Robbery

Did you there are robbers around in Evonyland? There are as Banyan and I found out last night. This was a complete suprise to me so I investigated further. There is very little info about this on the forums but what I have found out is:-

• This is a new "feature" say in the last 6 months.
• Only effects transporting of goods between alliance members.
• Only occurs under very rare circumstances.
• Ok what triggers the robberies?
• PRESTIGE
• Yes it all depends on the prestige levels of the person sending and the person receiving.
• If there is a large difference between the two in that the person receiving is much higher then the person sending then this triggers the robbery scenario.
• The exact level difference is unsure.
• Why you may ask?
• Evidently some people were logging in with more then 1 account on a particular server, then using the free teleport to get closer to where their main account cities were, then after joining the alliance  using their new city to supply their main cities. e.g. getting a new city without buying medal boxes!
• So the devs invented the robbers. Its all about money remember! Evony is free forever huh!

EDIT:- We found out that reinforce also is effected, so troops only! no goods!

Hints and Tips Part 2

Here are some more hints and tips. These are all different levels and will added to as I think of them so look at this blog entry regularly

• Heroes: Have you got heroes? Do you know what all the attributes mean? Hopefully here are some of the answers.
• Politics: This is the guy (or girl) who should be normally your mayor. The higher his/her politic level the higher your production.
• Attack: This is hero you use for attacking as his attack level is added to your troop attack level hence makes your troops more powerful. The attack level also effects the build time of troops so make your best attack hero mayor just before building troops and then replace him with your normal mayor once you have started the queue in the barracks. Also make sure you have a high attack hero in each city as this hero will help defend you if under attack.
• Intelligence: This guy is rather underrated by a lot of players but can save you hours of time. The intel level effects the research times at the academy so as above put him/her in as mayor before research. As we all know the research times start getting very long so this hero can save you hours. As way of example by changing to a reasonable high intel hero (85) from my normal mayor I saved 32 hrs on research time for level 10 Archery.  The high intel hero also helps with your informatics level so send him along with your scouts when scouting high level valleys.
• Do not forget to level up your heroes after attacking and keep checking your mayor as he/she is constantly gaining experience but can easily be forgotten. I presume that you all understood what I mean by levelling up? If not or you unsure leave a comment and I will try to explain further.
• Inn: Do not get rid of the inn until you get your feast hall up to level 9. e.g. Do not make the same mistake I did. You need a inn to upgrade your hall and whilst at the moment you may think you do not need lvl 9 trust me later on you will because you need a hero for every attack and later on you will have to send waves of attackers to defeat your enemy. I realised too late and had to tear down a cottage to make room. Pity that a town hall upgrade does not give more space in the town! If you have an inn check it daily as the heroes refresh every 24hrs. Remember the ones you want have a base attribute of 65 or higher. Also remember that Google is your friend here so if the last sentence was pure gooblygook to you do some research yourselves.
• Valleys: I will post some details on capturing high level valleys when I can find a good site but here's a link with some good basic info.  http://www.theevonywiki.com/index.php/Valleys

Remember if you find any good sites with the info let me know by posting the link in the comments box and I will put in the resources page.

 Ranks and Titles

Be careful upgrading your military rank, you will waste your medals. The game devs have dropped the medal drop rate so low, especially rose and lion medals, which you need to advance in the game in the early stages, e.g.us, that it is impossible to get more then the title knight (2 cities) without extreme luck on the lucky wheel or buying games coins. The quest also leads you astray as well. Do not upgrade your military rank unless it is necessary it is the title that matters eg Knight, Baronet etc because each upgrade here allows you an extra city.

 The following links explain the different titles and ranks
Titles http://theevonywiki.com/index.php/Titles
Ranks http://theevonywiki.com/index.php/Ranks

Exercise in Rally Point
Just to give everyone a reminder that the exercise battle simulator is rather "flawed". While it useful when you are just starting out, later on it can cause you major grief. This is especially true later on when one is trying to attack higher level valleys. This I found out the hard way when attacking a level 9 valley. The simulator said I will lose no troops bar a few warriors, so I sent a few more archers to make sure. The end result was that I lost the lot (8k archers gone och!!!). What one has to realise is that the simulator does not take the tech levels into consideration and a level 9 valleys has level 9 techs for all troops. So be warned!!!!
As an aside try putting one archer against 5 rams in the simulator and see what happens! Then look at the specs for both troops and explain? If anyone can come up with a suitable explanation I will be fascinated to read it.

The Element of Suprise

Or how to outsmart your attacker
This is a quick post mainly for Banyans benefit to show what I am trying to achieve but some others may find some of the tips below useful.

• I am trying to get enough resources together for Banyan to build approx 5k A.Towers in 1 hit. Why?
• Because if you build say 200 or 300 and then get attacked your attacker will easily overcome those and you will be back to where you started.
• Remember he can scout you and see what you have but not what you are building!
• So the idea is to give your attacker the impression that your city is defenceless (which it is).
• Remember those towers, once built, will appear in one hit so one moment 0 then 5000
• 5000 ATs will require approx 15-25000 archers to take down.
• In the mean time get your walls as high as possible and research archery levels. This will make your towers even more deadly.
• Whilst waiting for the towers to be built, also build troops (again archers)
• When you have good size say 1000 then lose them by sending them to an alliance city (Dont forget to ask 1st)
• If you build say batches of 500 to 1000 once built recall your hidden army add the new members and re-hide.
• Keep a reasonable army in town as if he sees very low numbers or suddenly 0 archers when you had say 1k yesterday he may get suspicious.  
• Unless you get scouted at the wrong time(unlucky) he will see very little change in your apparent troop levels. We want him to get complacent. 
• Important Keep Your Gates Closed you do not want to lose what troops you do have
• Also build about 100 scouts if you haven't got any.
• You will know what time the towers will be complete (Remember I can not see that for you as it depends on research, hero level etc.)
• Now is the next clever bit. I want you to build approx 2-3000 scouts to arrive at about the same time as the ATs. 
• You will also need to be online at this time or you will lose the element of surprise so adjust build times etc to suit eg slightly more or less ATs etc
• Once your towers and scouts arrive open your gates and recall your troops.
• If you now get scouted because a) your gates are open and b) you have a lot more scouts it will mean that he will probably not send enough scouts.
• A smart player always scouts before an attack and times that scout to be just before the attack hits. This will show if the gates are open and if you have been reinforced? note I said smart!
• But he will not get that scout report because you killed all his scouts. So his options now are to recall his troops or press on. He may press on if he has enough troops to take care of the troops that he as seen and thinks you have. WE HOPE!
• He would not have allowed for the return of your troops which were in hiding or 5000 archer towers
• The fields will be stained for ever with his blood

Remember to keep your builders building, and your academics and barracks busy. It is important to spend all the resources that you can and lose any that you cant DO NOT MAKE YOURSELF A TARGET

Warfare is the Art of Deception

As I write this I am presently attacking rallin10. Good you may say. His city nub which I have scouted has over 9k archer towers, This will require approx 50k archers at lvl10 archery (which I am still waiting for) to beat down his defences (5 to 1 ratio with layers is usually required (from other sources not me)) I do not have that many archers and I would suspect that the whole alliance together has not that many. So what am I attacking him with? 1 hero (required) and 1 pike Yes one!

You are most probably now think I have now completely lost it. No  STRATEGY and DECEPTION
rallin immediately sent me a in-game mail which is shown below read and learn


msg 1 "who's in your alliance sending an attack from lol 25 hrs away"
my reply: "in25 hrs u will find out lol"
msg 2 "lol...well gl with it...probably should get a good scouting report on me first though"
my reply 2 "already got it thanks u must have had your gates closed at some time"
msg 3 "so you realise that i have 9200 at's right....and you know how many troops it takes to take them out right...cause my beacon tower is showingyou have no where near the right amount"
my reply 3 "u right i havent game a bit of bummer there with new patch glad npc lvl 5 only have 5 walls we would all go hungry lol"

Remember he can look up our alliance and see that there are 7 members but NOT who they are.
His warning bird is flashing because he is under attack! and he knows that the attack will hit in 24 hrs.
Depending on his informatics level he might get some idea on how many troops
But who attacks a city with 1 soldier so even if he gets that amount of data he will not believe it (probably thinks system is screwed)
So he is now probably searching the map to find an alliance member 24hrs+ away to gauge their strength. He will not find any because its me who is attacking and I am only 44 mins away. So why 24hrs+  simple I used camp time. He will go to bed thinking that both his cities are under attack! what am I going to do? wait 23 hrs then recall my troops (do not want to lose a pikeman do I? lol) in the mean time he is rushing around preparing for the worst.
p.s. My statement about scouting him was correct but I didn't need to as he told me in his mail lol

too cocky for his own good but stupid with it just the sort of opponent I love

pp.s. my last reply was calculated as there was a patch in June of now last year. He now may think that I am an experienced player from another server when in truth I started the same time as you (exception Lord Renfred)

Read and Learn you do not need to be more powerful just smarter (but being both helps!)

UPDATE
Here is a small update with regard todays events
To give him something else to think about I started attacking his valleys.
This is usually a complete waste of time as capturing another persons valley is rather petty and pointless as either you:-

• You capture it and then recall your troops as usual which leaves the valley undefended. This means he can just wander back with a couple of warriors and take it back or
• You reinforce with more troops to defend it (which eats a lot of your food up as the troops eat twice as much when they are having a barbecue. !lol!

 So what I did was to send multiple attacks to about 4 of his valleys with about 2 mins between each one.
I also made a free valley slot available so I could capture it. After I captured the first valley I recalled my troops then I abandoned the valley. Waited for the second valley to be captured - rinse and repeat!
You may wonder why did I abandon the valley? because the valley will then get re-stocked with NPC troops.
So to take the valley back he will have to scout it and send an appropriate size army to capture it.

Why should I waste my troops when the Evony system supplies them for nothing and these were all lvl 7 or 8 valleys so not that easy to recover.

 I certainly got under his skin as the two mails below show:-
Msg1 "keep that up and you'll be sorry"
Msg2 "way to go you can snipe ppls valleys...if you're trying to get medals know that you're doing wrong and also that you're just being a complete*by doing this

you'll be sorry if you keep this up however"

My response none!!! but by sending an email to me that was very stupid because it told me he was on-line.

He then tried to scout me and lost all of his scouts so now he is getting very p**sed off.
His next response was more interesting in that he must have contacted his alliance host who is miles away.
The Host is BIG player so sent a lot of scouts to one of my cities which took out all my scouts and so thus got a scout report. I have since replenished my scouts so no problem but what did rallin learn 1) that my wall are higher then his and 2) I have 14.5k A.Ts eg he stands no chance and that's my weak city! In the mean time he is still looking at the little bird flashing on his screen because he is under attack so I sent two more waves of attackers, again with the extravagant amount of 1 throw away hero picked up from local boozer and 1 warrior but because my beacon and informatics is slightly higher then his he is getting confused info. In the meantime of course he is not attacking anyone else in the alliance!

Other Alliances

Just a quick post with regard to the other alliances, PureBane (longduck(y)) is rated 12th on our server with 89 members. Anyone notice them coming to duckys aid. Most of these alliances do not care for us newbies they just want you in so to build their own prestige. THIS IS NOT HOW THIS ALLIANCE OPERATES. But it will only succeed if we ALL work as a team. So keep reading this blog and ask questions if you do not understand anything, either leave a comment on blog or mail me in game. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE BEING ATTACKED. If the answer to your problem is already on the blog and you just haven't bothered to read it you will get a very terse response from me if you ask for help so READ LEARN and QUESTION if you do not understand. Also don't forget the links on the right sidebar there is a wealth of information there.
p.s. I am attacking longduck as I'm writing this so I may regret these words regarding PureBane but hah it's only a game
update ducky will most probably not bother us again unless he is very stupid, see alliance battle reports
ps Banyan would you like some of your chattels back?

Protect Your Resources

With last nights battle and defence arrangements behind us (well done team) I thought it would be a good idea to post some tips on protecting your resources (Gold food etc)
This will be in two parts as the procedures change somewhat depending if you are online or off during the attack.

Online

If you are are online and can see that you are about to be attacked and you know that you will lose you should do the following:-

• Remember the main reason you are being attacked is for your resources so hide them!
• How? Easy! Use the market (Thanks to Lord Renfred for pointing me in the right direction long ago when we were in B.P.)
• Wait until approx. 30 mins before the attack starts and sell everything you have.
• Sell slightly below the market price so to make sure all your goods are turned into gold.
• You should be now gold rich but the rest of cupboard is virtually bare.
• With less then 30 mins (say 20mins) before the attack hit buy. It doesn’t matter what and depends on the level of your market. If your market is at least level 4 you can buy some of everything. Pay over the odds so that your bid(s) are excepted. Remember to spend all your gold. This is the clever bit remember it takes 30 minutes for the goods to arrive so when your attacker arrives the only thing in the cupboard is what you have produced in say the last 20min. He will be very p***sed off and will most probably not bother you again.
• Yes you will lose money on the market but nowhere near as much as if you were plundered. But remember it is the 30min delivery time that is important so ensure that the goods ordered arrive after the attack(s) (Check to make sure sure he is not sending more then 1 wave of attackers) Do not use Amazon special delivery service because you need to wait. 

Offline

• If you are being plundered whilst offline (get back from work, log on and UGH!) Then you can protect some of your assets by hiding them again.
• We cannot use the market this time so we need to find somewhere else to hide them.
• Again easy but you need transports or workers (lots) to carry
• Where can you hide them?
  
  
  
  1. In your valleys! Just load up your transports with what ever you fancy and reinforce one of your valleys. They will just sit there until you recall them when you are on-line. Remember only you can see those little flags so even if the opponent guesses what you may have done he will have to search the map to find your valleys and then scout them to find your transports and if you send some scouts (who will attack his scouts) and some troops to protect you will make it even harder for him to plunder. note troops that are camping out eat twice the amount so be careful with numbers
  2. In an alliance town! Just click on one of our alliance members towns and reinforce as above. But please get permission first as the transports / workers will require feeding. The above trick can also be used online eg For the small amount produced between selling and the attack, just send them out somewhere just before the attack, wait for the attack is over then recall.
  
  

EDIT: DO NOT SEND TO ME YOU WILL PROBABLY GET ROBBED see later posting

Note need to check on one thing in that if you reinforce rather then transport to alliance will the goods remain in the wagons or be given to the host. I or you could check on this later.

However if you have strong wall defences and a good size army you will repel most if not all attacks from the mid range players SO KEEPING MAKING TROOPS AND ADDING WALL DEFENCES (ARCHER TOWERS  )

I hope this will be of value to someone and feel free to comment as sometimes I think I am the only one reading this blog. (Note to Banyan )

Quote of the day:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

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Battle Reports Share Your Success (or failure)

This part of the blog is for posting your battle reports. Remember when you  see your battle reports there is a link on the bottom of the report. Copy and paste this into the comments for this blog entry. Remember to post your losses as well success stories as we can all gain experience from our mistakes. The big battles are the ones to post eg an active player or NPC above lvl 3

e.g. battle113.evony.com/default.html?logfile/20100101/fd/d9/fdd9f7de7eaf90c639f985c5a82e7a32.xml

I have made a post comment below to start the ball rolling
Just copy and post the above url into your browser address bar to see
Note the blog is splitting the url onto 2 lines so you need from battle.... to xml