BerserkDK Evony guide

By BerserkDK You may know most of this but hey maybe there is ONE thing you did not, so you might learn something new reading this through ;) If you disagree with anything or have questions, feel free to ask me in-game.

Battle mechanics Before anything else, to understand this game, you need to understand the battle mechanics, which apply both when hitting NPCs and attacking/defending against players. Every evony battle happens in rounds In a round, all units in range of attacking will fight, all not in range will move forward at their allotted speed (incl. research buffs). This is true for BOTH attackers and defenders. So, it is important to understand, that defending units in fact move out of the city and towards the attackers, when battle commences! On each unit in barracks, you can see what their speed and range is. It is also important to understand, that in any given round, any unit will ONLY fight one unit type. If the chosen target is warriors, and there is only 1 warrior, that 1 warrior will occupy the opposing unit for the entire round! Any battle will commence at the extreme range of the longest ranging unit most often that will be Traps or Abatis (5300), if you have none of those, it will most probably be defending Catapults ( 2250 with Archery 10). It continues down the list according to range, with the longest ranging defending unit setting battle start range. Any attacking until will be outranged by defending catapults in the first round, so all attackers and all other defenders move forward the first round, each the number of yards which is their speed, + research bonus. Units will always prioritize the most dangerous unit in range this means ranged units first, then if none are in range, the unit in range with the largest combined attack force (so 100.000 swords would get hit before 100.000 warriors, because the swords have a higher attack value). So, first round, attackers lose whatever mech units or archers the defending catapults can kill in that round. Second round, now a lot of units both sides have moved forward, and are in range: Ballista, Archers, Mounted units, etc. and THIS is where you need to take note:

The whole reason we use layers in our attacks, is that a lot of units move faster than our archers and our archers stop to fire as soon as they are in range of a target . while layers keep marching forward because they are not in range to attack. So, for instance, a layer of cavalry will have closed much more to the defending archers than our own archers, and in the second round, the defending archers will still be out of range of our archers but IN range of our cavalry layer so instead of moving further forward, the defending archers will stay in place and fire on our cavalry layer while our own archers are free to hit defending melee troops marching forward now being in range. The more rounds you can give your archers to fire on defenders without being hit themselves, the more successful your attack will be. That is also why the size of each layer is important. Any layer that only gives you 1 round, might as well be just 1 unit if 2000 still only gives you 1 round, you might as well stick with just 1 unit! Layers have only one purpose to stop the defending archers from moving forward and getting in range of your attacking archers. Round 2 completed, the rounds keep coming, after the same matrix, until 1 side is completely out of troops, or you reach round 100, where defenders win by default (battles take a maximum of 100 rounds) So now, when you have a bit of understanding of the battle mechanics, let s move on.

Heroes Many players don t put enough importance on this part of the game. I often log into an account and see really poor heroes in a city. Keep searching your Inn whenever you are on, for perfect heroes, and keep upgrading the ones you have. At this stage of the game, a lot of you have spent a lot of time and effort, building up heroes that may not be that good at their base value. So rule of thumb: If the value the hero is there for (attack, politic, intelligence) is above 120, leave it be if it is below, you can rapidly build up a better replacement. So, what is a good hero? Well, except if you get lucky with one of the helms, usually, a base value of 69 is the best you will get. So, how do you figure out the base? Well, let s invent a random hero here, for the purpose of the explanation: Level 34 22 politics 88 attack 43 intelligence To work out the base value, you first add together the 3 values (22+88+43), so total value is 153 Now, you decide what value you want to know the base of in this instance attack base. So, we divide the attack value (88) with the total value (153) 88/153 = 0.58 The hero in the example is level 34 to reset him to level 1, is 33 levels so we need to find out what 58 % of that is: 33 x 0.58 = 19 So, we now know, if we go and reset the hero with Holy Water, he will lose 19 attack points, from 88 to 69 .. so this is a GOOD hero go hire him instantly. (this is an approximate guide you may find the hero a little over or under what expected after holy water, but it is pretty close) This calculation can be used on any hero just change up the numbers, and you are good to go.

How should I use my heroes? First, let s focus on the mayor The mayor is the deciding factor in how long buildings, fortifications and troops take to make. For buildings and fortifications, you want the highest possible Politics value, as that cuts down time immensely. Many have fairly low level politics heroes, because they never use them to farm. To raise their level, farm level 5 NPCs with your politics heroes, with 550 ballista and 400 transports, and he will gain levels fast. Another way to build a big mayor, is to use holy water on an attack hero with decent politics base, which you have already leveled up. A Mayor with 400 politics can build full wal defences in under 24 hours, and abatis is 2-3 seconds it is definitely worth spending the holy water to get to that point. The other important thing about your mayor, is he decides how many resources are produced. The higher the politics of the hero, the more production. You want your politics hero as mayor ALL the time, unless if ordering troops. When ordering troops, you want the hero with the highest possible attack value, as the higher the attack value, the faster troops are trained . Many make the mistake of just using the highest attack hero in each city to order troops. But, if you are smart, you use your top attack hero on the account for ordering troops in all cities. It takes you max 5 minutes to send the hero from one city to another and you save HOURS of training time in your barracks. Just leave an open spot in each feasting hall all the time, and it is quick to send the top attacker from city to city to build troops.

Attacking and defending with heroes There are several important things to know about how to use heroes in battle: When defending, you do not need to appoint your top attacker mayor, the game automatica uses the lly hero in the city with the most attack points for battle. However, with an incoming attack, you SHOULD send your top attack hero to the city being hit. If you are reinforcing a player being hit, and your hero is better than his, reinforce with the hero, and your hero s attack points is what is used in the battle. When attacking with heroes: Always use your top attacker for scouting, you cannot lose him scouting and kill the most scouts Never use a top hero for a scout bomb, you may lose him Never use your very best hero for attacking at ALL no matter what the circumstances, you may lose him, and lose all those points you need for training troops and scouting When abatis killing, hire whatever cheap crap heroes you can get in the inn (but obviously the ones with the best attack points available) When attacking with Cavalry, use your best Intel hero 128 intels give you a 50 % loss reduction, above that no added effect, so from then put upgrade points in attack. When attacking with ballista/catapult numbers, use your best inel hero 163 Intel gives you 50 % loss reduction, above that no added effect, so from then on put upgrade points in attack.

City setup Resources First, a lot overlook the benefits to single resource cities. When you start the game, you build a few of each resource field in your first city, because you need all the different resources to build up. But, later in the game, you really need to convert each city to 1 resource. Why? Because, if you run a city with for instance 40 iron fields, you can hold 10 level 10 hills outside the city, which will boost your production tremendously.

If you run 20 wood and 20 iron fields, and hold 5 forests and 5 hills (or even 10 of 1 kind) your production is lower combined, because the production boost you get from each valley, correlates to the total base production of that resource in the city, and if you only produce for instance wood on 20 fields in the city, the percentage added to your production per valley is only half what it could be with 40 of the same resource fields. So, if you have the motivation, start restructuring your resource fields it takes time, but it will be worth it I suggest every 2nd city wood and every 2nd city iron you do NOT need food or stone production you can sell wood and iron for far more than it costs to buy those resources.

Buildings What buildings you have inside the city, is always the same, but the numbers vary, depending on what kind of resource you manufacture there. First, once researches and wall are at level 10, you do NOT need: Warehouse, Workshop, Forge or stable. You also only need 1 Inn on the accounts, not 1 in each city. Many don t want a marketplace in each city either personally I like it, especially with single resource cities, as it means I can trade goods in every city without moving it, which is great if I log on to a city under attack and partly pillaged. Now, you can apply 1 of 2 strategies: 1. High population This means more cottages and fewer barracks. You get to build troops much slower, but you never have to drop production to build them. Usually this means around 10 barracks and 15 cottages.

2. High troop production This means more barracks and fewer barracks. You build many more troops ata time, but you have to zero your production before ordering troops in the city, to get the necessary population (and set it back to 100 % once troops are ordered). In wood cities you can run 17-18 barracks here, in Iron cities around 13-14.

It is down to personal preference which strategy you use.

What to use Mich. Scripts on? The first priority, in every city, is always the rally spot that HAS to be level 10, for you to fight and farm effectively, unless you want to spend a ton of cash on war banners (but then you might as well spend cash on mich scripts ;)) So, what comes next? Well, again, personal preference. My order of priority is: 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Wall TH Relief Station Embassy Feasting Hall Academy Cottages

And then, I usually chose ONE wood city, where I change the priorities up, and upgrade as many barracks to 10 as I can, to have a city for building Catapults in big numbers.

Farming You will never produce enough resources to be big, if you do not spend a lot of time farming NPCs Big armies eat a lot of food, and if they starve, they die. There are 2 basic farming methods: 5s: When your hero is above 80 attack and your logistics research at max, you send 400 ballista and 400 transports, to get a full haul from a level 5 NPC. You can use less transports, but when sending out many attacks at a time, it s way easier to just keep copy/pasting 400 If the hero is lower, add more ballista.

You take no losses

10s: This is probably the most discussed point in evony. Nobody is yet certain what the perfect method is, but I can tell you what works for ME (and many will disagree so experiment with different methods, and find what suits you). I do not start on 10s until the hero is 155 attack. From 125 attack I start on 7s, from 135 on 8s and from 145 on 9s you use the same method as 10s, but you need fewer transports, so can add more archers. Once the hero reaches 155, I farm 10 s with: 95200 archers, 1000 warriors, 1000 pikemen, 1000 swordsmen and 1800 transports Losses vary, depending on the attack points of the defending hero, but on average, you lose the 3000 footsoldiers, and 7-8.000 archers, per hit. Until about 175 attack, you get to raise the hero 2 levels after each attack, from 175 to 190, once per hit, and after that the ration decreases a bit.

Once the hero reaches 220 attack, I change method, as I have found it is cheaper at that level: 93200 archers, 5000 scouts, 1800 transports On average, I lose 5.000 archers and 3.000 scouts (the better your hero the lower the losses)

NPCs regenerate army every 6 minutes and is at full strength 1 hour after being hit but it takes 8 times longer for it to regenerate its resources so 8 hours is the needed pause on an NPC, before you can hit it again and get a full haul. HAVE WARHORN APPLIED ALWAYS IF USING HEROES BELOW 250 ATTACK!!!!

Defending So, with resource production, troop training and farming in place, let s start to look at fighting (this IS a war game after all). Defending while online First thing you have to understand, if you want to be a great defender: LAYERS ARE BAD (There ARE exceptions to this rule, so read the following carefully) Any attack on you, which is not a scout bomb, or Mech attack, will kill more of your archers if you have even ONE worker, warrior, pikeman or swordsman in the city. If you are online, and have anything incoming which is not a scout bomb, send everything below archer out of the city, as well as all your mounted units, and your rams and transports.

(YES gates should be open which it is not in this example) Yes, the method sounds odd, but it is true! The more ballista and catapults you have as your basic defence, the better results you get, because their added range and force kills attackers further out from your walls and faster. Now, for scout bombs, mech attacks, and in part Jaq attacks (big cavalry attacks), you will want to use a different strategy:

Scout bomb defence Scout bombs hit the most powerfull unit, as per the rules explained under battle mechanics at the start of this guide so to figure out exact numbers of a unit needed to protect your archers from bombs, look at the attack strength of each unit type compared to archers, and factor in number of archers in the city. For instance, an archer has an attack force of 120, while a warriors has attack force of 50. 120/50 = 2.4 So, you need 2.4 times as many warriors than archers in town, for the scout bomb to hit warriors instead of your precious archers. You want this to happen for 2 reasons: 1. Scout bombs only kill 3-5.000 units hitting melee troops, but 15-20.000 hitting archers 2. Melee troops are relatively cheap and fast to rebuild So, for instance, if you have a city with 300.000 archers and 200.000 pikemen, and you are facing scout bombs, you will actually get a better result by sending away some archers. Pikemen have attack 150, to archers 120, so 120/150 = 0.8 So, you need minimum 80 % your number of archers in pikemen, to have scout bombs hit pikemen, like this:

In this example, the 220.000 pikemen, amount to 81 % of the archers, so a scout bomb will hit them, instead of the archers. Remember though, you need a safety margin, if hit with multiple scout bombs, as if your pikemen go below 80 % of your archers, the next bomb will hit the archers.

If you do not have the troops for the described defence, there are 2 other options against scout bombs: 1. Close gates: You lose around 500 ATs and kill all the scouts 2. Send archers out of the city (possibly ballista and catapults too), and let the scout bomb hit the strongest remaining units (that might even be your scouts, if they represent the most combined attack force)

Under cavalry pressure As a defender, you will often see an attacker send numerous small cavalry/scout attacks (abatis killers) They do this to kill your abatis If you have zero abatis, 1 big cavalry wave (Jaq attack) will kill everything in the city I have seen 100.000 cavalry kill 800.000 defending troops in 1 hit, because no abatis were there. If you have just ONE abatis in there, you win the battle pretty easy, with minimum losses, using the no layer defence. So, if you experience these small attacks, build abatis in increments of 1, all the time, till the attackers gives up and tries a different method. You CAN add a few melee troops to your defence against a Jaq attack, to slow the horses down even further. If you have a Jaq attack incoming, and you are unable to get an abatis up in time close the gates.

Wall This brings me to your wall . What should you have there? Well, first of all, you need at LEAST 16.000 ATs they are your killers on ANY attack, and anything less than that number is bad. You also want around 1.000 abatis. You can build more, but actually you do not need to. The first hits you receive on your abatis, you lose a high percentage, and towards the end close to no (Machinery). ne So, 1.000 is almost as good as 2.000 or 3.000. Traps you ONLY need if you have a wave coming with no horses in it. Whenever there are horses in a wave, the abatis sets battle start range at 5300 but if the attacker sends a wave with no horses, and you have no traps or trebuchets, battle will start at AT range, which you do not want to happen. Rolling logs are virtually worthless, I only have a few of them as they do ok against cavalry. They do not kill as much as ATs, they die every time you are hit, and they are expensive in valuable wood to rebuild. Defensive Trebuchets are good, especially in the latter part of the game, when you face big mechanized armies. They outrange attacking ballista AND catapults.

This wall defence is a pretty good method for most players.

Mech defence In the latter part of the game, attacks become mostly about scout bombs, layer killers and mech attacks, and archers start to become mostly defensive units. Mech attacks are mostly used to kill heavy layers. Mech attacks are tricky to defend against, because you know they are trying to kill your layers, to pave the way for scout bombs hitting your archers, but at the same time, mech attacks kill a lot of archers if you have no layers. So, what do you do? Well, there are 2 methods I recommend: Either, make sure you have enough horses in town, to overrun the layers in the mech attack, and break through to the attacking mech with your horses. This is the method I prefer and will ensure the mech never really has much impact on your primary defence (ATs, archers and mech) Alternatively, if you do not have enough horses, use layers that are not heavy, but still slightly bigger than what is coming (so if the layers are 1000 in the attack wave, have 1500-2000 of each layer in defence). What this method creates, is a situation where your layers kill the attacking layers, and make it through to the attacking mech, before they can do serious damage to your primary defence.

(YES your gates should be open, forgot to tick the box when I took the picture)

Offline defending The tricky part to defending is if you are NOT online . If you have no layers there, your archers get murdered by scout bombs, so the no layer defence does not work when you are offline. What I suggest is, that while offline, you either make sure you have enough of one type of melee unit, to protect against scout bombs, or, if that is not possible, keep your gates closed. Keeping your gates closed means your wall will die, and your city can be plundered for all resources without a fight, but if you make sure to share your log in information with people you trust, and they are good about monitoring war reports, they should be able to log into your account and run defence, before things get too bad Attacking This is the trickiest part of the game, and the part most get wrong a lot this game favours the defender heavily. There are two types of attacking: Against someone offline and against someone online. Let s take the path of less resistance first the offline defender: Offline defender First, you need to find out what he has scout or have others scout for you. Once you have the report, you can choose your method and there are MANY variables to cover, unfortunately. IMPORTANT: ALWAYS include cavalry and cataphracts in any rainbow without them, your losses multiply. On the following pages, I will show some examples of attack methods.

Defender has full wall (incl. Abatis), at least ONE heavy layer (more powerful than archers), archers, a big amount of mounted units and some mech units. Layer killer The layer killer will often be your first attack (sometimes the first several attacks), against a well defended city Each attack will take out a layer (if a very big layer 200.000+, you will need 2 layer killers for it)

The layer killer will trigger units in the order of speed, so cavalry first, then cataphracts, then pikemen, then swordsmen, then warriors. At this stage in the game, the warriors you have largely ignored building so far, suddenly become a very important unit to you again!

Defender has full wall (incl. Abatis), at least ONE heavy layer (more powerful than archers), archers, a small amount of mounted units and some mech units. Mech attack The Mech attack does the same as the layer killer, but MUCH more effectively. Where you might need 10 layer killers, you can accomplish the same with 1 mech attack. As the only type of attack in the playbook, with a mech attack you need a layer of EVERY unit along, because they are ALL faster than your ballista and catapults. If you do not quite have enough units for a full mech attack, kill up the quantity with archers, like in this example:

Defender has full wall (incl. Abatis), only light layers (less powerful than archers), archers, few mounted units and some mech units. Scout bomb This you will most often not face until you have applied one of the previous methods, unless you are dealing with an inexperienced defender. This is when you use scout bombs. A scout bomb is 100.000 scouts, and with the defenders gate open, it bypasses any units, and goes straight for the one with the highest combined attack value. So, 200.000 warriors have a lower combined attack value than 100.000 archers and thus, the scout bomb will hit the archers. You should ONLY use scout bombs against archers and mech units. Send a scout bomb (100.000 scouts).

This will kill 15-25.000 archers or mech units per hit (depending on hero levels and boosts). Keep sending till his archers and mech units are dead, or until you again need to send a layer killer to take down the number of a layer, so archers are again the most powerful units.

Defender has no wall (zero abatis), at least ONE heavy layer (more powerful than archers), archers, a big amount of mounted units and some mech units. Jaq attack This is a dream scenario for a big cavalry wave. You can kill as much as 8 times what you send, if you are presented with this defence. Do NOT send if the player is online (he will build an abatis) or has an abatis Send a cavalry bomb any mix of cavalry/cataphracts up to 100.000 Include archers in the wave Include scouts in the wave Use intel hero with 128 intel

Cataphracts are by far more effective than cavalry, but few people have 100.000 of those sitting around, so most often, a cavalry bomb will be a mix of the 2 unit types. Archers are along because (remembering game mechanics at the start of this guide), defending ranged units (ATs, archers, ballista and catapults, target ranged attackers as their first priority. So while they are busy killing the 5000 archers you sent along, your cavalry storm towards the city unhindered. Scouts are along because they will function as a scout bomb, and because they are cheap Intel hero is used because cavalry get a 50 % damage reduction with an intel hero of 128 intel and to do better than that with an attack hero, you would need a hero with very high attack (don t know the number, but at least 600 attack).

Defender has full wall (incl. Abatis), and whatever troops you want to kill his Abatis. 100/100 (Abatis killer) Send a bunch of abatis killers 100 cavalry + 100 scouts

How many they kill per hit, depends how many the defender has left and how his machinery research is

Defender has full wall (incl. Abatis), and few troops you want to kill his wall defences. Rainbow This is where we say hello to an old trusted friend, the rainbow. It is seldom effective against the above mentioned defences, but it is still the best tool for killing a wall cheap and fast.

Online defender This is by far the hardest thing to deal with, and unless you are much stronger than him, you will often need to team play with others in the alliance. The methods are the same as described above BUT you have to take into account that he can build and reinforce at any second. So, to make it harder on him: Timing is EVERYTHING Send, or have others send, attacks to the defenders other cities and alliance cities close to him, to keep them from reinforcing (these can be recalled at the last second, and do not have to hit) time these to hit around the same time as the real attack, to he cannot send troops from town to town in between attacks. If he is ripe for scout bombs, send these to hit the same second as a rainbow, layer killer or mech attack, which will force him to open his gate, or deal with your rainbow killing his wall defence. This obviously also works vice versa, if your object is to kill the wall and you want him to close the gates for that ;) Scout, scout, scout depending on how fast you operate the game, around 10 seconds before each hit. You need to read the report, and have time to possibly recall your attack(s), if something drastic has changed. If you co-play on a target with others in the alliance, make you re your computer clocks are in sync, as your coordination will otherwise be off, and cost you big losses. You can still use all the methods described for an offline player, but now you will be countered in whatever you do, according to how good a player the opponent is.

That s about all, for now HAVE FUN

BerserkDK