Ah, Evony. My shame-game. I first learned of it through their horrible ad campaign. I’m sure readers have come across them as well and immediately had an adverse reaction as I did. In case any of you haven’t seen their banner ads around, let me just post a few examples.

How tasteful…

No, these haven’t been Photoshopped.

Browser-based Leisure Suit Larry?

So, I, like so many I’m sure, avoided this game like the plague until a friend of mine explained to me how much fun it is. I had to go over to his computer and see for myself. Let me just put up a screen shot of the actual game play. Theres false advertising and then theres this…

I call “Shenanigans”!

Yeah, it’s MMO Civilization clone. If you’ve ever wondered how game developers see their audience, Evony’s ad campaign should clear that up for you. Apparently we’re all male, 16, and single.

Anyway, their ads aside, the game is actually quite good. More than that, the game may even be great. It’s all web-based but, if you feel so inclined, you can download a desktop app though. I’ve tried this and, really, it adds no functionality or enhancements of any kind so I opted to stick to running it in browser. Here’s a run down of how the game plays.

Evony is a free-to-play browser-based strategy game. When you first fire it up, you’ll pick a name for your lord and city, flag, and city location. After that, you’ll be dropped into your city and right away you’ll start building shtuff. The game gives you a number of quests with handy rewards that that encourage new players to follow the correct path for expanding your kingdom. Anyone familiar with Turn-Based Strategy games like Civilization or any Real Time Strat games will be very comfortable with this aspect of the game. You’ll start with a few resources, a cheap city wall, and a town hall. Build cottages and upgrade them to increase your population. Build up your walls and build barracks to pump out various troops to defend yourself. Create an academy and start researching technology to unlock new troops, buildings, and upgrades. The quest line really helps to get new players on the right track. By default, all new players have what they call “Beginner’s Protection” which prevents other players from attacking your settlement for 7 days. This gives you time to get your shit together before you open your gates to the rest of the world. Soon, though, you’ll be itching to jump into the action and your dinky once one-building-settlement will look something like this:

Click to enlarge

Now, unlike Civ or or Settlers, this game places a number of restrictions to encourage players to log in from time to time, start building/researching something, and log out to come back in an hour or so. Many web-based games do this by allocating “action points” every hour or so but Evony is a bit more clever about it. Each city (yes, you’ll have more than one within just a few days) can only build one thing and each academy may only research one tech at a time. At the beginning, this doesn’t seem much of an inconvenience as everything takes from 30 seconds to 10 min to build and every thing under 5 min can be instantly completed free of charge. That all changes, however, once you get further along. Most work will soon take 30 min to a few hours. Some can take days. If you’re looking for a game you can play for multiple hours in one sitting, this game is not for you.

Mmmm, delicious delicious resources.

For a game that sells itself as a one way ticket to boob-town, it turns out to be a surprisingly deep experience. After only my first day, I was in an Alliance sharing resources with my neighbors. In just a week, I was sending armies out to conquer nearby forests and plains and (fruitlessly) throwing my troops at nearby enemy players. Most of my time now is spent strategizing our next attack with my Alliance and flipping resources on the marketplace. It’s a hoot if you give it a chance.

The Marketplace makes taking advantage of lazy players easy and fun!


Still, the game has it’s downsides. They’re not game breaking but, if you’re not aware of them going in, they can turn a new player away quickly.

First and foremost, when you first start up, there is no way to specify which server, out of the current 127, you start on. Furthermore, you’ll be places in one of the earlier ones like 17 or 60 to try and max it out. I understand the devs want to fill their servers but these servers are far too fierce for players who are just starting out. You’ll end up surrounded by other players who are already well entrenched and who’ll decimate you the second your Beginner’s Protection wears off. The only way to avoid this is to log out after initially creating your account and city and selecting a new server of a higher number like 125. At this point, however, you’ll have to create your lord, city, flag and pick your location all over again. It’s an avoidable issue but tedious. Server selection should be available when creating an account and city, not after.

The other big issue I have with the game, other than their ad campaign, are micro transactions. The game is free but they, of course, offer in game purchasing though their “cents” system. $5 gets you “50 cents”. $20 gives “200 cents” and so on. These game cents can be used for almost anything. Anything that slows you down in-game can be solved by pulling out your wallet. Need resources and don’t feel like waiting or buying them on the marketplace from other players? 1 cent = 2,00o wood. Some building session taking 8 hours to build? Purchase an in-game, untradable item that reduces a construction time by 6 hours for 20 cents. Now, I understand the games gotta make money but this is too much. Basically, if a player were to “make it rain”, they could quadruple their city growth. I’m not against in game purchasing but there should be limitations. Perhaps allow players to buy as many items as they want but put a timer on how often in game items can be used. Hell, everything else has a timer. Why not this? Of course, thats an easy question to answer. Any restrictions on purchasing would reduce cashflow. It’s a business after all. Whatta ya gonna do.

Anyway, if one can get beyond these few pitfalls, theres a wonderful game to be had for all you strategy lovers out there.  Check it out. Just head on over to Evony.com. To avoid getting stuck on server 3 or 5,  just head on over to this link. It’ll let you set up your account and start your city on server 125, the same I use, without having to recreate your city. Hope to see you in there.

Squid, out.