Review of Evony The Free-to-Play Strategy Game

I love massively multiplayer (MMO) games and I love real-time strategy (RTS) games. Fuse them together into one free-to-play game and you have Evony - a free MMORTS.

Basically, you create your own kingdom and compete with other players, or non-player characters, for resources and prestige. You can horde resources, expand into a multi-city empire, or run a massive alliance of players.

This is a persistent game, which means when you log off your kingdom continues collecting resources and in-game events continue to happen.

You can develop and run multiple cities as your rank grows.

You can research technologies to improve your kingdom.

Every day you earn an Aries Amulet. You can use this to "spin the wheel" for a prize. The prizes range from soldiers, gold, and production upgrades to heroes and resources.

Every player also gets a newbie package which has a bunch of handy items like medals and production upgrades.

Ok, so by now you have registered and chosen a server to call home. So what should you do? Start building!

You will need cottages to expand your population, develop resource fields so you can build, and begin to piece together an army. Now, since you are new you will enjoy 7-days of peace where more powerful players cannot attack you (you cannot attack either). This is really useful because in those 7-days you can really become formidable.

In the picture above you can see the character screen which lists your name, the server name (and time), your alliance name (if any), prestige score, rank, honor and other important information.

The picture above shows the city panel which contains the city's name, location, gold, population, and resources. You can also view the heroes that call the city home, your army, and your defenses.

Kingdom Resources include:

• Gold
• Food
• Wood
• Stone
• Iron

Next to each icon you will see a number (in black) - that is how much of that resource you currently have. The number in green is how much you are generating. If that number is red, it means you are running a deficit and you will want to increase production of that resource. 

In the menu you will find:

• Shop - Buy items or game coins. (both totally optional)
• Alliance - Find, create and join an alliance or view yours. 
• Quest - View quests and turn in for rewards.
  
• Reports - Messages from trading, scouting or attacking. 
• Forum - Socialize with other Evony players.
  
• Contact - Self-explanatory. 
• Statistics - Player scores, heroes, alliances and more.
  
• Mail - Read and send mail.
  

The chat box features channels for new players, the entire server, your alliance, and private conversations.

Why should you join an alliance? Easy - protection and friendship.

Your alliance should help protect you if you are getting targeted a lot. A good alliance is also social. If you have ever played other online games such as World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, or Command & Conquer, you have a good idea of the value of teaming up with other players.

• Build up your lumbermills. Wood is the most important resource.
• Then build up your quarries because stone is the second most important resource.
• Make sure you have enough cottages to support your resource fields!
• Don't neglect warehouses! You need to protect your resources from plundering!
• Save your slow upgrades for when you are sleeping so they are ready when you're online during the day.