Evony Game Guide» Evony Game Guide

Evony Age 2 Guide

kschmandt — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:21:46 +0000

After many months of research and testing our Evony Age 2 Guide updates are done!

The Guide is now over 80 pages long and is jam packed with great tips, tricks, strategies and info for both Age 2 and Age 1.

Whats new?

All New Chapter on Age 2
Complete Medal Farming Strategy for Fast Advancement
New Charts and Cheat Sheets
New Easier to Use Layout
Over 30 Pages of New Content!

These are just a few of the great new additions to our Evony Advanced Strategies Guide . We are really excited about these new updates and hope you will enjoy them as much as we enjoyed putting this together! Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Download your copy of our guide “Advanced Strategies for Dominating in Evony v2.0″ HERE

Evony Honor Medals and Level 4 NPC’s

kschmandt — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:14:14 +0000

This is one of my favorite times during advancement in Evony. The search for Honor Medals can yield far more than just medals.

I have found that the best place to find Honor Medals is Level 4 NPC’s. Not only do they drop Honor Medals when attacked but, Lion and Courage Medals as well. So as soon as you reach Barronet you should make attacking level 4 NPC’s part of your daily routine.

Level 4 NPC’s contain a lot of resources which will help you build quickly while you are waiting to advance your rank and title. Specifically they contain 1.6 million food, 120k of each resource, and 300k gold. There is even an advanced strategy for attacking these cities without taking a single loss.

Another thing you will get while attacking Level 4’s are a ton of Gems both Flawless and Delicate. You will be able to upgrade your hero gear in Age 2 quickly with an abundance of gems.

I suggest upgrading your Rally Spot as much and quickly as you can. This will allow you to send out more attacks and increase your chances of finding an Honor (or other) Medal.

Make a list of every level 4 NPC within 20 miles of you, click on one then click attack. Once you have filled in the numbers for the troops you want to have attack simply go down your list and change the cords for each additional attack. This should save you a ton of time clicking and attacking each individual city.

It takes 8 hours for the resources in an NPC city to regenerate but it only takes 1 hour for troops and defenses to fully recover. To get the full benefit out of each attack space them in 8 hour intervals.

Using this strategy you will find that you are able to jump your title from Baronet all the way to Earl in no time. You will also have more food than you know what to do with. A nice bonus.

Good Luck!

Evony Suppression Trick – Avoid Being Colonized

kschmandt — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 02:16:15 +0000

Ok, I have not been able to test this since I have not been colonized lately I have heard that it works so let me know what you find.

Once you are “colonized” there will be an eight hour suppression period. During this time you can have your allies’ mass troops and you can build up your own army. Once this time is up there will be a fight between the attacker’s troops and your own. If you win you are free and if you lose you become a colony under the attacker, your suzerain.

So obviously you want to win the fight, right? Well if you get your allies to reinforce you, you may take losses but win in the end. I’d rather not take any losses. So here’s the trick: go to your Embassy and you will see where troops are garrisoned in your city. You will see your attacker’s troops. You simply have to dismiss them.

The catch is that if you do this right away and your suppressor notices they will simply reinforce and hope you don’t notice. The key is timing. You have to wait until the last minute so that your suppressor doesn’t have time to reinforce. When suppression ends and the stabilization battle takes place your enemy will have no troops in your city and you will win as a result.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you!

Evony Age 2 New Server Launch

kschmandt — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:04:48 +0000

Evony is launching a new Age 2 server on June 25th. This is the third one in less than 30 days.

A new server is always a fun place to start out. No one has had time to amass a huge army. So the playing field is pretty level. Take advantage of this new launch if you are just getting started.

If you are a seasoned player this is a great opportunity for you too. You will be able to run a streamlined build and hit the ground running. When you come out of beginners protection you will already be ready and there will be no one to stand in your way.

Many of you already know much of this, if that’s the case for you take this as a heads up. Hey, there is a new Age 2 server coming online! Enjoy.

Building a New Evony City

kschmandt — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:54:23 +0000

Are you building a new Evony city? The basics of building Evony cities are very simple, but some cities can have a more targeted purpose and take longer to get the hang of and build. Let’s look at a few Evony city types that many players commonly use.

Raiding City (varied uses)
Tax City/Gold City (for all your gold, new servers and newbies only)
Resource City (Focus on one specific resource, keep all the same valley’s, massive single resource production, mostly old servers)
Military City (Troop mass production, also holds your army)
Main City/Political City/Headquarters (First city, with a nice amount of troops and full walls defending it in the first 3-5 months hopefully)

Evony Raiding City

Raiding Cities are NPC’s you have conquered. They serve as rally points for your troops and are used for three reasons.

A good secretive way to mass troops close to opponents
Faster transport to and from alliance members.
Protection for your main city

First things first, conquer an NPC city.

Inside-

Just leave it the way it is, maybe increase the rally spot if you’ve got a low level NPC/Flat. Maybe a few fancy touch-ups depending on your planned usage.

Outside-

37 Farms—-Upgrade As much as possible so you can mass troops and not worry about feeding them!
1 Sawmill, Ironmine, Quarry-Lol? Yeah just keep them……..

Now that you have a safe place to mass your troops that is close to your opponent you can attack and raid quickly and with ease. You shouldn’t really have to worry about defenses since you will have a large army here. Also when you are done attacking the nearby opponent you may want to abandon this city anyway.

This strategy is great for protecting the location of your main city. If your opponent has a high enough level Beacon Tower they will be able to see the exact location from which your attack originated. If they or their alliance come after you, you can run and loose only a city that you would have probably abandoned anyway.

Evony Tax/Gold City

This city is simply used to make gold and is much the same a resource city since much of your gold will come from selling resources. Use a high politics hero as mayor, this will increase resource production. Check your marketplace to see which resources are selling for the most on your server, usually lumber or iron. When you are producing these in abundance they can be sold and you should have no shortage of gold. The more gold the better!

Inside-

Town Hall Level 9
1 Inn level 9
1 Feasting Hall level 9
29 Cottage level 9
Marketplace level 1

Outside-

37 level 9 sawmills/ironmine depending on which resource sells for more.

Don’t worry about producing much if any food as you will have plenty of gold to buy it. Food is usually the cheapest resource.

Evony Resource City

This city provides massive production (over 600,000) of a certain resource per hour and is very similar to your Gold City.

Whatever you decide to produce, it’s a good idea to make sure you have 10 Level 10 Forests/Hills/deserts for increased production (230%). This is the primary advantage of focusing on one resource.

If you have three resource cities each focusing on all the resources then the nearby hills, deserts and forests you capture wont compound and increase the production of any one resource as much.

Your ability to store more of the given resource will make for easy access. You wont have to transport from three different cities to collect any one resource.

In the later stages of the game lumber and iron are most preferable, as you need them to build troops and defensive units.

Inside-

1 Inn level 9 (demolish after you have a high politics hero)
1 Feasting Hall level 1
1 Town Hall level 10
30 Cottages level 9

Outside-

40 of the resource you are producing (ironmine or sawmill mostly) level 9

Evony Military City

In a military city we want to do one main thing: produce a lot of troops fast. I also like to have my military cities hold a portion of my army, as there is no point in having an extra city produce tons of food for my troops unless it’s a raiding city where troops will be anyway. If you are planning to build a certain unit more than another plan your resource fields produce the necessary resource.

Inside-

1 Inn level 9 (demolish after 8 good attack heroes and 1 good political hero)
1 Feasting Hall level 9 (8 atk, 1 pol)
20 Barracks levels 4, 5, 9 (archers, cavalry, ballistae)
10 Cottages level 9
Town Hall level 10

Outside-

40 farms level 9

Or distribute to account for the unit you are producing, this may save some time transporting in your resources. Lets face it, you will be producing a huge quantity of troops and bringing in resources will be necessary.

Evony Political City – Your First and Main City

This city is your headquarters, so it’s pretty much a balanced city that does a little bit of everything. You should have excellent walls and defenses plus troops as you will DIE without them once someone finds out this is your main city. So get working, this is accomplished in the first 1-2 months!

-Inside

1 Town Hall level 10
1 of every one per city building (beacon tower, feasting hall, inn, marketplace, academy, relief station, forge, workshop, embassy all level 9
7 Cottages level 9
16 Barracks level 4,5,9

Outside-

20 Sawmills level 9
10 Farms level 9
10 Ironmines level 9

You can replace some of the farms with whichever resource you need most. Food is cheap and easy to raid from nearby NPC’s.

It’s preferable to have 5-6 military cities, 1 lumber and one iron producing city, one city to act as your headquarters, and the rest saved for raiding cities. When you separate your cities purposes like this it is important to remember that you will need a lot of transports to move resources around.

Any other thoughts, city types, or suggestions? Leave a comment.

Evony Building Guide

kschmandt — Sat, 15 May 2010 21:30:05 +0000

In Evony building strategy is very important. Here’s a guide to which buildings you may want and what they do for you.

Cottage- Cottages offer shelter to citizens, attracting more people to reside. This will allow your population to grow and tax revenue to increase.

Farm, Quarry, Iron Mine and Sawmill – These buildings are pretty self explanatory. They are your resource generators. The higher their level the more they produce and store.

One advanced strategy is to keep your Farms to a minimum. You can get all the food you need raiding barbarian cities or by buying it. It is typically much cheaper to buy food than any other resources.

Barracks – Soldier training and dismissal are conducted in Barracks; the higher its level the more advanced army branches can be trained.

Feasting Hall – The Feasting Hall is the residence of heroes. You can check the status of heroes, upgrade stats, give rewards, and dismiss them. There must be vacancies in the hall if you want to hire a hero. A higher level Feasting Hall will give you more heroes to choose from. There must also be a vacancy if you capture a hero during combat. A captured Hero can either be Persuaded to join you (same cost as hiring in the Inn) or Released.

Inn - The Inn is used to recruit Heroes. Increasing the level of Inn allows for more Heroes of higher level to be present at any point in time. The quality of available Heroes varies.

There is a trade-off between initial level and Stats for Politics, Attack and Intelligence. Higher level Heroes hit diminishing returns for improvements – each Stat increase requires more experience. This makes a low level Hero that can be developed a much more attractive recruiting prospect than a higher level one with better Stats. Financially, low level Heroes are cheap to hire and keep.

Marketplace – The marketplace allows you to buy or sell resources. Higher levels allow for more trades at once.

Rally Spot – The Rally Spot is a place for military assembly, where you can give an order to attack or conduct a military exercise, check your army’s status and intelligence, adjust your attacking and defending strategy.

The level of the Rally Spot determines both how many marches you can send out at any given time and the maximum size these marches can be. Per level, you can send one additional march and the march sizes increase by 10k troops, all the way up to level 10 which can send up to 10 marches, each consisting of 100k troops.

Also note that using a War Ensign item can increase the size of a specific march by 25%. The ‘Open Gate to Fight’ option determines whether your army adds its strength to the city defenses, or stays safely in barracks to leave the wall defenses to take on an attack unaided.

Leaving your gates closed is useful when you think your army will die from an oncoming invasion and want to protect them. Note that while having your gates closed will protect your troops it will also keep them from fighting and defending your city. If you think that your defenses are sufficient then protecting your army is a good idea. Sometimes however sending your men out can mean the difference between winning and loosing.

Another feature of opening gates is that your scouts will combat enemy scouts when they come to scout your town and potentially kill them before giving the enemy any information; having your gates closed prevents this and lets enemies scout you freely.

March: Instead of going to your selected target on the map and choosing to send a march, you can send it directly from your Rally Spot if you know the co-ordinates of your destination.

Exercise: Exercise is a troop vs. troop battle simulator that will give a rough idea of what might happen in a battle between specific army combinations. This is handy if you’re unsure what formation to put your army in, or wondering how to reduce your losses, but it has some flaws.

It doesn’t include technology levels, traps and wall durability or Hero attack statistics, all of which can seriously swing the outcome of a battle. Because of this, it’s advised to not use the Exercise unless you know the enemies information and can accurately put it together in accordance with your own to come to a better conclusion about what might happen, but is still gives inaccurate numbers at best.

Medic Camp: In the rally spot you will find a button that says medic camp. This holds all of the troops that have been wounded in your recent battles. For a gold fee you can ‘heal’ these troops and they will rejoin your army. If you don’t heal them they will eventually die.

Relief Station - The Relief Station increases the speed of Army movement between your cities and your allies’ cities.

It is very useful if your cities are far apart and you need to transfer troops. This is also good for reducing time to transport or reinforce your alliance members.

Stable - A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals.

A military stable would also have a training grounds, barracks for the troopers, blacksmiths, armories, and the like. A horse must be highly trained to be successfully used in battle. Any civilization that wants to employ a large number of horsemen are highly encouraged to invest and build as many stables as possible.

Horses are raised in the stable, and horsemen develop along with the stable’s level. The Stable allows Horseback Riding to be researched and is also required to build Relief Stations. The in-game description of Stables claims “the higher its level the faster troops are trained.” Perhaps it means that faster horses can be trained with higher level of the stable. It does not increase speed of training however. Building levels do not affect speed of research/training/construction in the game.

Town Hall - The Town Hall is the administrative center the city. Here, players modify Production, Tax Rate, Comfort, and Levy parameters. Each upgrade of a city’s Town Hall increases the number of valleys a player can conquer. Upgrading a Town Hall also increases a city’s resource fields by three. Every city begins with a Level One Town Hall.

According to the quest guide, the Town Hall is the administration centre of a city. While you upgrade it, the efficiency of constructions is enhanced at the same time. Furthermore, the limit of gold reserve will also be increased. Don’t forget when starting out upgrading your Town Hall to level 5 will remove beginners protection.

Also note that the Town hall level affects the view of your city on the map. Levels 1-3 is a “village”, level 4-6 is a “town”, level 7-9 is a “fort”, and level 10 is a “city”.

Walls - Strong and firm city walls built around the city provide significant protection against attacks and invasions. All kinds of fortified units can be built here. The higher your wall level the more spaces are provided for defensive units.

Warehouse - Build one Warehouse for the quest, but don’t rely on it to protect your resources from raid on it’s own, however it’s good to have one Warehouse and set it to save only food so you have some stored for the Comforting “Disaster Relief” if you fall victim to attacks.

As for protecting resources, there are some ways to keep most, if not all of them safe from plunders.

This strategy no longer works: Hide your gold and resources from plunder by putting them up for sale for a lot of money in the marketplace.

Resources in the queue for sale that have not sold yet are taken in an attack (attempt to do this in a massive attack, and all resources up for sale will be gone from the list).

Resources that are bought and not yet arrived before the strike are not touched. One strategy is to sell everything and buy it back (so the gold can’t be taken) less than 30 minutes before the strike hits. They can’t touch it.

Another strategy is to have transporters load up with everything they can, and then march them to a valley, or set them up to march for a long time (maybe an ally far away) while the strike happens, then recall the transporters before they arrive. In theory, you could just set the camp time for the marching orders for several hours and they would be safe, and when you recalled they would come right back.

The main issue about Warehouses is that they simply don’t store enough for them to be worth taking up the construction slot in your town, even with Stockpile 10 researched.

However, several high level Warehouses and Stockpile 9 or 10 can save a significant amount of resources. Ideally you would set aside an unimportant supply city and use that as your Warehouse city, so as to not interrupt the soldier training in other, larger cities. In this case you would keep a supply of resources sitting aside in this town to protect them in case you fall under attack unawares and don’t have time to protect them in other cities, or transport them to safety.

Workshop - The workshop is necessary for offense and defense mechanics. It is required for Metal Casting. It is also a requirement for building higher levels of your Walls.

Academy – The Academy is very important. All of your research is done here. You will see that much of the research requires other structures to be built. All advanced troops require research to be done before they can be trained.

We have actually done several posts dedicated to the Academy:

http://www.evonygameguide.com/academy-basics-part-1/

http://www.evonygameguide.com/academy-basics-part-2-or-why-you-need-an-academy-in-every-city/

I hope this gives you a good idea of what you are dealing with when you start and continue your building process.

- Kris

Thanks to LakersFan1 on server NA10 for much of the information in this post!

Evony Experts ONLY!

kschmandt — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:53:10 +0000

Are you an Evony expert? Can you write? Those are the two questions we are asking our readers. If you have tips, tricks, strategies, or just useful information about Evony or Evony Age 2 we would love to hear from you! If approved your article will be posted on our blog and you will get the credit. Are you up to the challenge?

Visit our Evony Experts Only page to see the requirements.

Evony Age 2 Prestige Trick

Ben Fitts — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:54:22 +0000

Want to see a clever Evony Age 2 Prestige trick? This trick actually works on age 1 as well.

This screenshot of the top ranked players on one of the age 2 servers clearly shows at least one player using this strategy:

Click on the image above to see. Notice that the player with over 6 million prestige has 0 honor. He also only has only 1 city and his population is only 224.

Here is the trick.

Step 1. Build a massive army the traditional way

Step 2. Move all your army to one small city. Preferably a city with Town Hall level 1.

Step 3. Move all your resources into that city, especially food.

Step 4. Have an ally or friend capture all of your cities except for that small city (or you can just abandon them but you might want to get the cities back so having a friend capture them is better so they can help you get them back.)

Step 5. Attack some barbarian cities.

Step 6. Collect huge prestige bonuses!

You see prestige is partially based on your total town hall level. Let’s say you have 5 cities. You would add up the town hall levels of all 5 cities. Then when you do battle the amount of prestige you earn is based on that total town hall level. In the screenshot above you can see this guy is getting so much prestige because he has basically gotten rid of every city. He has one tiny level 1 city and a population of only 224 in that city (meaning he has a small town hall because the level of cottages is based on the town hall level of the city.)

Rumor has it that this prestige trick works on both Evony Age 1 and Evony Age 2.

- Ben

New Age 2 Servers

Ben Fitts — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:38:17 +0000

There are 4 New Evony Age 2 Servers.

NA9

NA10

NA 11

NA 12

If you’re looking for a new server try one of those!

- Ben

Evony Age 2 – Get 100k Prestige your first day

Ben Fitts — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:36:27 +0000

So you’ve started on a Evony Age 2 server and you see people talking in world chat about how they have gotten 50k or 100k prestige their first day. Have you ever wondered how they do it?

Well the trick is Facebook.

You know how Evony now let’s you connect to Facebook? Well here is how you can get 100k prestige in a single day.

1. Connect your Evony account to a Facebook account. It does NOT have to be your main Facebook account. You can make an account just for Evony. Just use a new email address and you can always get a free email at Yahoo, Gmail or whatever.

2. If you are in an alliance, ask your alliance for their Facebook emails so you can send them all friend requests. If you can get 10 facebook connections you should have enough for 100k prestige. If not you can use these facebook groups to connect with other people on your server.

Evony Age II Ally Page

Evony Daily Players Fast Add

With these two Facebook groups you can find a bunch of other Evony players on your server. You can look through the list for people who say they are on your server. Many of them will say they are on NA1, NA3, NA6 or whatever. Find people who are on your server and send them a friend request. Make sure you add some additional comments to let them know you are an evony player from their server.
You can also post a message on these servers. I wrote something like “Evony Age 2, Server NA3 Daily Player”. Within a few hours several other NA3 players had added me as a result of posting to these Facebook groups.

IMPORTANT: Once you are confirmed as a Facebook friend you have to add them as a Evony Ally. To do this click on the evony news where it says “play Evony with” or any of the other Evony news items. Then before you are taken over to Evony click on the “My Allies” button at the top:

If you have Evony allies already or pending requests you will see them on this screen. Scroll down until you see the following:

Once you have allies you will start seeing Evony news items that will allow you to gain resources, troops, etc. However one of the best things you can do is visit your allies and help them every day. When you do this you will get bonus chests that you can use. The basic chests will give you like 80k food, 20k stone, iron, lumber.

You can use these chests to make a donation of gold, a donation of food, a donation of stone, etc. quests. These quests will give you 20k prestige EACH. This is how to quickly get 100k prestige in a single day.

To visit your allies click on the Facebook icon for your ally on your main Evony screen. If this menu is hidden you may need to click on the Facebook F icon to open the menu.

On the following screen you’ll see a view of your friend’s home city. Several buttons will appear. The one you want to click on is the one that says “help increase production”. That will allow you to help your friend and will send your friend a small chest of resources. Your friends will do the same thing back to you and this is how you can quickly get 200,000+ resources in one day so you can donate them and get 100k prestige. Believe me you’ll get all these resources back quickly.

Creating allies with Facebook is just one step. There will be more Facebook tricks. I’ll keep you all updated as I learn the tricks from Evony Age 2.

- Ben

Evony Age 2 Lag

Ben Fitts — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:02:36 +0000

One of the problems players of Evony Age 2 are experiencing is sever lag. I’ve heard a lot of complaints and some players are going back to play on Age 1. I think many of these players don’t understand what causes lag.

Lag isn’t your PC. Lag is caused by the server. Some of the Age 2 servers are overloaded and these servers have a lot of lag. The computers running the game literally can’t process all the various orders, battles, etc. However some Evony Age 2 servers are not overloaded. These servers seem to run much smoother than the overpopulated servers.

Today I put together a list of the 3 of players on each Evony Age 2 server:

na1: 75,030 players
na2: 45,510 players
na3: 40,890 players
na4: 41,950 players
na5: 130,610 players
na6: 118,660 players
na7: 134,460 players
na8: 136,630 players
As you can see NA3 and NA4 have the least number of players. In fact they have almost 1/4 the number of players on NA8.

So if you get tired of the lag on your Age 2 server, maybe you’re on the wrong server?

Evony Age 2 Historical Cities

Ben Fitts — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:06:53 +0000

A new element in Evony Age 2 is Historical Cities. These are NPC cities higher than level 10.

The Historical Cities are spread out across the map as such:

Level 12 City (red flag), every 17 miles north/west/south/east.
Level 16 City (blue flag), which is the state capital. Only 1 per state.
Level 18 City (yellow flag), only 1 per server – “Atlantis” at map coordinates 0,0.

Atlantis Evony Age 2 - Level 18 City

These cities allow you to send out more troops than normal from rally points. They also allow you to affect the nearby cities in your zone. You can do things like tax other cities, draft 10% of their troops, etc. I believe the idea will be that alliances will fight to conquer these cities and eventually huge wars over the control of these cities will ensue. I don’t know all the effects yet but will write more as I find out.

There have been several threads on the beta forums about the historical cities as some alliances have been gathering a lot of research.

Lord Skywlk from the alliance BAMF wrote a great thread on how to conquer a level 12 historical city.

DaFallen has a thread on Atlantis. Atlantis is the only Level 18 city in the game. YES they were the first alliance to take out a level 18 city! Congratz to DeFallen! You guys kick ass.

Evony Age 2 Beta Updates

Ben Fitts — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:00:10 +0000

It looks like Evony Age 2 beta has received some updates today.

First is the new News screen. It has the most recent news including a link to the rss feed. It also has links to go to other areas of Evony like the forums.

There is also a new login screen which now allows you to login via Facebook connect. You might have seen this on other web sites recently where now you can use your Facebook username/password to login to other web sites.

Personally I don’t EVER use Facebook connect. I don’t want to have one login on every web site. I use a password manager to manage all my usernames/passwords and I have a different login for each and every web site. This protects my privacy and security if one account is ever compromised. In a world where everyone logs in to every web site using a Facebook username you’d only have to hack one account to get access to everything!

Other Evony Age 2 Beta updates include some updated graphics in game. I’m assuming there have been other patches, bug fixes, etc. I will let you know as I find out more. I’m checking out the forums and stuff now.

- Ben

How to get Prestige in Evony

Ben Fitts — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:39:07 +0000

A lot of people ask about how to get prestige in Evony.

One of the key ways to get prestige in Evony is to not have very big Town Halls and not run a lot of cities.

One of the key factors when getting prestige from battles is the size of all your Town Halls combined. If you have 5 cities with level 9 Town Halls you have a Town Hall rating for 45. If you had only two cities each with level 10 Town Halls you’d have a Town Hall rating for 20 and you’d gain prestige a lot faster.

Don’t believe me? Look at this top players chart from the beta server.

One of the things you’ll notice is that 3 of the top 10 players on the beta server only have 1 city each. Most of these players have very little honor. They have been focusing on building barbarian towns near their city and attacking the barbarians over and over and over.

One trick you can do to get prestige is to simply not upgrade your Town Halls as much as possible. On one server I’m playing right now I’ve gone from being ranked 2,800 in prestige to being ranked 180. I use only two cities. I have big walls but small town halls. It even makes my cities look smaller on the map.

Another trick you can use is to build up several cities to build up your resources and your massive armies. Then move them all to one city and abandon your extra cities. This way you’ll have one city with one Town Hall and you’ll gain prestige faster from attacking level 10 barbarians.

Try these tricks out and let me know if you have any more tricks for gaining prestige fast.

- Ben

Updates to Evony Guide Age 2

Ben Fitts — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:40:28 +0000

We’re updating the Evony Strategy Guide with information on Evony Age 2!

I’ve been updating the guide with new tips and strategies. I’ve also been updating the guide with a section on the beta of Evony Age 2. This will include information on the new features within Age 2.

The new version will be ready by the weekend. For those of you who already purchased the Evony Guide version 1, I will be giving you free updates to the guide. You get all updates as a part of your purchase! (You’re welcome!)

If you haven’t yet purchased the Guide then you will want to purchase it now. When I launch Version 2 of the Guide the price will be going up.

Remember to purchase go to:
http://www.evonygameguide.com/advanced/

Finally… are you an expert at Evony? Are you playing in the Beta? I’m looking to hire writers to help with updates. If you’re interested leave a comment on this post and give me your best email address so I can follow up with you. I will require writing samples, so please be prepared to provide some links to some articles you’ve written about Evony.

- Ben

Evony Age 2 – New Features – Evony 2

Ben Fitts — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:55:09 +0000

Evony Age 2, adds several new features.

One of the newest game elements/features is the ability to outfit your heroes with equipment. The equipment helps increase the heros stats. You can see from this screenshot that the equipment includes armor, swords, shields, etc. Depending on the style of equipment and the level the stats are increased more. Level 1 increases 1 stat by 1 point. Level 2, 2 points. Additionally you can socket gems into the armor and equipment to increase the stats further. There are 3 different gems. One effects attack, one politics, and one intelligence. Finally you can further increase your heroes speed by giving them thoroughbreds to ride. I assume this will increase the speed of the army led by the hero?

Evony 2 Hero

Evony Age II goes by many nicknames. Some call it Evony 2. Some call it Evony Beta (since it is in beta right now.) Others called it Evony Age 2 instead of typing out the roman numerals. Whatever you call it, it looks like a heck of a lot of fun. Adding these new features to the game will make the game playable much longer. Players won’t get bored once their cities are built. Now they will work to increase their blacksmithing, build new items, and outfit EACH of their heroes. It could be a long process!

Evony Age II – Evony Beta

Ben Fitts — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:35:58 +0000

Evony Age II is coming.

Evony Age II is currently in beta. Starting at 12:01 AM Central time you can login to the beta server using your normal Evony login. They only accept 10,000 players each day. That’s why if you want to play the beta you need to login in the middle of the night and start your account.

The beta servers are supposed to reset every 2 days (meaning you loose everything and have to start over.) But some players I’m finding say that hasn’t happened. They have been able to play all week. Another thing they are doing is purging accounts that don’t login for 24 hours to make room for the new players.

The Evony Age II beta server is 10x faster. If something takes 60 seconds to build normally it will only take 6 seconds to build on the Age II server. That way you can build up cities and armies fast and try out some of the new features of the Age II server. The good news is that beginners scripts still effect 15 minute build times. So you can use all your scripts to really build up your city quickly.

On the Evony Age II beta server they also give you 1000 game cents every day. That way you can buy lots of stuff and build even faster.

As I play on the beta server I’ll share more of the changes with you.

It looks like they’ve add several layers of advancements. For example you can now outfit your heroes with equipment to change their stats. You can make these items in your forge/workshop. That’s a great change because previously those buildings were useless and you might demolish them after the initial buildup.

Here are a few screenshots for you. Click the image to see a full size image.

Evony Age II MAP

Evony Age II City

Evony Age II Town

How to defend the Scout Bomb

Ben Fitts — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:36:17 +0000

The scout bomb is an effective way to weaken a high level opponent’s defenses. Scout bombs can destroy all the traps, and devestate the archers defending a city.

So how do you defend against the scout bomb?

There are a few strategies for defending against the scout bomb.

1. Send your army to a nearby flat to avoid being attacked by the scout bomb. Unfortunately the scout bomb is usually followed by additional waves of armies so sending your troops away might not be a good idea. You could receive further attacks while your army is gone. Not to mention the scouts will weaken or destroy your defenses.

2. Close your gates. If you’re gates aren’t open your archers won’t fight. The scout bomb will hit the defenses on your wall. They could still weaken your defenses though so this might not be the best strategy.

3. Have a lot of scouts to defend against the scout bomb.

4. Have a lot of fodder (warriors) to defend against the scout bomb.

5. Have stronger troops like swordsman to defend against the scouts. Since swordsman have a high defense you need less total swordsman than scouts to defend against the scout bomb.

6. Get your allies to send your some troops quickly. Of course scouts are very fast but hopefully your allies can send you some army to help you defend before your opponents regular army arrives.

The big problem with the scout bomb is that scouts are faster to train than swordsmen or archers. If you get attacked by large numbers of scouts and defend yourself you may still face additional scout bombs before you can rebuild your defenses.

Again the fact is that the person who can make resources the fastest is usually the person who can build an army the fastest. It’s very hard to keep up with an opponent than can make more troops than you on a daily basis.

Do you have any more strategies for defending against Scout Bombs?

The Scout Bomb

Ben Fitts — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:36:10 +0000

Have you heard of the scout bomb yet?

I’m a big fan of scouts. I think they are one of the most underrated troops in all of Evony.

The main reason why I love the scout is that they are the fastest troop in the game. The scout is also one of the cheaper units to make in the game. These two reasons combined make the scouts very powerful.

So what is the scout bomb?

The scout bomb is when you send LARGE quantities of scouts to attack your enemy NOT scout him. True scout bombs are typically 100,000 to 400,000 scouts. (of course that would mean 4 waves of scouts)

The idea is that the scout is the fastest troop in the game. This means your attack lands faster and gives your opponent less time to react. Since the scout is the fastest troop in the game they also have an advantage when attacking archers. The archers get less free attacks on the scouts. The scouts quickly close the distance andget close enough to attack the archers with their swords/knives. Large numbers of scouts can actually devestate archer armies.

For this reason many high level players like to use the scout bomb on their opponents. They time their attacks so that the scout bomb hits and then shortly after an army of traditional troops (archers, warriors, calvary, etc.) hits. The scout bomb weakens the archer defenses and uses up the one time defenses like traps. Now the regularly army hits and is able to do much more damage and take less casualties.

That’s the scout bomb!

Bruce Everis, why do you pick on Evony and not Zynga?

Ben Fitts — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:03:05 +0000

Mr Bruce Everis,

Why are you picking on Evony for their free to play business model? (free to play but offer in game items for rl $$$)?

Have you been on Facebook recently? Don’t you realize that’s how most of the facebook developers plan to monetize their games? Just look at Zynga the makers of the facebook games Mobwars, Mafiawars, Farmville, Pirates, and Vampire Wars. Aren’t they all based on the SAME business model you are constantly arguing against? They are all free to play but allow you to purchase credits which can be used to buy in game items. See the screenshot below from MafiaWars on facebook.

Isn’t this the new business model written about by Chris Anderson the editor of WIRED magazine. He writes about a new business model called FREE: the future of a radical price.

So Bruce, why are you picking on Evony? Obviously at this point you are picking on them because you think they are related to Chinese Gold Farmers and they sued you, but WHY did you start this fight in the first place? Why haven’t you complained about the dozens of other companies out there using the SAME BUSINESS MODEL to do online games?

MOST of the big Facebook game companies are using the same business model. You play for free but they constantly try and upsell you on getting more levels or buying stuff for the game using real currency. Isn’t this the same thing you are accusing Evony of doing? Why aren’t you talking about these companies?

- Ben Fitts

Evony Game Guide

Just released the 16 page FREE Evony Tips

Ben Fitts — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:58:41 +0000

We just released our FREE Evony Tips.

The idea is simple. We wanted to show you guys 80+ tips from our advanced guide to get your feedback and see if you like it. You can download them for free. All you have to do is opt-in with a real email address. You will get your download link via email. When you click the link in the email you’ll be immediately taken to our instant download form.

Get 80+ Free Evony Tips Here.

How cool is that?

- Ben

PS. Everyone who buys our advanced strategy guide become affiliates. Affiliates get their own version of the free strategy guide that they can download and rebrand with their own affiliate links! Then they can give it away to all their friends and make 50% commissions on all the sales!

Evony’s boobie ads – Why is everyone so upset?

Ben Fitts — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:07:34 +0000

Why is everyone so upset about Evony’s boobie advertisements?

I don’t get it…

SOOOOOO Many companies use sex to sell advertising. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this web site. It shows dozens of different advertisements for various video games that use sexy ads to sell the game.

And we’re not even talking about the beer ads, deodorant, cologne, cars, jewelry, etc. Gallup advertising actually has a great page showing a lot of other companies that use sex to sell their products. (see sex in advertising here)

I even found a web site entirely focused on sex in advertising.

The funny thing to me is all the people complaining about the Evony ads are just helping Evony promote the game! How many people have clicked on the links or done a Google search as a result of seeing all the people twittering about the “sexy” ads from Evony. Do these people not realize they are just helping promote the game?

The fact is the game is a lot of fun to play. Regardless of how it is advertised or any of that junk. The game is fun so once we get a chance to play the game we learn that all that other stuff doesn’t matter!

Thanks for helping promote Evony

How to get Rose Medals

Ben Fitts — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:09:13 +0000

A lot of people are wondering how to get rose medals.

As I’ve mentioned before rose medals come from low level valleys. Specifically levels 1-4. Some people also claim you can sometimes find a rose on levels 5 & 6 valleys.

The general consensus is that levels 2 and level 3 are the best valleys to attack. They give rose medals more often and their defenses are rather weak.

We’re finding that it takes between 50 and 100 attacks per medal. You might get lucky and get one within 10 attacks of another but more often than not you might spend an afternoon attacking valleys to find one medal and it might be a cross medal instead of a rose medal!

Here are a few strategies we’ve been using to attack a lot of level 2-3 valleys. Typically attacking 3-5 valleys per city with 6-10 concurrent attacks while we try to get enough medals to promote from Knight to Baronet.

Send 600 archers. 600 archers won’t take any losses so you can continue to take valleys over and over.
Send 2000-3000 scouts. Scouts are the fastest unit in the game. They are also the weakest. You will take losses but you can continue to attack over and over again very quickly.
Send 600-800 warriors. Warriors are cheap and you can replace them quickly/cheaply.
When attacking over and over again it is best to recall your troops, then abandon the valley. Some people suggest that you are more likely to get a medal when you conquer a valley. Other people suggest that you are more likely to get a medal if you attack a valley with full defenses. When you abandon a valley it will revert to a fully defended valley. The idea is by attacking/abandoning valleys you’ll have better chances than if you simply keep attacking valleys over and over.
If you’re going to log off for the night, don’t abandon the valley. Hold the low level 2-3 valley over night. Valleys increase/decrease in rank every day when they are unowned. Over a period of 10 days a level 1 valley will become a level 10 valley. If you own it, it won’t go up or down in rank. That way you can keep ownership of a bunch of level 2 and 3 valleys near you. Simply keep them when you log off for the day and abandon them before you start attacking for medals again.

These strategies are just some helpful tips. People have said all sorts of weird things like attacking swamps works better than attacking other valleys, but so far I have found no truth to these statements. My last rose medal for example came from a level 2 hill. I think the medals are so random and so few and far between that it is hard to provide any accurate data on drop rates. I suspect that the drop rate is the same among all valleys.

One popular web site suggests: 50 archers for level 1, 100 for level 2, and 200 for level 3. This site also suggests that the medal drop rate is 2% to 3% which means one medal per 30-50 attacks.

My own personal experience suggests that every 30-50 attacks is optomistic at best especially if you are looking for a specific medal. You’re just as likely to get some crap medal you can’t use (cross medals for example) instead of the rose medal you really want.

If you have any comments or suggestions I’d love to hear them.

If you’re going through a server merge

Ben Fitts — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:47:18 +0000

If you get a notice that your server is going through a merge there are some things you might want to do.

Get in touch with the members of your alliance. Get their contact information outside the game. When worlds are merged people may have to change names. If you have an alliance forum that’s a great starting point. Your also might want to try and collect as many email addresses as possible. (Your alliance won’t exist at first and you also run the risk after the merger that someone else might start an alliance with the same name!)
Stockpile FOOD and resources. A lot of people are suggesting that during server merges you don’t login on the first day even if Evony offers you 50 cents to be the first to login. They’re suggesting that most bugs effect the first people to login and that if you wait 24 or 48 hours you will have less chance of running into problems.
FOOD prices go up drastically in the last few days prior to a merge. Everyone tries to store enough food to keep their armies alive. You might want to capture a couple level 10 barbs if you can to get access to all their level 10 farms and the food they produce.
Expect the new server to be a cluster f**k. Everyone gets moved and people have to try and reconnect with their buddies plus the server is packed with more high level players who are all out for blood. There won’t be as many barbarian towns and you won’t own any valleys. Competition will be tough. Stockpile your resources and troops so you can take advantage of other people’s weaknesses.
A little preparedness before the merge will go a long way after the merge.
Check sites like this one for more info as the merge happens and check the official Evony forums at bbs.evony.com

Call of the Warlord – Announcement of server merges

Ben Fitts — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:20:22 +0000

Evony Community,

You have been asking for it, we’re bringing you it!

Evony is pleased to announce the 2009 Autumn Campaign, “Call of the Warlord”. This huge event is going to be bringing together all of the best on World Servers 12-17. Due to this, we are bringing all six world servers offline at 00:00(CDT) September 17th 2009 so that we can begin preparing for this epic chapter in the saga of the Evonian lands. After 12 hours, at 12:00(CDT), a new server named WN3 will be online for the campaign to begin!

Don’t worry, you will not lose one penny and instead we’ll be ensuring all players who are involved with this campaign are given specific packages.

And that isn’t even the best part! Check out these extra bonuses!

50 cents FREE to the first 100 players to be activated on the new server!
50 cents FREE to each member of the first 5 alliances to be established with 20+ members on the new server!

That’s a fantastic kickstart bonus for those who want to be at the competitive edge! We’ll be placing the bonus cents to those who are quick within 3 business days of WN3 opening. Don’t wait or you might miss out!

So if you’re on World Servers 12-17, we need you to immediately go to this page:

http://user.evony.com/index.do?PageModule=MergeInfo

You will see a landing site for the 2009 Autumn Campaign where you will need to put your login details. After logging in, a very special 2009 Autumn Campaign information pack and announcement will be there waiting for you, explaining all details, providing examples, etc of how this campaign will work.

Again, we’re going to be bringing World Servers 12-17 offline on the 17th of September at 00:00 (CDT) to begin the huge campaign. Please go to the site above and prepare to see who will be answering, the Call of the Warlord!

Best Regards,

Evony Team

Just Launched: The Advanced Strategy Guide for Dominating in Evony

Ben Fitts — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:24:18 +0000

We’re proud the announce the launch of our 49+ page ebook:

The Advanced Strategy Guide for Dominating in Evony.

We’ve been working on the book for weeks now.

If you ever wanted to learn how to make an unlimited amount of gold, conquer level 10 barbarian towns, or fight using advanced battle strategies this is the guide for you! It even includes a step by step guide to making your first town on a new server.

The ebook includes FREE Updates for life and a money back guarantee if you find the information inside the book doesn’t meet your expectations.

Get the Advanced Evony Strategy Guide now. (Instant Download)

- Ben

PS. We’re looking for affiliates and we pay 50% commissions to anyone who wants to help us promote the book!

Announcing Server Mergers (Call of the Warlord)

Ben Fitts — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:15:57 +0000

Important update for those of you on “World servers”. Evony is merging these older servers together in a campaign called “Call of the Warlord”. They call these WN1 WN2 and WN3. If you see any threads on the forums with those names in them they are about the world merges.

Old servers W1 – W5 have already been merged.

Servers W6 – W11 are being merged now.
http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=56460

Servers W12 – W17 are next to be merged.

Apparently a lot of things happen. You loose your valleys. Your cities are transported to random locations within the region and your alliances disappear and have to be reformed. IN exchange you’ll get a more active server with a lot of top players. You’ll also get 50 evony cents to help get you started.

I suggest anyone who is on one of these servers spend some time reading the game forums to get more information on this.

Here are some tips from another player that has already been through a World Merge.

the merge of W1-W5 was a bumpy ride for sure…. but now you should see the activity level on the server! WOW!

here is what I would do if I knew that I was going to be forced through another merge
-stockpile a week of food in each city – no exceptions
-create and rank up some accounts on the other servers for the free coins
-find a way to keep in touch with alliance members during and right after the merge and regroup faster (skype, messenger etc.)
-build some twig cities to claim as many adv teleports as possible – npc any you don’t want after the merge
-collect any real life email addys of people you want to keep in touch with… many people will quit over the stress of the move
-do not log in on the first day of new server – let everyone else discover any bugs first without risking your account
-sit back and enjoy watching all the people totally freaking out over the merge (I hated the idea of the merge at first but now the new server and diplomatic dynamics have grown on me)
-be patient if there are any issues with your account transfer, Evony will get to most of them eventually

Good luck everyone! Hang in there, it will only hurt for a little while

Check out the forum at: http://bbs.evony.com to get more information on the world merges.

What is a Relief Station and what is it used for?

Ben Fitts — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:08:17 +0000

I noticed some new players in my alliance were asking about relief stations.

A relief station is a building which allows your troops to have extra speed when travelling between your cities or your allies cities. They can make travel times infinitely faster when traveling between your own cities or your allies.

This is HUGE. Let’s say you get a battle message saying you’re going to be attacked at one of your farm cities. A farm city typically doesn’t have a lot of defenses so you send reinforcements. You want to make sure your reinforcements get there first. If you had a high level relief station your troops would zoom across, even slow troops like transporters or ballistas.

Transporters are another good reason to have relief stations. Transporters carry a lot of resources but they are slow. If you wanted to send some resources to a member of your alliance it will take forever unless they’re very close to you. However if you have transporters you can cut those delivery times down to much more reasonable amounts.

Later in the game you may want to do things like farm food or lumber or iron for your army. You may be sending a lot of loads of resources from your farm city to your main city. You’ll really love the relief station once you get a level 8 or 9 relief station and your troop get there in just a few minutes instead of an hour.

So new players, don’t neglect the relief station!

PS. YES the bonus stacks on top of your compass or horse back riding. In essence allowing you to move faster than your enemy when reinforcing your own cities!

The Evony TICK use it to time attacks

Ben Fitts — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:46:32 +0000

When playing online games there is usually a “tick”. A tick is an internal timer the game developers use to update aspects of the game. It’s called a tick because of the seconds on a clock that “tick” off.

Usually a tick involves resources. In Evony you regenerate resources each second, but there is another tick which updates things like loyalty, barbarian defenses, etc.

For example the rate at which your loyalty goes up or down is based on a tick timer. This is an internal system in the game that runs and updates every player’s loyalty so if they have changed the tax rate every 6 minutes the loyalty will tick down or up by 1 point.

The same tick runs other processes as well. For example we know that barbarian towns defenses are replenished completely in 1 hour. This is based on the same 6 minute tick. Every 6 minutes 10% of the barbarian’s defenses are replaced.

Of course this is NOT based upon WHEN your attack hits. Your attack might hit and then 2 minutes later the tick happens in which case 10% of the defenses would be back. However if you know when the tick will take place you can hit the town repeatedly in that 6 minute window and you know there will be no defenses. This can be very useful in an advanced strategy for conquering high level barbarian towns. You can schedule waves of attacks to land within the 6 minute window that you know the town won’t have any defenses. You can win a fight much faster by simply timing your attacks.

One easy way to determine when the tick will happen… change your tax rate so that your loyalty changes. When your loyalty “ticks” upward or downward that is the tick. Now watch the clock. The next tick won’t take place for 6 more minutes then your loyalty will tick upward or downward again.

Beacon Towers HELP in Scouting

Ben Fitts — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:26:35 +0000

Many players don’t realize this but beacon towers actually help in your scouting.

Have you ever wondered why your informatics level is high but sometimes you get bad scouting reports? The reason is because your beacon tower helps in scouting. Both your informatics and your beacon tower need to be equal to the level of the flat you are scouting. If you’re scouting a city it needs to be equal to the level of the walls of the city.

Don’t neglect your beacon tower! I love all the newbies with level 3 beacon towers that build up massive cities but never upgrade their beacon towers. They just don’t realize how important the beacon tower is!

The Advanced Guide is coming soon!

Ben Fitts — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:39:41 +0000

I’m putting the finishing touches on the advanced game guide!

It is a download that you can print on your computer, take to work, take to school, etc. Read it while you’re not able to play Evony and bring all those tricks back when you can play again.

I’ve had a few people reading a rough draft and have gotten a lot of good feedback.

Hopefully the guide will be available in a few days.
Stay tuned for more info!

- Ben

September CENTS Package A added

Ben Fitts — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:53:41 +0000

From Evony:

Beloved Lords and Ladies,
How is your journey in Evony going?

More players are coming into this land, making Evony a success, which we owe it to you! To help you compete more effectively and easily, we prepared for each and every one of you a FREE $50 worth gift: Package Sep A!

Spend $30 or more by September 6th and you can get one! Here are the goodies you’ll receive!

Beginner Guidelines*10
Primary Guidelines*5
Speaker*10
Cross Medal*3
Rose Medal*2
Lion Medal*1
Wisdom Medal*3
Freedom Medal*3
Napoleon’s Diary*2
Michelangelo’s Script*1
Food*20,000
Stone*20,000
Wood*20,000
Iron*20,000
Gold*10,000

Check it out through the top left gift box icon and don’t miss it!

Play for fun and get more friends!

Evony Team

Conditions: Purchases of cents under the premium rewards program do not qualify for the above package. Must spend a total of $30 or more on cents between now and midnight Pacific Standard Time September 6th. Total retail value of the Package is $50.

Where to find Rose Medals

Ben Fitts — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:35:34 +0000

Rose medals are needed for the first promotions. You receive cross medals from attacking low level valleys. You usually receive cross medals when attacking level 1 through level 4 valleys. Reports from some players say that you can also find rose medals occasionally in mid level valleys level 5-6. (I’m not sure if this is a valid claime or not.)

You need 5 rose medals to promote your title to Knight. You need 10 rose medals to promote your title to Baronet.

You need 5 rose medals to promote your rank to Major.

I KNOW some of you are mad right now because you cannot find Rose medals. It appears to me that Evony has changed the drop rate of medals (at least one new servers). It can take easily take 50 or MORE attacks to find one medal. I do not know why. I do not know if this is a bug or not but I will keep you posted as I get more information.

Where to find Cross Medals

Ben Fitts — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:33:06 +0000

Cross medals are needed for the first promotions. You receive cross medals from attacking low level valleys. You usually receive cross medals when attacking level 1 through level 4 valleys.

You need 10 cross medals to promote your title to Knight.

You need 5 cross medals to promote your rank to Captain.

How to teleport your city

Ben Fitts — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:49:28 +0000

City teleporters will teleport you randomly within a region. When you click on city teleporter to use it, it will ask you which region you want to move to. It will then teleport the currently selected city to a random location in that region. If you have multiple cities you will need to do this multiple times. When you do your city will be teleported at random and they may be far away from one another. To move to a specific location you need an advanced teleporter which allows you to pick the coordinates of your city.

WARNING using a city teleporter will only move the CURRENTLY SELECTED city. Make sure you select the right city to move. I accidentally moved one of my cities twice and didn’t have a teleporter left to move the other city.

Medals and Rank/Title Advancements

Ben Fitts — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:12:42 +0000

When you advance your rank or title you use up the medals required to reach that level. You’ll need to obtain new medals to advance again.

It is always better to advance your title first since titles allow you to own/control/make more cities. You can advance your rank after you advance your title.

Since the advancements use up your medals it is even more important to make sure you advance your title first and your rank second.

You also want to avoid using medals on your heroes. Medals can be used to raise the loyalty of heroes. However you can also use gold to improve the loyalty of heroes. Since gold is easily replaced and since you cannot buy medals it is best to save your medals for titles and rank advancements.

How to tell if you are being attacked!

Ben Fitts — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:41:49 +0000

If you have a beacon tower you will get a flashing combat message when you are being attacked. Your combat icon will flash red which warns you that an attack is incoming. Click the combat icon and you’ll get a message describing the incoming attack. Based on your beacon tower level you will get more or less information about the attack. This only works if you are online. If you are not online then you won’t see the message. You’ll come back from your “job” to check on your cities and find a combat message saying you were plundered. Hopefully your defenses were strong enough to defend your city!

What do you spend your first Michelangelo Script on?

Ben Fitts — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:11:01 +0000

You need a level 10 Town Hall to advance your military rank to General. You need to be ranked General to advance your title to Earl, Marquis, etc. Since you cannot advance without a level 10 Town Hall your first Michelangelo script should be used for TH 10. Otherwise TH 10 is probably not as important as Walls 10. After the first TH 10 use your Michelangelo Scripts to create level 10 walls.

Capture High Level Valleys!

Ben Fitts — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:40:32 +0000

A clever strategy for capturing high level valleys is to allow your enemy to capture a high level valley first. Then you attack it and capture it after he recalls his troops. For example taking a level 10 valley will require 20k troops or more. However if you wait for an enemy to take a level 10 valley then you try to take it from him, you might be able to take it with only 1 troop! You can only do this if you are out of beginner’s protection.

You can loot resources by attacking valleys!

Ben Fitts — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:39:06 +0000

If you attack a valley or flat and do not have the slots available to capture it, you will still be able to loot resources from it!

Early on it might be valuable to loot nearby valleys for resources. Just send some workers or transporters along with your regular troops and they will carry resources back. Valleys contain resources based on the type of valley you conquer.

If you raid a grassland, lake, or swamp you will bring food back with your army. If you raid a desert you’ll bring stone back with you. If you raid a forest you’ll bring back wood. Etc. If however you conquer the valley so that you “capture” it, you will not bring back resources with you. Instead you will get a production bonus at your city for producing that type of resource.