Evony

Seriously. How can you not click that button?

Look at the top of your screen. Chances are there is a woman with her tits hanging out asking you to come and conquer the land, and implying you will get the girl and have fantastic virtual sex all night long.

The product they are selling is pretty much the opposite of that.

Evony's history of misleading advertising, scattergun banner ads and occasional outright theft are well known in the gaming community. After a bit of fuss about stealing textures and images from Age of Empires, the Evony team did a complete graphic redesign, meaning we haven't found where they stole the new textures from yet. Though they still use the tech descriptions they lifted from the Civ series. Many have also pointed out that items are sold that basically let you progress through the game with nothing but cold, hard cash.

So what about the actual gameplay? Well, it certainly ticks all 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted.

Um - we thought it was supposed to be set in medieval Europe?

We were going to write some details on actually playing the game, but as was rightly pointed out, no one would really give a shit.

Playing Evony is like playing Civilization. Except Evony is Civilization for the old: slightly retarded, much simpler and spriteless.

Thanks, fuckwads.

Oh, and some claim that development of the game was paid for by those idiotic WoW players who buy gold from gold farming sites. So we'll have less of the fucking sneering about playing a real MMORPG.

Warfare may come and go, but boobs are always appealing

Your tactics will vary, depending on the age of the server. You will have beginner protection at the start, so you are completely safe to be a tosser to everyone for the first 7 days, or until your town hall reaches level 5. Make enemies while you can - and plan on not sleeping.

On a well established server, the tactics for a newcomer are to wear the opponents down by being repeatedly conquered - a bit like winning a fight by continually hitting your opponent's fist with your face until he gets bored and goes away.

On a new server, the one with the biggest dick army calls the shots. So build troops like hell and do not make one single mistake.

We would happily ally with her.

To survive you need an alliance. Preferably one close enough to you to help you rebuild after being wiped out for the fourth time, and active enough that there is always someone on to reinforce you in case of attacks.

Lea, our advisors on this topic, has active members - most of whom (unusually) have lives outside the game. Fortunately, the members are spread over enough time zones that there is always someone available for you to scream for help to.

Falling for the come on is probably the biggest one.

Forgetting to tick "share to all barracks"

To build forces fast, you have multiple barracks. Click, set 33,000 archers on to produce, hit OK. Fuck. You now have one barrack tied up for the next 190 hours. And no resources or population to build more.

Forgetting to change mayor

Heroes have three mutually exclusive attributes which affect build times if they are mayor of your city. Politics speeds up building and resource production, Attack speeds up troop production, and Intelligence speeds up research. Try to remember not to set research going with a moron as mayor next time.

Mis-targetting

Hitting a level six NPC instead of a level five, losing all your forces. Transposing two digits of a city co-ordinate and accidentally starting a war. Most players do one of these pretty much every day.

Abandoning the wrong city

This one is just plain embarrassing, as your premiere war city, with it's full roster of high level heroes and several million troops disappears at the push of a button, leaving you with some poxy bit of trash.

Trying to take a players Last City

An extremely common occurrence is to see pages and pages in the war reports of a player hitting the same city over and over in an attempt to conquer it. However, Evony, in a bid not to kill the cash cow, makes your final city unconquerable. This buck fever mistake is the cause of much innocent merriment within alliance chat - and much teen angst and poorly spelled rage when the teasing gets a bit fierce.

All RIGHT, we fucking well GET IT!! The ads are really fucking annoying!

Combat mechanics

The combat mechanics are completely fucked up. Two identical attacks can give wildly differing results, based seemingly on the phases of the moon, server time, or just how prickish the programmers are feeling that day.

Money

Every other day, you will get a system mail. Asking you to pay money. For a free game. And the exchange rate is atrocious. Going on holiday and want to protect your hard work? Go into holiday mode - which costs 5 game cents per day, two day minimum. (10 game cents is $1 US)

Farming

You need food to feed your troops. You physically cannot produce enough in your cities to support an army that won't just get laughed at, so you need to farm barbarian cities (NPCs). Of course, the bigger your army, the more you must farm, which means you need a bigger army. Or no life whatsoever.

Botters

Of course, this being the net, the bold statement at the top of the screen that there are no cheats in the game has been taken as a challenge. Bots of varying complexity have been designed to automate the farming and building chores. Once a month or so, Evony does actually both to suspend people for botting. And their cities go into holiday mode so they can't be attacked. Excuse us? Punishing cheaters by letting them have a risk free week off? Yeah, that'll discourage them.

Game Glitches

Once in a while, some of your forces will simply disappear with no warning. Rarely, you can have forces suddenly appearing too - usually when your city is just about to starve.

Ignored bug reports

So, you have had a glitch. Send in a bug report. The programmers need a laugh too. Just don't hold your breath for a response.

Getting mugged

No, we are not talking about the begging mails. One thing a good alliance does is pass around resources, like a circle passing a fatty. But a low prestige player who tries to help out a high prestige player will be robbed, and lose half their forces. This is not a glitch - it happens every fucking time!

Drop rates

To progress to higher rank, you need medals, which you get by attacking valleys and NPCs. Or winning or buying medal boxes. Fair enough - if you have endless time. The drop rate is officially around 2% - so you will get two medals per 100 attacks. In fact, experience has shown that it is more like 0.2%. Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with people getting sick of wasting time on valleys and spending money to buy the medal boxes.

The Wheel

Every day you log in, you get a free amulet, to use on the wheel of fortune. Yeah, right, Wheel of Pain more like.

World Chat Smackdown

No MMORPG would be complete without a chat function. Sometimes the chat is almost literate, usually it is L337erate. Trash talking is pretty much mandatory, and can be tediously amusing. Oh - did we mention that every line costs one speaker? When you run out - time to pray to the wheel of pain - or get out the credit card.

Overpopulation

So, you have slaughtered all the enemies round you, taken and torched their cities, and their unconquerable cities have zero loyalty and population. These players have not been on in weeks - the shame too great to bear. And what happens? The cities sit there. For fucking months! Occupying space that would far better be used for farms.

Stupid Names

Hey, it is the Net. No one is the slightest bit surprised when Alliance Pinas attacks Alliance Boobies.