Evony: Age I

It's been over a month that I have been playing the on-line flash game entitled Evony: Age I. It hooked me literally in the first few minutes of playing as it is relatively easy to learn and figuring it all out doesn't take much time at all. I aim to provide a review of the game and just how it hooks you into it and keeps its hold over you.

I should start by saying that I am avid gamer and have a love for the on-line genre of games. By this I mean I am currently playing World of Warcraft and am awaiting for the arrival of the next beta of Huxley. So another game that provides a decent time sink was something easy for me to become hooked on. Evony itself reminds me of a cross between Civilization with some elements of Age of Empires. Essentially you are building an empire of your own while competing with others around you. Taking over surrounding valleys for more resources, storming the walls of a rival city to pillage his or her treasure, or just amassing an army of epic proportions to defend your own castle, this game has a lot for you to do.

You start as a civilian and work your way up through the ranks by following the various quests that they offer. And you want to follow these quests as they are a major boost early in the game and also act as a tutorial of sorts for newcomers. Another element of the game is called prestige. Prestige is a sort of rank but also something required to move up in title. Building, training an army, conquering lands and much more contributes to this. You will also notice something else called honor. Honor is more or less the PvP (player vs player) stat. You gain honor from attacking rivals and winning but lose honor if you fail in your attack. You can ignore this stat in the beginning.

To work newcomers into the game, you are given a seven day protection from being attacked. In this time you should follow your quests and build up your army and defenses for protection but also conquer surrounding valleys to inflate your resource income. One of the quests allows you to appoint a hero as mayor which will also help to boost up resource gain. I should mention that heroes are a big part of the game as well. They are used for leading attacks on valleys but also cities. They are essential to any army. I will discuss more on them in the next part. After your seven day protection you are free game to anyone around you. But you can also attack anyone near you as well.

Heroes. Every army needs them in order to keep pushing attacks on surrounding regions. Following the quests you will learn how to recruit them and how appointing them to mayor can give certain bonuses. What it doesn't mention is what the stats are actually used for. Intelligence lowers research time and can also help you find medals when attacking valleys. Medals are used in quests to promote your rank. Politics is used to give an increasing bonus to resource gain and to build faster. Attack is important for just that, attacking! It provides a bonus to your army's overall attack. It also makes your army train faster in the barracks. The following link provides a good explanation of it: http://www.evonyguide.com/guide-to-heros

Now that I have tackled most of the game but still leaving some smaller pieces out, I will provide a few links that I have found very useful during my time spent playing. You can go with the widely used: http://www.theevonywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page. It provides a very large portion of information on the game and is updated frequently. Another quick read is what the words mean when you scout a region for how many troops occupy it: http://hods.com/evony/tag/zounds/. All in all the game is still going strong and doesn't seem to want to let up either. I have enjoyed my time spent playing the game and will continue to do so on and off. I encourage others looking to spend a few minutes to a few hours on this game and you'll quickly end your boredom while doing so. If anyone does become hooked on this game, send me a mail letting me know you liked the read! I am on server 35 under the name of Lord Shiby. Simply put in the name Shiby under who to send to.