| Evony: Age I | ||
| Genre | Strategy | |
| Enjoyment |
| You wont be able to leave your computer screen |
| Diplomacy |
| The whole world must play this game |
| Complexity |
| A Phd in Quantum Physics required |
| Fairness |
| As fair as fair can be |
| Reliability |
| hosted by God |
| Overall |
| Caution, may affect your social life |
| Ratings | 2 | |
| URL | na | |
| Review(s) of Evony: Age I |
|---|
| Evony: Age I – the best ever free browser MMORG strategy game By Lord Jean De Courland, 25 August 2009 I stumbled upon Evony, a medieval warfare game, by following an advert link about a month ago. I fell in love instantly and could not stop playing it ever since. The purpose of the game is to run a medieval city-state, gradually growing it from a tiny village into a kingdom of up-to 10 cities. The budding Lord has to complete many delightful quests, liberate valleys from barbarians, and occasionally ward attacks by rapacious neighbours. At later stages, when a player is powerful enough, it becomes possible to loot NPC barbarian towns and unleash wanton carnage upon other lords. The later is usually done as a part of an alliance, so diplomacy plays an important role. But Evony is much more than just another war-game. For me it is a game of intellectual delight; of management and accountancy – an essential stress-buster for a pressured professional like myself… Tweaking taxation and production rates, hiring and firing heroes, prioritising production and Academy research, balancing budgets, playing stock-market game in the marketplace and sending your ballista-transporter armies to loot insane amounts of resources from Barbarian towns is all part of the package! As the game progresses the time intervals between player inputs increase: for example it takes 100-200 hours between high level city wall upgrades. Many other higher-level buildings take 5-10 or more hours to build. Thousands of archers and ballistae take days to train. So in advanced stages it requires as little as 15 minutes in the morning and half-an hour in the evening to start new builds and researches, give training orders in the barracks, fill market-slots with speculative bids and offers, and to send your armies marching off to glory: to loot NPC cities or to retaliate against pesky neighbours. Taking a peek at how things are going from the work PC and daydreaming about how your cities are ticking over all by themselves make boring real life Town Hall meetings more bearable. (In the real world I am a middle-ranking Town Hall bureaucrat). The game runs real-time on a server, even when you are off-line. This ability to click-and-leave the game is what I appreciate most. But if the player so chooses, it is possible to spend full-time equivalent playing the game, especially if you are managing an alliance. In the beginning I was so enthralled by the possibilities, a few times I got up in the early hours to make a few clicks before going back to sleep. But generally, it is a low-maintenance game – a few a clicks every few hours is all that is required. It is not the amount of time you spend playing; it is the decisions you make that affect your progress. Just like in real life. I also see Evony as a valuable educational tool for children to learn about Economics, Politics, History, Diplomacy, Stock-market trading, and vital transferable skills such as patience; communication skills; negotiating; psychology, conflict resolution; ability to balance finances; gain the best value for money; and how to prioritise your workload. Last but not least it allows overseas students to practice their English on Alliance or World chat. Another great thing about Evony is that it can be played completely free. Buying game cents helps to speed-up progress in the game, and to make a lord more powerful sooner. However, unlike in most other games, in Evony it is entirely possible to achieve high status just by being patient, shrewd and wise with the choices you make. And if you want to speed things up just use some pocket change. Evony is an equal opportunities game. Registration is extremely easy – you just chose your Lord’s name, gender and password. That is it! No need to invent a plausible real life name or address. You would be building your first city in minutes. What’s more: you can change name and gender once. There are freebies galore! Evony even generously compensates players for server downtime! User interface is intuitive and quests provide an excellent guide even for a complete beginner. Most quests provide generous rewards, and daily amulet gift may win useful items on the wheel of fortune. No downloads or installation are needed and the game is quick to load. Those with older PCs may have to clear their browser cache each time before logging in to speed up the process. I have never come across another free game that was so fair to its players. Evony is totally free from adult content and graphic violence as child-friendly as can be. It is a game is suitable for all ages. http://www.evony.com/ submitted by DeCourland on 25 08,2009 |
| Review Rating: 9.9999 (4 people have rated this review) |