Evony community info

Finally, after so many weeks of hard work and frustration, the evony map is going into open beta!  That means that all of you can go to the map now and start entering data.   Yes, it is time for you to work now.  What? You think I’m meant to suffer alone for this great tool? 

Truth be told, you and I would have been spared a lot of headache if Evony had allowed us to access their map data.  There are preliminary indications that we will be allowed to do so soon, hence all your hard work may be for nothing!  Hahaha! 

Wait.  What are you doing?  Go back to work on entering that map data!  Do you have anything better to do while you’re building another cottage now that you’ve discovered you need people to recruit armies?  Maybe you think you’d better take up blogging?  Nah, it takes a special caring person like myself to do that.  I’m not judging you… You care too, it’s just that… you care about the map more.  Which is good for everyone!

My cottage is nearly done building, and I’m thinking of taking a short nap in there, you know to test it out for my residents.  So let’s wrap it up:

Currently all the map is, is a fancy game map.  You can see the real Evony world and you can see how it zooms to the small Evony map, and you can actually see about 10 times the detail that you can see in that small Evony map.  That said, it gives you no additional advantages.

But if you enter the data here is what the map will be in a week’s time:

• The map is integrated with EvonySocial.  By default, only your friends from the Evony social network will be able to search for your name and find your cities.  The permissions can be changed by you in EvonySocial, so that for example all you EvonySocial alliance members will be able to search for you.
• At the moment city markers are only visible on the grass patches.  Later on, when you login to EvonySocial you will see all the icons of your friends and others who allow you to see them on the world map at any zoom level.  So you can see your friends right away at different states with a global map zoom level.
• You will be able to enter enemies and friends coordinates manually, and share them with your alliance members by default.  The enemies and friends will be visible on the world map and you’d be able to search for them by name.
• You will be able to customize flags and assign them to enemies or friends, say one flag for one enemy alliance, and another flag for another one.

I believe this will be a greatly enhanced set of map feature, long overdue for this game.  It should be out in about a week my time.   Given that my brain calculates at the speed of light most of the time, it means about 10 days for you ground folk due to time dilation.  Hey, blame Einstein not me. 

I’ve also worried quite a bit about security here, and I hope you find it adequate.  Like it?  Hate it?  Have suggestions?  Please leave me a comment - unless you really do hate it, then just go away, why do you need to insult me?  What did I do to you?!

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With the latest nix by Evony on the access to their servers (voluntary on our part) we are forced to do business blind to in-game data.  Mostly, nothing will be affected in terms of functionality, however, you will have to help us enter the data in instead of getting it automatically.  No biggy right?  Really?  You really think so?  Great!  Go ahead and you do it, but send me the code afterwards, I want to take credit for it.  Pretty please.

The way the map stands now, you, the user, will get to click a grass patch area and tell the map what exists there.  Is it a forest, a lake or a city?   You will also specify its level.  Sounds simple enough, but it’s a lot of clicking so start saving your clicks from now for the map.  

When you add cities to the map, you would be able to specify the lord for the city as well as the alliance and other information visible in the Evony map.  This information will not be searchable due to Evony’s concern over unfair game play using 3rd party websites.  One of the most desirable features in building such a map is showing all the alliance cities on one world, and actually searching for alliance members city coordinates (one of the biggest peeves by Evony players). 

Ideally, we would want to show such information only to players in that alliance, however, now that we can’t access Evony servers, we cannot verify a person indeed belongs to an alliance she claims to.  Since the feature is so useful that we have to implement it, essentially Evony has created an unfair gameplay problem for themselves by restricting us from doing our due diligence and securing the map browsing.   If you’re as concerned as we are, please write to them and complain.

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Evony has a concept called city gates.  You can read about it in a little more detail at our Evonypedia site.   OR I can save you some time and tell you right now that in the rally spot dialogue box there is a check box asking you if you want your gates open.  If you open them then your troops get to fight when an army invades them.  Otherwise, well, take a guess.  Nope, if you said they are protected, you’re wrong.  They are just sitting ducks for attacking archers.  I haven’t seen proof of it myself, nor read anything authoritative about it, yet I have it from a good source, sort of our guild leader in BOOM on server 14.  So, there seems to be almost no point in keeping your gates closed.  Ever.  Well unless you know you are attacked by an army of sword carrying dwarfs (they need the elves to shoot arrows). 

Another concept in evony is alliances.  If you’re not a member then join one, there’s no membership fee, and you will get some reward from the quests button.  I know, I know, what about the quitting fee… None either!  Free.  You can talk to your allies for free which makes the game more interesting and they can help you with resources or questions you have, after, of course, you’ve checked our evonypedia.  Oh, a little tip, if you don’t find the article you want on evonypedia, but do find it on another wiki, like theevonywiki, or were told about it, do me a favour and copy it, and paste it into an email, and fire it off to contribute@evonypedia.com.  It will appear on the site in like 5 minutes, because as I keep telling you our editor never sleeps.  If it’s not there in 5 minutes, post a comment here and I’ll reply with his phone number. Don’t worry, you won’t wake him up.

The main benefit of an alliance, as in the real world, is your military power. You would therefore think that you can coordinate an attack in your alliance against a target and completely annihilate it with 100x the troops it has.  Well, you can coordinate all you like, but you can’t attack all together.  So an attack has to come in waves.  The first attacker will be the strongest force to weaken the defences as much as possible for the next guy, and similarly for subsequent attackers. 

The problem is that if you’ve got a much larger force than your enemy the evony battle simulation gives you a decided edge.  You overwhelm the other side and almost take no losses at all.  If you are in an alliance and know your city is about to be attacked you can ask them to reinforce your city with their army.  Open your gates and make sure you can host many armies (your diplomacy centre has to have a high level).  As the defensive side, you have an overwhelming edge over the attacking alliance.  If you assemble a truly large enough army in your city that it takes no losses even against the best army of your enemy (which will be fought first) then no matter how large the attack force or alliance is, you’re safe, and you will take almost no losses. 

If that really is the case, then the only way you can get attacked successfully is if your own alliance turns on you.  So you better be very nice to them. 

Hey, I ended up a blog post without any self-serving statements, yay!  (I believe I’ve already made those statements at the beginning of the post)

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