Evony - AGE 2 - for beginners

Just a few thoughts on Evony for those who are considering playing the game from a guy who has been playing for a couple of years now.

1. Evony is an online game about building an empire, city by city, as well as conducting wars and managing diplomacy. You are playing against hundreds, if not thousands, of other players.
   
2. Evony is a map-based game in a world which has about a dozen states, and it is not animated. You will only see the maps and reports of unseen actions – you will not watch graphical representations of your troops or see your opponents as you might in other civilization games such as World of Warcraft. or Sid Meir's Civilization.
   
3. You CAN play Evony for free – I have never spent a dime on it myself. BUT there is a push from the managers for you to buy packages of materials and game coins that will allow you to build your empire much more quickly. I will NEVER be a big player in the game without shelling out some cash, and am intimidated by players who spend a lot of money and could easily dispose of my empire and armies in a day or two. As a non-spending player, you will never be secure.
   
4. There are actually a lot of Evony games going on. It started with the first servers, now called AGE I, which I have never played and can't tell you much about. I think there are still some games going on there, but I've never visited those servers.
   
   The second age, called New Age or Evony Age 2 also has 2 different levels spread among it's 40 or so servers, each server being a separate game. On the first 21 servers (named NA1, NA2, etc.), which you can still join, if you are captured by a larger player, which will most likely happen as you grow, you can continue to play. Your Suezarian (captor) will draw off about 10% of any resources that you build, but you can still continue to play the game. At some later point, when you gain size or join an alliance capable of helping you, you can get rid of your Suzearian and play unimpeded.
   
   In the games on servers NA22 and above, the game is different in that captors of your cities have a choice – they can Suze your city and draw resources, or they can completely eliminate your city. It's a tougher game to join once it is established as you can be wiped right out of the game overnight. If you want to play at this level, join the game on the highest numbered server possible as it will be the newest game and fewer of the players will have the strength to eliminate you right away. New servers and games are added about twice a year.
   
5. Some players love starting from scratch and enjoy taking new players under their wing – you will see them jump to nearly every new server as it is introduced, and once they have an established empire, they abandon it to move to the next new server – they are not fond of the quiet atmosphere that develops on the more established servers where a sort of balance comes into being with only occasional wars breaking out.
   
6. Some players play the game for the war – they love to attack and annoy their opponents. Other players join for the camaraderie – once you are in an alliance you can build friendships and support networks with other players. Live chat and email are both popular features of the game. The live chat feature drives me crazy because you can spend the better part of an afternoon saying “hi” and “bye” to players as they log on and off with very little in the way of substantive conversation taking place. But some folks love it.
   
7. Evony, more than anything else, is a game of patience. You don't actually watch buildings get created, nor armies being built, nor troops attacking a city – you watch a timer counting down the minutes. Some new players get frustrated at the amount of time ti takes to build a city to its maximum level, but that's the game – waiting. If you can't spend a couple of hours a day – at least on most days – playing the game, don't bother – it will take you forever to get anywhere in the game. It is not a game that can be played well in 15 minutes per day.

What I've done here is just present some random thoughts about the game for anyone who might be considering playing. I may well edit this as time goes by, but I just had some thoughts about the game that I wanted to get on record. If anyone ever bothers to read this, I hope you found it interesting.