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I had been seeing banner advertisements for a game called Evony for several months touted as being Free Forever and a browser based game so I finally decided to check it out and see if it was for real and what is was all about. After a couple of weeks I decided to write a review on it and my first impression is that it is very addicting. It reminds me a lot of playing the old board game Risk crossed between the old computer game Civilization when it first came out. Is it as graphically intense as World of Warcraft or fast paced and exciting as Unreal Tournament or Diablo? In a word, no. But for what it is I find myself drawn to it over and over again to play and for that Kudos to the Evony developers and marketeers for creating a simple yet highly addictive game that is fun to play with many other people online! I love it.

The game is set in a medieval time frame with lords, ladies, knights, warriors, castles, catapults, and other remnants from the past and is a real time strategy based game that continues on whether you are logged in or not. There are many cool things about this game and this type of game I am learning. The first being it is free and there is no software to download or load on your computer at all. You just create an account in your browser and off you go ready to play in Firefox or Internet Explorer. The game is basically all about building a city and then multiple cities and then turning them into strongholds and eventually large defensible castles. Inside each city you build a myriad of buildings to run your city from cottages for people to live and grow your population to barracks for producing an army and an academy to increase your skill in certain aspects of the game. All of these construction and research activities cost resources which is the name of the game in Evony. Resources, resources, resources so you can constantly build, upgrade, recruit, and attack your enemies. As you get more advanced things take longer to do like upgrading to a level 9 barracks may take about 8-9 hours to complete and you can only do 1 construction and 1 research activity in a city at a time. So the nice thing is you can hit build something and then go to bed or go to work and when you get back to your computer it is done and ready for you to do something else. Attacking your foes is similar in nature. Depending on how far away they are an attack can take as little as 3 minutes to multiple hours depending on how far the march is and how many upgrades you have made to compass and horseback riding skills to speed movement. There are a ton of things to build and upgrade even if you don’t plan to attack anyone but be prepared, in the end this is a war game about domination so nobody is neutral for long.

Another important and interesting aspect of the game is that of alliances. You start the game with a 7 day beginners protection period where nobody can attack you and you can’t attack anyone else either. This allows you time to learn the ropes and build up your defenses and army before you can be attacked. For more beginner tips and tricks check out my post here. The game is divided up into a bunch of very large “states” like countries and most Alliances are based in a particular state and you will see people messaging for members to join. Alliances can get up to 100 members and are critical to ones survival in the game. As the 7 day periods end for most people they will start looking for easy targets where they can get more resources to build themselves up quickly. An alliance provides you protection just in the name because most people don’t want to pick a fight with a large alliance early on because of retaliation. And if you aren’t in an alliance you are a target of coordinated attacks coming your way to steal your resources.

The numbers are staggering in this game. I remember when I got my first group of 250 archers and was thrilled. Now I run raids with 15k archers and lose 1500 and don’t think about it. I just produce more. Early on 1k archer towers was a must for protection and now I have 10k meaning it would require an army of 100k archers to defeat me most likely. I have a stockpile of food of 14 million resources right now and that is nothing according to some old vets(the game has only been out for about 6 months). When you attack someone you basically get a report that shows how long the fight lasted and what the casualties were on both sides, who won, and what was plundered. The battles in Evony aren’t nearly as exciting and graphically intense and World of Warcraft but they aren’t as stressful either and if you have to get up to do something for awhile nobody is yelling at you.

Something that is always controversial in many games is that of real money having an influence and in Evony you can buy in game Evony Cents to use to help build yourself up. You can buy items, troops, resources, and a ton of other things by inputting money into the game. $5 goes a long way in giving you a nice jump start and I know some players that have input $200 to get started and are warlords early on taking people out. You don’t have to put any money in and can do alright. My first server I didn’t spend any money and was in an Alliance ranked 16th with 100 members and I was ranked 6th in the alliance. I was also ranked in the top 250 on the server out of over 8000 players on the server. Of course for a few bucks you can have even more fun.

One of my other personal favorite aspects of the game is the Wheel of Fortune. Every day that you log in you get a free Aries Amulet which is worth a free spin on the Evony Wheel of Fortune. It has a random set of items on it every spin and some of them are worth a ton in this game; like a mech battalion which can create up to 400 Ballistas or maybe 120k in gold or an item which gives a hero up to 500k experience and can level them from 10 to in the 20’s instantly. I look forward to my free spin everyday.

Hero’s are a fun aspect of the game as well. You can recruit them in your Inn and then house them in your Feasting Hall. They gain experience from each mission you send them on and level up thru the game becoming more powerful and specialized for your missions. You can also appoint one with high politics to be mayor of each of your towns which drastically improves your resource production as well. It’s a pretty neat idea and lets you personalize your army and characters a little bit more.

One thing I wish Evony had was sound. At least some medieval background music to listen to while playing would be great.

Overall I have found Evony to be a big success and am very much enjoying the game. It is very addicting and can be played anywhere on any computer so it is very accessible as well. It is a lot of fun and although I wouldn’t say it is better than others games I play like World of Warcraft, Warhammer, Diablo, Unreal, etc it is very different and fills a different time and reward void than those games which are also time sinks. I definitely recommend checking out Evony and giving it a shot, I am sure you will have at least a little bit of fun and for the price you can’t beat that!

My character is of course emancave on server 107.

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