cottages. Build one each of farm, sawmill, quarry, and iron mine, and then build enough cottages to supply the needed workers.

Keep the idle population number low. And keep the population limit at least 30% higher than the current population.

There is no point in constructing resource producing buildings if you don’t have the population to work them, so wait until you get the people needed.

Two things that can give you “instant” population growth. Population raising feature on the Comforting tab in the Town Hall, and applying the Civil Code item. You should apply the Civil Code item as soon as you have cottages to hold the extra 100 people you will get. Do this as soon as possible. Maximize food production so that you can use the population raising button often.

Increasing number of resource fields
You add to the number of resource fields by increasing the Town Hall level. There is a quest for this. Do NOT increase the Town Hall level greater than 4 until the 7 days of protection has expired. AFTER you have filled up all the resource fields with resource producing buildings, then start increasing the town hall level. Increasing the town hall takes a lot of time, so use items to reduce the construction time.

As soon as you have increased the town hall level, new resource fields will appear. Build an equal number of farm, sawmill, quarry, and iron mine on the new resource fields.

Make upgrading the Town Hall level a priority because you also get additional valleys, and this dictates the level you can upgrade certain building types to.

Conquering Flat to build city
Steps to follow.
1. Build a level 5 Farm.
2. Build a rally point.
3. Build a barracks.
4. Research Informatics to level 3.
5. Recruit 20 scouts
6. Scout a nearby level 1 flat.
7. Unpack all the chests. There will be items that give you army units, apply these items.
8. Recruit enough workers so that you have 250 workers.
9. Recruit whatever other army units you need so that your army is 3 times the size of the army uncovered by the scouts.
10. Attack the flat, do NOT send the scouts or the workers in the attacking force.

Conquering valleys
Before attacking a valley ALWAYS scout it first. Recruit a hero with a high intelligence rating and use this hero for scouting. You will need 3 heroes for 1 city and 1 hero each for every city after that. 1 hero is the castellan (per city), 1 hero is for attacking, and 1 hero is for scouting. Different attributes are better for each of these things, so you want to recruit accordingly. You will also need to upgrade the rally point to level 2.

While the scouting party is returning from the scouting mission, attack with a large enough army that you outnumber the opponent 3 to 1, this will ensure low casualties.

When you unpack the chests there are items you can apply to obtain soldiers. There are also quests for recruiting soldiers. When you unpack the chests and apply the items and complete the quests you should have an army that can defeat most level 1 valleys which are not controlled by another Lord. Try to only conquer valleys that are NOT controlled by another lord.

Determine what resources you want to add a production bonus to and find level 1 valleys nearby and atttack them. AFter the attack is over you have to tell the army to return, otherwise they will just camp at the valley.

After you have all the level 1 valleys that your town hall can support, upgrade the town hall, now you can attack another valley. Keep upgrading the town hall until you have a level 4 town hall. Conquer as many level 1 valleys as the town hall at level 4 will support.

Now recruit 20 more scouts. Scout a level 2 valley. Research archers and recruit 20-30 archers, depending on what army you will be facing in the level 2 valley you just scouted.

Recruit an army so that it is 3 times larger than the army in the level 2 valley.

Abandon one of your level 1 valleys and attack the level 2 valley. Do this for each of your level 1 valleys.

Now you are ready to move to level 3 valleys. After that go up to level 4. Keep increasing the number of scouts

by Ringlord

Time: 42 minutes.

Troops used.
Archers: 210,000
Warriors: 175,000
Ballistas: 10,800

Losses.
Archers: 53,000
Warriors: 48,000
Ballistas: 0

I’m also looking at the Queen of Evony submissions in between attacks, that might not be too interesting for you to watch, but it’s boring just sitting there waiting. Anyways the video is pretty long, so I’ve only posted the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes. Please do leave comments.

Part 2.