Evony... an unexpected package

Game Review
The company that designed Evony has succeeded where many, many others have failed. They have made an engaging, open ended multiplayer online game that is free and browser based.

To play Evony you simply sign up at www.evony.com. You will be allocated a server, and you will find yourself the lord of a small village. Your challenge is to build up the village into a large city, gather resources, research new technologies, take on the NPC cities around you and of course defend against other real players who also inhabit the lands.

Don't come to the game expecting lurid animations or sword swinging heros. The game is essentially played out in simple graphical interface where you can see your town buildings (or farms) laid out on a grid. Zoom out and you can see your city on a larger "world" grid of NPCS cities, towns belonging to other players, and "valleys" representing unnocupied land, sometimes with special resource bonuses. While the graphics are helpful to keep track of things, your most important tools are the many menus of information and options that open out of different types of city buildings or from the menu block on the screen.

I think in the long run the game would stale and get boring if it were simply "man against the machine". Yes, it is many times more sophisticated than the run of the mill free online games, but ultimately it comes down to upgrading buildings, gathering resources, building up your forces and learning technologies. What turns this all into great fun is that it is a true multiplayer online game. Hundreds of other people will be building cities in your area, and inevitably there will be competition for scarce resources. There is built in provison for joining an alliance, and for building groups of allied alliances. There are ways to escape attackers (such as a "truce" you can put in place for a limited time) and teleporting a city. Certainly the most heartstopping moments I have experienced in game involve unexpected attacts from neighbours, desperate appeals to your alliance for aid, and the grim satisfaction of raiding the offenders city yourself once your powerful allies have broken his defences.

As a multiplayer game you expect to see some form of chat, and this is certainly part of the interface. The "world" chat is somewhat random, but your alliance chat area is a great place to get ideas and, of course, yell for help. You can also whisper individuals, and use in-game email as well.

The game opens with a seven day "beginners" period when your are immune to player attacks. After this the game is openly "PvP" (player versus player) so use the time to get in an alliance and teleport near to them. Armies take real time to transverse the map so rescue will not be instant if its needed.

How can the many servers and considerable development and maintenance time be offered free? While the game is very playable without any cost to the player at all, the company provides many useful in-game items that can be purchased with in-game cents. These cents can occasionally be earned or won, but more general have to be purchased for real money. Items range from extra resources to troops, medals, items that hasten build processes or add power to an army, items that increase production rates, or allow you to teleport your city. If you don't want to pay any real money, you still have a chance at one of these items per day, as each player gets a token each day that allows them to play a "wheel of fortune" with a range of rewards on it.

The games promotional material boasts multiple quests. This is true, in a way. A quest is actually a goal. When you reach the goal, a reward becomes available. For instance, a goal might be "build a level 9 Townhall". The interface will let you know both what goals are available for you to work towards and will flag any that have been attained. These quests are a clever way to guide the beginning player. Simply aim to complete each goal and you will quickly get the hang of what is going on.

Battles are not fought with any evidence of violence, so there is very little point swinging over to Evony if your ideal game is a first person shooter. Results of battles are calculated and sent to you as a battle report detailing what troops you lost, how many of the enemy were killed, and what loot was taken. In a clever twist a url is provided at the bottom of each report. Sharing this by in-game email or indead ordinary email then pasting it back into a browser will let anyone look at the report. Here is the result of an attack by some of my soldiers on a resource valley:
battle26.evony.com/default.html?logfile/20090905/37/38/37386e5b6d36cdb6aad9b495488fcd94.xml.

This game has many hours of play built in as you progress from being a poor village to being an obscenely wealthy tyrant of your region. However, it is not realistic to imagine sitting and playing glued to the screen for hours. There are increasingly massive amounts of time required to build higher level buildings (times in excess of 24 hours are typical for high level buildings) and troop movements may also take hours for long range targets. You can only build one building and research one technology per city at one time, though you can make troops and wall defences as well. A typical session for me would be to set some new building upgrades, ensure all cities are researching a technology, check in-game email and look for reports of attacks, then deploy some troops to gather resources or (more rarely) attack a foe. After that, log out and come back later.

It is consequently an unusual game that will certainly not suit every player and every termperament. However it is nicely conceived, has real depth (there are hundreds of pages of blogs and articles up allready about strategies) and provides a pleasant diversion even for players of more immersive mmorgs. Best of all, it need cost you absolutely nothing, so you have nothing to loose by trying it out and seeing if you are destined to be a Lord of Evony.