Denoob Age 1

Never lose casualties hitting a valley again!
Now that we're starting up a new server and need to start capping lvl 10 valleys for making NPCs, efficiency is paramount. I'm not going to get into the advanced mechanics of valley warfare but the key difference to note between cities and valleys is that the battle begins at the range of the highest ranged unit fighting, either in terms of movement or attack range. Each unit gets a 'swing' in each round, whether its slated to die or not. Knowing theory, you can figure out how to hit a valley in practice without taking losses. Each valley will have its defenders as one of or spread between types of cavalry, archers, swords, pikes, warriors. Swords, pikes, and warriors all can be classed as 'infantry' and are treated more or less the same

Always scout your valleys before attacking, only by doing this can you ensure zero losses when hitting it.
Valley defended by infantry ONLY:
Attack using archers, depending on how many infantry there are. As a rule of thumb, I use 1 archer/pikeman, .75 arch/warrior, and 1.5 archer/swordsman. I also include a rainbow of 1 of each unit though this is not necessary vs. these defenders if you send slightly more archers.

Valley defended by infantry+cavalry ONLY: to do this without losing massive archers, you must increase the battle's starting range by adding a ballista. One ballista will suffice for this purpose. I use the same archer #s as before for infantry, and add 2.5 archers/cavalry. A rainbow is NECESSARY vs. these defenders.

Valley defended by archers ONLY: avoid these. Because of battle mechanics allowing each unit to move and attack any turn it starts, you cannot farm these without losses. However, the most efficient way to farm these is with pure cavalry, you will take VERY few losses.

Valley defended by archers+infantry ONLY: avoid these. Because of above, but added layers, cavalry no longer works efficiently, so your best bet is archers+ a rainbow. Just enough to kill each of their unit types in one round, so follow the same # rules as before, and add 1.5 archer per defending archer.

Valley defended by archers+cavalry: same as above, only add 1.25 ballista per defending cavalry, and double the archers. The key here is to be able to knock out both the archers AND the cavalry in the first round, you suffer losses to your archers (ensure defenders target your archers over ballista by putting extra archers in your attack force) from just one round of defensive archers and then take the rest out in due course.

Please do not build any NPC's other than level 5 or 10's near any of your cities. You will want maybe one or two LVL 5 NPC's within 5 miles of your city. The rest of the NPC's surrounding you should be LVL 10's, withing up to five or more miles. I often begin building my LVL 10 NPC's before I am even capable of farming LVL 5's. You will want to get them built as quickly as possible, so that the flats near you do not fill up full of landscape clutter (noob cities, low leel npc's, hostiles, etc. You will also want your LVL 10's as near your city as possible, so that you can farm them more quickly later in the game when time and food are both more critical. Planning ahead for your LVL 10 field is one of the most important things you can do.

Lv10 farming is the bread and butter of end game troop feeding. Without this, you will not be able to sustain an army worth a damn. You want at minimum 10-12 lv10's per city to farm, the number of these that you have equates to the size of the army you can feed. (E says there is no such thing as too many LVL 10's per city.) To attack a lv10 you will need a hero with at minimum 138 atk, tho having 160+ atk is recommended, even with this you will take significant losses (up to 10-15k archers per lv10) until you reach around 200atk. You also want your mil trad, iron working, medicine, compass and archery to be lv10, hbr lv10 is also preferred but is not a requirement. Going in with under leveled tech will result in MASSIVE losses, some ppl have lost as much as 70k archers in 1 hit b/c they had techs that were lv9. Do not make this mistake, be patient, your time will come.

The rainbow setup you use to tackle your lv10's is important, there are many variations that work, finding the one that works for you is your goal once you have the hero to start. Your rainbow should consist of 90-92k archers, 2k transports and a rainbow of ground troops. The reason you rainbow for a lv10 is so that you do not lose archers to traps, and at the beginning it helps with the impact of 400k warriors hitting your archers. But once your hero's atk reaches the 200 mark you will begin killing all 400k warriors in 1 atk round, you will know when you have reached this point b/c your battles should start lasting only 11 rounds. Any battle that lasts under 14 rounds is a decent hit.

If it seems that we are focused mostly on LVL 10's, there is a good reason for that. One thing that most new players regret not doing in the game is building enough LVL 10's. Keep in mind that flats fill quickly, and you will soon outgrow your LVL 5's. Of course, you will still want to build and farm LVL 5's. We just recommend that you place them much further out from your cities, and mainly focus on building and prepping for farming the 10's. LVL 5's are great for grabbing some free, no loss food and resource; but you cannot sustain a large army or level up a good attack hero strictly with LVL 5 NPC unless you want to farm as a full time job.

Farmers Vs Warriors Myth debunked
I often hear people scoff at "farming" players. Anyone who does this and thinks farming is beneath them is a moron who has no clue how to become a major player in this game. True, the object of the game is not farming, it is attacking. However, based on the fact that this game will be won by the person who can build and maintain the largest standing armies, only those who build and agressively farm large LVL 10 fields will ever become major players to be reckoned with. The "warrior" players may start off strong, but in the long run they will not be able to generate as much food and res, or replenish troops as quickly as active LVL 10 farmers. We would like for people in our alliance to consider themselves "Militant farmers". Yes, we have a very heavy farming focus; but we also tend towards the hostile side, and will quickly and gladly smash you to pieces with an army much larger than most players can produce or sustain. For proof that this tactic does work, look up player Fluffyganjmod on serv 103. Anyone else wanna scoff at farmers now?

About NPC item drops
Lv5 and Lv10 both can drop the following: Mich Scripts, Hero Hunting, Amulets, Holy Water, and Speakers. Mich Scripts and Amulets being the rarest drops. Take note that it is possible, tho extremely rare for the a lv10 to drop multiple treasure on the same hit. It would seem that on the newer servers lv10's no longer give medal drops. Both lv5 and lv10's are a great way to get xp for your heros regardless, you should be farming both as often as your production allows you to, as the more of these you can hit, the bigger the army you can feed. I've said it before, but it is worth saying again. The size of your army decides your own survivability, as does the lvl of your heros. You are not farming npc for the treasure, but for the food and hero XP primarily, everything else is an added bonus.

To learn more about NPC farming in general, please check out the following link:

Different troops are best for different types of situations and have different capabilities in Evony. Every troop has a certain troop type that it will target first, knowing the targeting order will increase the strength of your attacks immensely, as well as reduce your overall troop loss.You should also learn what the ranges of troop types are, and what effects that has on battle. The following link is the best description of troop/fortification mechanics around: http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=63051

Seriously folks, read it, learn to live it and love it. Read it again and again until you memorize this stuff. If you cannot or will not learn the material covered in this link you would be better off logging out and taking up Farmville. This information will make all the difference in whether or not you can sucessfully attack and defend, and both Fluff and I feel that we can't put it any better than Brady did.

At the start you will want to continually check your inn for heros, as you want to get a high pol, atk and int hero asap. The ideal hero has at minimum 68 base of at least 1 stat, and has duality. (to figure out the base stat, use the following formula; stat – (level -1) = base stat); however when first starting out you will have to take what you can get until you find something better.

As time progresses and you have a good gold income you will want to have hero hunting sessions, during these you will recruit and dismiss heros from the inn until you find afforementioned heros.

Remember the importance of rotating your heros. Pol heros when appointed mayor increase production, building speed, and fortification building speed. Int heros when appointed mayor increase research time. Atk heros when appointed mayor increase troop production time. Take note that your atk hero does not need to be appointed mayor to defend your city. When attacked/scouted your highest lvl hero defends, and so long as you farm npc your highest lvl hero should always be your main atk hero.

Notes on hero duality
As mentioned above, the ideal hero has a base of 68 plus. However, it may be to your advantage to sacrifice that 68 and higher issue in order to get a hero that has duality. For example, an attack hero with 36 pol, 70 atck and 21 int is an acceptable attack hero which most users would snap right up. However, you would be better off getting an attack hero with 9 pol, 65 atck and 52 int. The reasons a duality hero is often better is that it offers more possibilities and a wider scope of usage. The higher the intelligence on an attack hero, the better. You will ideally want an attack hero with an intelligence of over 50. The reasons for this are that the higher intelligence heroes tend to lose fewer troops, find more medals and objects, and anything with an int over 50 will get a defense bonus. To learn more about how the int affects def bonus, check out this link: http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=84773.

Of course, the higher the atck and int numbers are the better for an atck hero, and it is possible to find heroes with very high scores in both areas with significant inn surfing. When you find the best possible atck hero that you can that falls into those stats, designate him as your farm/baking hero as opposed to an attack hero. For example, I find one lvl one hero named hero A that has 5 pol, 70 atck, 61 int; and another level one hero named hero B that has 14 pol 64 atck, 52 int. DO NOT use hero A to attack players with, you can lose your heros even if they have a 100% loyalty. Instead focus on raising this hero up by farming lots of NPC's with him, and use him to bake troops with. Eventually Hero A will become the one that you use to farm your level 10 npc's. Hero B can also be levelled by farming lvl 5 NPC, but he is not your main focus for levelling, and can be used to attack players. Try to get all of your attack heros with a duality score if possible, and you will be formiddable.

Both Pol and Int heroes should have a fairly decent atck score (40+, ideally 50+) as well as a high base. This is so that you can also use NPC farming to level them up.

Make sure to reward your heroes and keep their loyalty high, as the higher the loyalty on a hero the less likely it is you will lose them. Keep in mind that you CAN now lose heroes that are 100% loyal if you are defeated in an attack.

Troop production/mechanics:
Production: When producing troops remember that you want your highest atk hero as mayor when queueing troops (as mentioned previously). The higher your atk the quicker your troops bake. Other factors that help this is your mil science, each upgrade gives you a significant bump in production time. If you have the extra mich scripts it is a very good idea to up your forge to 10 just to get mil sci 10 asap. This game is all about how many troops you have and what you can do with said troops, so it is a smart move if the option is available to you.

As your atk hero lvls up you may want to demo barracks and replace them with cottages in order to not dip too hard into your labor forces. Every minute your labor force is in the red equates to lost resources, some lost resource is ok, but if you are zero'n your population out to make troops several times a day, this hurts your daily production.

To level up your main atk, pol, and int hero's quickly you have several options. You can set up 2-3 lv5 npc that are relativly close (but not too ear, read about NPC building) to your city, and alternate attacking them with your current focus (the hero you need leveled up quickly). As far as your pol mayor goes it will also receive gobs of xp from troops finishing, keep this in mind when appointing your mayor.

The first tech that you will want to research is Lumbering, assuming that you are beginning with a Lumber Resource city. I usually get that to about LVL 5, sometimes alternating with Construction, which I bump up to 4 or so in order to be able to build my city reasonably quickly. If you are doing a Lumber city, you really dont need to focus on the other res techs (mining, farming, etc) because you really won't be using them much. Skip rasing these beyond what is required, until most other techs are completed.

Your next biggest priority in the tech area should be getting to the point where you can farm level 5 npc, and build the ballista to do it with. This means your next major focus should be metal casting 5 so that you can begin the slow process of Ballista production. The ability to farm a level 5 npc without loss requires the correct mix of tech stats, which begins at Archery 8 and Horseback Riding (HBR) 5. It has come to my attention that the further the difference in level between your arch and HBR, the longer it takes to level your HBR. So ideally, I do a couple levels on Arch and then do an HBR until I get to 8/5. 8/6 works also. DO NOT increase beyond 8/6 without reading the "making the farming leap" section below. I generally stop pursuing these techs once I hit 8/5 and move on to the next grouping.

Military Science, Military Tradition, Iron Working, Medicine, Compass, Informatics, engineering, machinery and construction should now be raised to decent levels. I tend to try to get Mil Sci and Informtics high ASAP, then raise the others evenly. Fluff generally goes evenly across these techs, and does not do the initial construction levelling prior to pursuing npc farming tech. The result is my city builds up a little faster than his, and he can farm slightly sooner than I can.

Making the farming leap
Once you have hit a respectable level on your other techs, it is time to consider raising your NPC farming techs. Metal casting can be raised at any time, but is much less critical than the Arch/HBR issue. It will simply allow you to build ballista faster, it does not affect how well you can farm, or if you take losses doing so. HOWEVER, if you do not have the right mix of techs on your Arch/HBR you will lose ballistas and transports when farming level fives.

As soon as I feel like I am ready to begin raising farming techs, I do HBR 6, which causes no issue to my farming. I will next make sure both of my cities are ready to focus strictly on NPC techs by not tying them up with long research times. I will then start Arch 9 on city 1. Arch 9 will take an eternity to finish, and you can still farm while the research is going on. Do NOT start a long tech on your second city while doing arch 9 unless it will finish well before your desired start time for hbr 7 does. To figure out your start time, check to see how long your HBR 7 will take to ugrade, and double that time (taking HBR 8 into account). However many hours that works out to, subtract that from the ending of your arch 9 to make them finish around the same time. This is when you will want to begin HBR 7 on city 2. As soon as you ACHIEVE HBR 7, you must stop farming level 5 NPC until your HBR reaches lvl 8 AND your Arch reaches 9, or you will lose troops. Once you leave 8/6, no combo works without loss until you hit 9/8.

If you do the timing on this correctly and plan ahead, it will give you the shortest possible time gap (I have had it as low as 4 hours) where you are unable to farm lvl 5 npc. If you do not plan ahead for making this leap, I have heard of people waiting 3 or 4 days to get their techs sorted out prior to being able to farm again. Unfortunately that can cause serious issues due to food shortage. If your second city will be sitting idle due to not being able to fit in any other techs due to time length, now is a good time to go back and run up agriculture or mining.

You will next want to get the following techs up to level ten in prep for level ten NPC farming:
Arch, HBR, Iron Working, Military Tech, Medicine, Mil Sci. People's opinions seem to vary on the Compass issue here, with some stating you should not level up your compass until you have a higher attack hero. Fluffy and I both level up our compass, and have a Compass ten formula that we use to farm our NPC. Just be advised that many NPC farming formulas you will hear of do not work the same with compass ten as they do with compass nine. If you pursue compass ten, make sure to use the compass ten farming formula.

Once you have completed raising your techs to the point where you can farm level tens, there is not a whole lot left to complete. It is now personal preference as to which ones you prefer to level and in what order. Now is the time to begin thinking about building that warehouse in one of your cities and doing stockpile research.

To make any building in your city a lvl ten, it requires using a mich script. All non paying players recieve one to start off with, and it is important that you not waste it and you understand what function it will give you by applying it to each building type. Fluffy's opinion varies a little bit on preferred order of Mich Script usage, so I will post both of our opinions and the reasons for them, and allow you to decide. Both are valid ways of doing things, and which you pursue will really come down to your preference and budget.

Fluffy advises
for resource cities:
Walls 10
Rally Point 10
Town Hall 10
Relief Station 10
Feasting Hall 10

He prefers to do walls first because each level that your walls increase, you get a defensive bonus and you can also build more AT's and other wall defense. Rally Point comes next because that is what allows you to send increased numbers of troop wavfes on attacks. Town hall is usually the third choice because it provides an extra three res fields, and will also be needed for later promotions. A lvl ten relief station will allow you to move six times as fast as a lvl 9, so both of us highly favor that coming next. Feasting hall allows you to house an additional hero for attacking.

For Strike cities, you should move feasting hall up above Town Hall, because sending attacks is a higher priority for a Strike City than Production. Once you have completed all of those, he likes to begin using them on resource fields, and then cottages.

My Opinion
My way is just slightly different than Fluffy's. I mostly follow the same basic order, except for that I prefer to always do my Rally Point before I do my walls. The reason for this is that I always rush to farm level ten NPC's as quickly as possible, which is extremely difficult without a LVL 10 rally point. When farming level tens, you have a much higher drop rate for Mich Scripts than you do from lvl 5's. Due to that I prefer to take the lower wall defense and insure that I will beable to farm, and count on my farm drops to provide another mich for wall def quickly.

This is somewhat academic if you are able to buy coins at all, since you will start with at least two. My main concern on the servers where I cannot afford to buy coins is that it will take forever before a mich drops from a five, and I will be held back on farming :(

Mich scripts should generally not be used on farms, quarries, inns, markets, stables, workshops, or beacon towers. Barracks should be done after all other major buildings, because the only benefit it provides is to be able to produce catapults, and requires you to upgrade a workshop prior to doing it. Having the level ten racks is awesome, IF you have a high enough attack hero and a large enough NPC field to be able to field a mechanized army. I will often do my racks prior to starting res fields, and I think fluffy usually does the res fields first. If you cannot support a mechanized army through having a good sized lvl ten field, the res field is a better advantage.

Your allies cannot reinforce your city if it is under attack and the gates are closed, the enemy will simply hit and destroy your wall defenses and then cart off all of your resource if they defeat them.

ONLY close your gates if:

All of your wall defense is torn down, and most or all of your troops are dead due to prior attack. In this situation, you should go ahead and leave your gates closed until your city once again becomes defensible. Closing your gates in this situation allows you to protect the small numbers of troops inside your city until you get a decent amount of wall defense built again. Your allies cannot reinforce you until you get some wall defenses rebuilt without taking large troop losses, so let them know you have closed your gates to rebuild wall def, and let them know when you re-open them so they will know when to begin reinforcing you again.

Close your gates if you are online and you see a large attack coming towards you that you know you cannot defeat, and there is nobody near enough to you that can send reinforcements.

Close your gates can be used as a defense against a scout bomb.

Reinforcing
At all other times than those mentioned above, your gates should remain open so that your allies can reinforce your city. You will only be able to hold as many reinforcement waves as your embassy level allows, so having a high level embassy is very important. You should make sure that you always have the button "allow garrison troops" checked, or you will not be able to be reinforced by anyone.

If you send reinforcements to someone's city, send as large of a force as your rally point and troops level will allow. Sending small waves of 5k or 10k really is not helpful, and simply clogs up embassy slots so that others who have higher troop counts cannot reinforce. It is everyone's responsibility to check war reports often, to make sure nobody is under attack. If you see a defense war report, let everyone know in alliance chat ASAP. Look to see if the enemy is hitting wall defense items such as traps and abatis, and if there are defending troops fighting inside the city. If someone is under attack and you can reinforce them with a sufficient amount to defeat the attacker, as an ally, it is your responsibility to do so. Keep in mind that while reinforcing someone's city, your troops will consume their food. You will want to send a load of food with your troops due to this, so that the city you are reinforcing does not run out. If your reinforcements eat up all of that city's food, both their and your troops will refuge and die of starvation.

DO NOT reinforce anyone who has had all wall defense torn down, or who has their gates closed. (you will know this because youll see the enemy taking no losses and simply hauling off resourcces). DO NOT send suicide reinforcements (your buddy has 10k total troops, and you are the only one around to reinforce and only have 20k to add to that; and the enemy is sending 2 waves of 100K rainbows). Sending your troops in to reinforce and be killed for no purpose only further weakens the group, and it does not aid your ally.

If someone is in the position of not being reinforcible, this is simply handled differently and does not mean we have abandoned them just because we are not going to suicide our own troops. When the player logs in, we will send them aid in the form of food and resource with which to rebuild, and if possible send protective reinforcements to keep them from being a sitting duck while rebuilding once they get some wall defense rebuilt.

Allies who do not watch war reports and send aid when their team members need it and it is possible and appropriate for them to send it are not fulfilling their duties as allies, and should not expect continued support from, or participation in, our group.

Keep in mind that your prestige will play a factor in reinforcing allies also. You should NOT attempt to reinforce any ally that has more than a 50% difference in your size at ALL (person needing reinforced has 1 million prestige, if you are higher than 1.5 mil or lower than 500k, DONT send any troops). The further apart your difference in prestige, the more likely it is you will automatically lose troops during travel. These troops are not killed by the enemy, they simply die in transit and never even reach your ally. This is only an issue when there is a large prestige gap.

Wall Defense