Evony: what to expect

Evony is not a puzzle game. It's a real-time strategy game, requiring extensive preparation to play at a competitive level.

Puzzle me this...

The puzzle "hook" reels many people in, but you'll quickly discover that the real game is in building strong troops, cities, and alliances, then fighting against other players and alliances in rapid real-time battles. If you're just looking for puzzles, GET OUT NOW WHILE YOU CAN!

So what IS the game?

Evony is a mobile real-time strategy game. Over the course of months, or even years, you build up a city, train troops, level up generals, technology, and dragons to strengthen them, and form alliances with up to 120 players from all around the world.

Players who stick around tend to find the most value in creating in-game friendships with alliance and server friends, and competing on teams with them. Battle occurs in shorter battlefield events each week, and longer weekend server vs. server (SvS) wars every two weeks.

Competing at the highest levels of the game requires both a lot of time and a lot of money spent. To understand the psychology of the how the game gets you to spend, read up on Gacha. If you want to go more in depth, consider following through the following case study on a similar game by a more well-known publisher (sign-up required, but it's worth it!).

There are ways to stay reasonably competitive without opening your wallet, and you can still have a lot of fun outside the top ranks. But whether pay to win or free to play, this is not a game for casual or occasional players: all your work will just serve to feed others' growth unless you dedicate time daily to growing and maintaining your cities and troops.

Still interested?

• Battles are won ~80-90% based on prepared troop strength and composition, and ~10-20% based on skill during the battle ¹. Learn about troop strength in our guide to buffs (TODO: link here), and about troop composition in our guide to layering (TODO: link here).

• Figure our your (time and money) budget. "Whales" spend $1000+ (USD) per week, sometimes for extended periods of time, as they prepare their bases for top battles. Small to medium coiners can still spend $100s of dollars per month trying to keep close. Skilled free players find clever ways to exploit the game's mechanics to stay competitive, maybe buying the occasional small pack for an important resource or rare item (TODO: link here to a package guide). But all these players have something in common: they spend hours per day preparing and maintaing their city and troops, keeping up with changes in the game, and fighting battles. That is perhaps the most important expense to budget: your time!

• Learn how to help steer and evaluate your server early on. Alliances with different players will form and evolve, however any investment of time or money you make is effectively stuck on the one of more than 1000 servers that exist in the game. And the quality of your interactions with the people on your server is the most important factor in your enjoyment of this (or any) game in the long run. Some experienced players with similar styles or goals even coordinate to all start new accounts on the same server to ensure a good environment. Read more here about how to effectively grow your alliance and your server (TODO: link here).

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