Evony (http://www.evony.com/)
Intro:
This is a game that I have currently been playing with several friends. My user is Lord Sreaberac and am currently part of the JLA server 31. It’s fairly addictive and unlike other games it does give you the ability to play on par with people who pay for the game. There is a graphic web/java interface, avoiding the common text based games. To best describe the game I’d categorize it as a mix of civilization and sim city.
Strat:
The concept of the game is build a city. There are three levels to the city. Within the walls you can build buildings.
Interior:
Barracks: Where you can build military units. (You should have a majority of these)
Cottages: For food (You only need 4 or 5 as population never really is a concern) Population is a resource needed to maintain production, and a requirement for building military. They regenerate, to the maximum population * loyalty of the city.
Warehouse: Reduces pillaging (Useless since defending is so much easier)
Embassy: Important for allies to help you out in defending and joining alliances. The higher the level the more waves of allies can send you.
Town Hall: Determines the amount of valleys you can control and rates. (You start with this building) You also have special abilities here to raise loyalty, population, and production. The level also determines the amount of production buildings you can have in the exterior section.
Forge/Stables/Workshop: Prerequisites for buildings and technology. Once you’ve upgraded all your other buildings you can pretty much demolish these. You will need them to research some techs, however that doesn’t mean you need them in every city.
Rally Spot: Level determines amount of men and parallel marches you can make. Once you go military strategy you will find you will need a level 9 or 10 in every city.
Relief station: Shuttling units between cities speed boost. (Allies as well) This takes a long time to build. Level 4 or 5 will be enough unless your cities are far away. At higher levels it takes quite a while to upgrade.
Academy: Where you upgrade technology. You can only research one tech at a time per city. But if you have multiple cities you can run parallel research. I find you only need one level 10 academy and just high enough for the other cities to always be researching something.
Inn: Where you choose your heroes. The key here is that higher level does not mean higher base stats. So a level 1 hero can have better stats than a level 10. Except a level 1 is easier to upgrade and cheaper. Hence, never settle anything less than level 1 or 2. Anything higher than 65 in any cat is a steal. You can specialize. I would never upgrade pass level 3 as the higher the level the harder it is to get lvl 1 or 2 hero selections.
Politics: +1% production if mayor, faster construction if mayor
Attack: Faster military unit build if mayor. Attack boost if leading attack.
Intel: Reduces research time, and boosts scouting.
Feasting Hall: Where you can appoint a mayor and where and how many heroes you can hold. You will end up needing a level 9. This really helps when you are medal farming later on. Ie. Attacking multiple valleys in one go to find medals.
Exterior:
This is where you build your production buildings. The level and number of each type contributes to the production of each type of resource in real time.
Wood. This is the most used resource.
Food. You need this to build units, also military require food maintenance while stationed in your city or defending a valley.
Iron. Produces Iron, this is needed in everything as well but to a lesser extent of wood.
Stone. This is needed to build buildings. A lot of this is required to build walls.
This is my advice. Since controlling valleys increases the bonus to only one type of resource type. It makes sense to control all valleys giving bonus to one resource type and building that one resource type field in the city. Then you can ship the resources between cities. However it’s difficult to create more cities unless you medal farm. If your active it could take weeks to get 2 cities, months to get 3 cities let alone 4 cities. However in your first city you should have a good proportion of each since. However you should really go a 20% food, 50% wood, 15% stone and 15% iron to start. Specialize in your expansion cities.
World:
In the world section you can see all the other cities and enemies out there. There are a mix of valleys which you can conquer with military to get resource bonuses. There are also NPC which are computer cities you can attack to gain resources. And there are other live player cities just like you. The level of valley determines how strong the enemy there is for you to take control of it. The higher the valley level the greater the bonus as well. I just suggest you take the levels you can and upgrade them later. But you should concentrate on one valley type to pile on the bonuses to the resource you produce the most.
I’ll let you know now, that if your active enough. You’ll make a lot more resources stealing from other players than you would ever by producing on your own. So military is always better. At the end of the day it’s best to be surrounded by a large number of 1-4 level NPCs. As you can farm them with long range weapons to steal vast resources without any losses later on.
Other notes:
Things that make this game fun are your allies. If you get into a good alliance that actively works together to defend each other from oncoming attacks it is 10 times more fun. The only reason I keep playing is to support my allies and avenge them from people pillaging them. Just remember everything is in real time so it takes time for men to travel. So it’s exciting when someone realizes a large army is heading towards them and all the alliance members are scrambling to send reinforcements to help someone defend. I will conclude this review for now and add some even more advance info later. I’m located in server 31 if anyone is interested in joining JLA.
Roulette: You can claim a daily gift. This is a amulet that allows you to get a random gift. It's done through a random roulette. Such gifts include, bonus items, heroes, military units, resources etc.
Quests: For beginners, everytime you hit a milestone for the first time you get resources or prestige or items. Helps you know what order of things to build. ie. First time building a barrack. etc.
It all started when I went to Mitchels and they were having a 2 for 25 dollar sale for some music. I wanted to get the Switchfoot CD, which was really in. The original one, I knew a lot of songs on there. I also saw the casting crowns CD which sounded familiar I think because someone played me a song before and I liked it. However someone I was with wanted a CD too, but only wanted one so I decided to get just one. I really couldn't decide because I was like, I only know one song on this casting crowns CD. Like a miracle there was a song playing in the background on the speakers. I was like, that song sounds nice who is that? And my friend said, "That's casting crowns, it's on the CD". So I got it. Loved it so much, I bought the new Lifesong CD on ebay as well. Casting crowns is so geared towards students. Check out a video made by someone with one of their songs.
You Tube link to VIDEO
And I also got a job. Still need the papers, so stop asking me when I start people?
Well what have I been up to?
I did laser eye. Yes I can see. No I'm not blind. Eye drops 4 times a day for 4 weeks then 3 times a day for 4 weeks. etc. That's it. Already beginning to forget I wore glasses.
No job. Downgraded from student to unemployed. The credit card people stopped callig me to offer me a credit card since I told them I graduated and don't have a job yet.
To move on, I'm going to Emmanual fellowship. These people you can tell are a lot more old. Sigh, well you gotta move on sometime I guess. Also noticed how much older people are when we had bubble tea with the alumni at LCCF. Elaine Ma, and Ken came in on motorcycles and helmets and armour and stuff. Wow! Talk about different part of their life. Rani is working late nights at a "studio". Josh was talking about all the raises he's been getting and Clinton talking about the multiple real estate investments he's been closing. Yep! Old!
Also started playing guitar on a worship team. Amp was way too loud the first time. Man, Maybe I wont' plug in next time. Let the drums and piano carry it. Then you can't hear my wrong chords. hahaha.
Sigh found out Kwan dropped out for coming to summer conference. Was really looking forward to jamming with him.
Found out Derek is going to New York for two months. Means we just lost our franchise player short stop for the rest of the season.
Hit the pitcher with the ball at my first up to bat.
My teammate drove off with my wallet, phone, and keys in his bag.
Night ended with me having to pick up a dead bird out of my neighbors basement and throw it out.
It's only Sunday. It's going to be one of those weeks.
Textbooks
If I had bought all my textbooks the stupid online bookstore says the total would have been about $650. That's way too much for textbooks anyone agree? At any rate I whittled that down to $60 through my textbook saving methods. I'll list them below.
1. E-bay and Amazon: Textbooks are cheaper this way you can get a softcover version or international versions which are much cheaper. You can also buy textbooks and sell them at your school.
2. Legacy: You have friends? Post on msn what books you need and see who helps you out. Some friends offer to lend you the books which is the best. Others offer to sell you the books pretty cheap. Other friends offer to sell the books for expensive. At any rate, in these cases, just remember the rules of thumb... don't make a profit on your friends. ie. Buying their textbooks for $50 and then reselling it the next term for $60. If you borrow books, you should be willing to lend them out as well.
3. Photocopy: Hmmm surprisingly not even worth it. Maybe a case here and there and an article instead of buying course packages, but I wouldn't suggest doing it for textbooks.
4. Library: I didn't even realize this... but I can borrow our textbook from the library, and then just keep renewing it forever. Dang... all these years. I just did it this term.
5. Share textbooks: Hmm I've done it before. Don't do it unless you don't need to use the book a lot. It just gets confusing and everyone studies last minute which is the same minute.
6. Don't buy: Hmmm you can get away with it. Surprisingly in hind sight I didn't have to buy books for like 70% of my classes. I've gone through courses without buying them and I've been fine. Generally you need them for case classes and math classes. Sometimes science.. depending on if you can understand what your teacher is saying or not.
Housemates
Hmmm thought housemates were good. But lately they've been smoking a lot in the house. They have some weird machine with a hose in the living room and I've seen them smoking things, different things. At any rate, I had to open my window and blare my fan yesterday to the point where I took out my power. Nehow, been holding my breath to get food from the kitchen.
Keys
Yeah so yesterday, I took out my keys and put them on my desk. Later I went to brush my teeth and stuff to go to bed, but when I went back to my room I found out that I closed the door and locked myself out of my room. I locked it because I'm scared of my housemates now for the reasons above. However, luckily I left my window open to blow out smoke, so I went outside popped the screen off and crawled down the window into my room. I live in the basement. Sigh, I bet this is going to happen a few more times.
That's it for now. Take care. By the way I play on the softball team Eternity looks like I'll be playing Renown and Illuminate... should be interesting.
1. They treat out the graduating class to lunch at a buffet and the ratio of students to profs is 1:1. Fun games good speeches.
2. A prof sees you on the street and honks you and gives you a ride to school.
3. Your fellowship can get control of an entire building to study in.
4. A sixth of the fellowship is on school brochures or website.
5. School has to use the stadium to write exams.
6. People complain something is far if you have to walk for more than a minute.
Such an awesome night it was. When you thought they possibly couldn't have done more, more happened. A lot of small and big things that made the night special:
1. Alumni came up (Elaine Sung, Sham, Clint, Rani, and Tammy).
2. Frosh sang, that was amazing. Funny. Creative. And great.
3. Tracy sang. This is someone who has really grown to be more assertive every year.
4. Spammie's vids. Oh Spammie. Going to miss you!
5. Edward sharing, I'm thrilled by how much he's come into the community.
6. Hannah's cell group vids. Pure random goodness.
7. Sam Ip and his violin players. To think they were holding back all year.
8. The stuff we got. Everything is so sentimental.
I think it really hit me yesterday. I've been constantly pushing the thought out and not thinking about it. But this is it. The ability to do what I've been doing every year for the past 5 years is about to end. The friends and times that we've had. The christmas potlucks, BBQ's, softball outings, brunches, movie nights, studying together, and etc. It's done. Although I know that I'll be doing my best to keep in contact. After so many years I know that it's not always possible. We'll be all doing different things and making new friends and things will never be the same. I'm not saying it won't be better, but it won't be the same. I realized it's even sadder for the grads then for the people that will still be here. They only have to say good bye to 9 people. While the grads have to say goodbye to everyone.
It's strange. Even though I've gotten to know the frosh and questionable frosh only 4 months it feels like I've known them so much longer. I don't know. LCCF is something that I've seen become and I've seen people grown in it, and grow it since the beginning. How hard will it be to let it go? I think coop has helped that process and the ring. (Can't imagine the withdrawl the non-coop grads will have.) Things have really changed and just like a pair of shoes... just when you have a pair that makes you comfortable, and attached is when you have to get a new pair.
However, we'll always have the blogs.
