| Evony | |
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Evony's logo |
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| Developer(s) | Evony, LLC |
| Publisher(s) | Evony, LLC |
| Platform(s) | (Flash reliant) |
| Release date(s) | May 6, 2009 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy Medieval MMORTS |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Media/distribution | Adobe Flash |
| System requirements
Adobe Flash Player 10.0, Internet access |
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| URL | www.evony.com |
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| Alexa rank | 1,367 |
Evony (formerly known as Civony) is an Adobe Flash-based multiplayer online game with graphic elements reminiscent of Civilization. The game is set in medieval times where a player is to establish a city, begin developing various technologies, and build supporting structures to generate armies and resources for the purpose of attacking other players and in-game opponents. Evony is also about making friends, and being part of a community, which in Evony is called an alliance.
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Evony is set in a persistent world–when a player logs out, the game continues.[1] A new player is given "beginner's protection" which prevents other players from attacking their cities for a total of 7 days or until a player upgrades the town hall, the centre of a city to level 5 or higher. This gives new players the opportunity to accumulate a few resources and troops and get accustomed to the game before the challenges begin to surface.[1]
A player begins by acting as lord or lady of a city. The player gives instructions on production and construction with the initial resources. The resources in the game are Gold, Food, Lumber, Stone, and Iron, and the city's population. As with many real-time strategy games, one first has to increase the city's population and hourly resource-collection rates through the construction of certain buildings in the city, and then start developing other aspects of their city and building an army.[2]
Evony features player versus player (PvP) gameplay, making it possible to attack another player's cities. The level of the attacking city determine how many troops can be sent in one attack. Unlike Age of empire, buildings cannot be destroyed, but a city can be lost - even if you are off-line. When member of an alliance, your friends can reinforce your city. (Requires an Embsassy). Various army units are available, and all battles are based on a player attacking an other players city, or a Non-Player City (NPC). NPCs arise when a city is abandoned. This happens if a player (which has not paid real money) don't play for a period of time, but more commonly when a player, after building a new city on a level 5 or 10 flat, and then abandoning it. It is neccessary to attack these level 5 or level 10 NPCs for resources (called farming). Therefore there are a lot of level 5 NPCs around mid-level players, and level 10 NPCs around the better players. There are certain troop setups to attack these NPCs favourably. An NPC can be taken over, and if its a level 10, all buildings will be at level 10, saving huge amounts of resources and time. However, certain reconfigurations must be undertaken. Taking a NPC level 10 close to an opponent is a well known strategy for staging attacks.
Evony offers many items, purchased with cents (evony money) which can be bought with real money, through its Item Shop or won at the reel or in battle, most of them in some way accelerating the player's progression through the game.
The construction of buildings, researching of technologies, and training of units consume time and resources and have various prerequisites. Each building can be independently upgraded from level 1 (initial construction) to level 10. Level 10 require a special item which may be won throug battle or purchased. Initial construction may take from under a minute to several hours or even days, during which the player must find other aspects of the city or army to manage. Each upgrade requires double the cost of the previous level in every resource and time required. There is a Speed up button, that instantly finish buildings with building time less than 5 minutes. There are also some items that can shorten bulding time or instantly finish a building. Technologies however start with level 0 and can be researched using an academy.
One important aspect of the game is the concept of Heroes. - A Hero can be assigned as Mayor. (Optional, but important) - A Hero must lead attacks on other players cities, valleys and barbarian cities (NPCs). - A Hero may be assigned to lead Scouting missions. (Optional, but useful) - A Hero may be assigned to lead Reinforcement missions. (Optional, but useful) - If your city is attacked, the Hero with the highest Attack attribute will defend your city. The Hero earns Experience points from these tasks, which increase his level, and provide one attribute point to the Hero, which you place in either Politic, Attack or Intelligence. You can easily waste DAYS of research/build and training time if you do this wrong. The Heroes have certain attributes, which are crucial for succeeding in the game: Politics, Attack and Intelligence. - A high Politics attribute of the Mayor will shorten the time for building buildings, walls and wall defence. - A high Intelligence attribute of the Mayor will shorten technology research time. - A high Attack attribute of the Mayor will shorten troop training time. - A high Attack attribute of a Hero defending, leading an attack, reinforcement or scout mission, will increase the fighting abilities of your troops.
The game sports 20 technologies, and allows the player to control up to ten cities through gain of titles and rank, both requiring medals gained by buying in-game coins or by attacking valleys. Each of these cities has 74 building slots at their highest level. There are queue options for army unit production and wall defenses, but not for research. Until the introduction of Bernini's Hammer in Age II, there were not any queue options for buildings as well.
Evony has two different monetary systems. The in-game monetary system revolves around gold. Gold can be obtained by completing quests and by taxing the player's population. It is also possible to sell resources for gold on the marketplace to other players, or gain gold by raiding non-player cities. In lieu of this, a player can use real money to buy game cents with which to purchase items and resources from the in-game shop.[1]
Prestige is a measure of a player's rank in the game. Players gain prestige by following quests, building and upgrading structures, training armies and successfully attacking valleys and cities often during the game. Honor is also a ranking system; however, it only changes with a successful or unsuccessful attack of or defense against another player. These are two of the main ways in which player rankings are visible. The overall ranking system that is displayed in the players window is based solely on their prestige compared to the remaining server population. Evony allows the player to control up to ten cities depending on title, not rank. To increase the number of cities the player can control, the player must obtain higher titles through the collection of certain medals.
Reviews for Evony have praised the appearance, but have been mostly critical of its derivative gameplay.
The game was cited as doing "an amazing job at making the game look and feel appealing to all gamers" by New Zealand-based Stuff, although it was criticised for the amount of time and effort needed to excel in the game.[1] Stuff also noted the shortcomings of a system like Evony's where one could essentially buy one's way through the game.[1]
The Guardian pointed out that it was so similar to Sid Meier's Civilization series that it felt like a ripoff, going so far as to essentially steal its name.[3]
Evony's 2009 online advertising campaign was criticized for featuring what The Guardian called "a string of increasingly racy images."[3] The images depicted females who, as the ad campaign continued, became increasingly unclothed,[4] none of which had any relevance to the game itself. A more recent ad features what appears to be a fogged sauna door with what appears to be a nude woman behind it. The next two ads displayed a topless woman lying on her stomach in a bed and another woman in bed lying on her back, wearing only her undergarments. More recently, there has been a new ad of two women in suggestive poses, only wearing their undergarments, seen on download sites.[5] Other ads used stock photographs from pornographic DVD covers.[6]
Evony has also been accused of promoting the game via "millions of spam comments left on blogs". The company denies they are responsible for the spam.[3] Others attribute the spam to players making use of the pyramid scheme-based iEvony affiliate program.[7]
A campaign for PopCap Games' game, Plants vs. Zombies, included online advertisements that parodied Evony's.[8] They featured cartoon images of female zombies like those featured in the game, in similar poses to the women in Evony's advertisements.[8] Similar slogans were also used; instead of "Save the queen!", one ad tells the onlooker to "Save Your Brains!"[8] AdventureQuest Worlds has also parodied the campaign. Its ad shows a warrior's shadows who is shown to be in blue boxers; it also says "They told ARTIX his ads needed MORE SKIN; EPIC FAIL". The game Alteil also parodied the Evony campaign, with an ad that contained a picture of a female character, and the text "She is actually in our game my lord". There is also a Bloons TD advertisement about number 4. It says "Pop me now, my lord.". This advertisement seems to still exists, it was shown on the hacked version of BTD3 on Pictogame. [9]
The creators of the game are linked to WoWMine, a Chinese operation known for online gold farming. Microsoft is suing that company over click fraud.[3]
On 25 August 2009, Evony's lawyers threatened to sue a critical blogger for defamation over a variety of allegations as to the game's provenance and the practices of the companies behind it.[10] The developers of Evony have denied the allegations from internet blogger Bruce Everiss, and have sent a cease and desist letter for defamation based on Australian law.[11] Everiss responded by linking to a documentary which reportedly shows evidence of Evony's fraudulent history.[12] The case would have potentially created a legal precedent over defamation charges for worldwide defamation being ordered from a domestic court had Everiss been found liable. However, shortly before the case was due to begin in Sydney, Evony parted with their legal team and asked for an adjournment of the case.[13] Two days into the most recent hearing in March 2010, Evony withdrew the libel claim against Everiss.[14]
On February 12, 2010, Evony, LLC, the company behind Evony, announced the release of Evony: Age II.[15] Currently the second age of Evony has now left the public beta testing stage and is now in its final release. There are now many new Evony Age II servers up. Some new changes from the original include Historic Cities, Cities with counterparts in reality with advantages over user-created cities, as well as Historic heroes and hero gearing
A bot is third party software used to automate a wide range of ingame functions such as farming (food gathering), troop recruitment and city defence[16]. An alt account is an additional account a player has on a server. The use of bots and alt accounts are forbidden by Evony's terms and conditons. Bots, alts and alliances composed mostly or entirely of alt accounts animated by bots[17] have become a severe problem on many evony servers leading Evony to introduce captchas in order to remove them [18] and also take legal action against software developers who produce bots.[19] This has met with only partial success[20][21].
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