Beginner’s Guide for Evony: The King’s Return - The Best Tips and Tricks for Newcomers
What started out as a humble browser-based game has blossomed into an expansive mobile gaming experience. Evony: The King’s Return is the successor to the popular Evony, which was a strategy game that you could play on your browser. This time, however, it’s a faster-paced mobile title revolving around building and developing your own empire, while growing your army and waging war against your enemies in order to become the strongest player in the land. However, no one can triumph by themselves, which is why you’ll also need to befriend like-minded players and create powerful alliances with them, adding their strength to your own and vice versa, while also gaining friends that can share resources with you and watch your back while you’re offline.
There are no dull moments in Evony, especially at the beginning, where every second counts and each moment is a rush to build your defenses and army before your peace shield wears off and you become susceptible to enemy attacks. In this sense, you’ll need to work quickly and effectively, which can be a bit confusing if you’re just starting out.
Luckily, we’ve created this beginner’s guide especially for newcomers to Evony: The King’s Return. In this article, you’ll find the most important tips and tricks for beginners of this strategy conquest game, so that you can get familiarized with the basics and start your journey on the right track.
Choosing a Starting Culture
In Evony, there are seven different cultures to choose from, all of which offer their own unique perks and traits, and often specialize in specific aspects of their cities and armies. In this sense, while the cultures are fairly balanced, there are some that can be much better for newcomers, since they grant bonuses that improve building and development, or that increase the generation of important resources for this purpose.
It’s worth pointing out here that, at least when it comes to resources, you can easily play Evony: The King’s Return on PC with BlueStacks on multiple accounts at the same time using the Instance Manager. By developing multiple alt accounts, you can effectively funnel resources to your main city, and never have to worry about not having enough materials to develop your town or build your army.
But we digress, when it comes to cultures, here’s a breakdown of the seven in Evony:
- Europe: Stone Production +10%, Mounted Troop Attack +5%, March Speed to Monsters +5%.
- China: Troop Load +5%, Ground Troop Attack +5%, Research Speed +3%.
- Japan: Food Production +10%, Ground Troop Defense +5%, Crafting Speed +8%.
- Korea: Lumber Production +10%, Ranged Troop Attack +5%, Healing Speed +5%.
- America: Gold Levy +5%, Siege Machine Attack +5%, Training Speed +3%.
- Russia: Ore Production +10%, Mounted Troop Defense +5%, Trap Build Speed +10%.
- Arabia: Gem Gather Speed +5%, Mounted Troop HP +5%, Bonus From Offering +5%.
Considering how important research and building is when you’re getting started, one of the best choices for beginning cultures in Evony is undoubtedly the Chinese. Their superior troop load will net you extra resources when gathering from the world map, while their enhanced research speed will let you research new technologies at a faster pace.
Keep in mind that you can always switch cultures through your Keep building, though you’ll need to pay a fee in Gems whenever you do so.
Developing Your Town
In the beginning, your city will consist only of a Keep and a few other buildings, and you will have to get to work building new structures to boost your production and start growing your army and defenses.
Some of the most important buildings to focus on at the beginning are your resource production structures, including the Sawmills, Farms, Quarries, and Mines, which produce Lumber, Food, Stone, and Ore, respectively. Though you won’t really have to worry about Mines and Quarries, since these are unlocked when you reach Keep levels 11 and 6, respectively, you’ll have to strike a balance between the other two. We recommend prioritizing Lumber since Food is easy enough to collect from the world map, as well as from your alt accounts. And while your armies constantly drain your food reserves for their upkeep, there really isn’t any consequence to running out of food—your army will never leave or die of hunger.
Other important structures include your military buildings such as the Barracks, Stables, Workshop, and Archer Camp, in which you will train the four different unit types for your army. These units are vital to your development not only because they keep you safe from enemy attacks, but because you can use your troops to gather resources from the world map and complement your passive production.
Above all else, your Keep should always be the highest priority since upgrading this building will unlock other structures, and will also let your other buildings reach higher levels, boosting their effectiveness.
Growing Your Army
There are four different types of troops in Evony: The King’s Return, each with their own uses, strengths, and weaknesses. These troop types are the following:
- Infantry: Strong against Ranged.
- Ranged: Strong against Cavalry.
- Cavalry: Strong against Infantry.
- Siege: Balanced stats, but offer the highest troop load capacity of all, making them ideal for gathering expeditions on the world map. However, when damaged, they can’t be treated in a hospital and require gems to repair.
While it’s important to keep a balanced troop distribution, we suggest focusing on siege weapons early on since they will allow you to gather more resources from the world map, potentially speeding up your development since you won’t have to wait around until you have enough materials for building and upgrading your city.
The World Map
While you’ll spend most of your time in Evony wandering around your city looking for things to build and upgrade, the World Map is actually one of the most important aspects of the game; it’s where you’ll find a wide variety of elements such as other players, NPC enemies, NPC bases, and gathering spots, to name a few.
One of the most important things that you can do throughout your entire journey in this game is to create the habit to gather resources from the world map, since generating resources in your town simply takes too much time, and you’ll eventually grow to the point where you have to wait for days until you have enough materials for a single upgrade or building. However, as soon as your army is large enough, you’ll be able to send them all to gather resources, massively boosting your accrual in the process.
Your Generals and Their Uses
Generals in Evony: The King’s Return essentially act as figureheads both for your armies, as well as for the development of your city.
Your Generals are units that don’t do much on their own, but when you assign them to specific duties, they can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your regular troops, workers, or buildings. For instance, when you assign a General to lead an army, they can improve the attack or defense of certain unit types, or confer a variety of unique bonuses such as improving march speed when traveling towards enemy NPCs, or giving monsters a chance to drop more loot when defeated.
To use your Generals, you first need to assign them to any given position, which requires upgrading your Keep to level 16 first. However, you can always assign different generals to your armies depending on the context. For instance, Spartacus gives his units a whopping 75% extra march speed when moving towards NPC monsters on the map, but only when he’s assigned as the leader of the group. And just like Spartacus, there are countless other generals that can give a variety of bonuses to your units, both in and out of combat.
Establishing a Good Production at the Start
Lastly, we want to close this Evony: The King’s Return beginner’s guide by talking about how to secure a good resource production. As soon as you start your journey in this game, one of your priorities should be to work on upgrading your Keep, which in turn will open up new buildings and features for you to explore. However, to progress at a steady pace, you’ll need a balanced resource production, which can only be achieved through your production buildings.
To get a good production going, we recommend focusing mostly on Sawmills, and building only a few Farms. This means that, since you only have 15 slots available, you could build 10 Sawmills, and only 5 Farms. And as soon as you hit Keep level 6 and unlock 5 more slots, you could fill these up with Quarries, which are also unlocked at this level.
By producing enough Stone and Lumber, you’ll have enough resources to steadily build and develop your town, which should only leave the matter of procuring enough food to feed and grow your army. Luckily, there are many farms strewn about the world map, which you can easily visit with your troops in order to gather resources and bring them back to your base. As such, we strongly suggest having your units constantly gathering from the world map—not only food, but also any other resources that you might need at any given moment.
With proper diligence and perseverance, you’ll be building and upgrading your town in Evony as fast as possible, without having to wait as much between projects as players who don’t gather and simply wait for the resources to fall on their laps.
