Several other reviews state the same problem. If you want to play you better be ready to pay. The ONLY way to play this game and get any enjoyment is to pay real money. Often. And lots of it. You absolutely can not compete unless you’re ready to spend. The first couple of months aren’t bad. But you better be ready to lose everything you’ve spent time building because the big players will obliterate you and farm you until you leave. You can protect yourself with a bubble, but then you really can’t play much of the game while you’re using a bubble. You can join an alliance, and it helps. Until you’re booted from the alliance to make room for players who are larger and spending money to play. Unless you’re ready to commit a couple of hundred dollars a month to play and actually be able to compete, you can’t really enjoy the potential of this game. There are players who LIVE for this game and it shows. Making complaints to the developers is fruitless. In one response I was told that I should screen shot the evidence for the issue I was reporting and I would be compensated, and in the very next sentence was told the developers aren’t going to compensate, that it would be up to the App Store (Apple) to compensate. So, my complaint was answered with word salad, and zero result. Well, let me be fair, I was told that “resource packages are available for purchase to help you grow…if you don’t want to take the time to build on the available resources places in the field of gameplay…” so, that helpful tip was given, FOR FREE! Very helpful.

So, like many of the reviews I have seen for Evony, I started playing this game because of the puzzles that they use to advertise. I had no idea that those puzzles are about 1% of the game. When I started the game, because of the incredibly high learning curve, I wasted a lot of time, trying to play on my own. It wasn’t until I joined a solid alliance that I began to see some real progress in the game. but it turns out, when you get into an alliance there are a lot of requirements for maintaining an active status in that alliance. There are events that happen at regular times that one must be present for or they will get burned and lose all their progress. At first, being available at 10:30 AM on Sunday morning for the undead invasion wasn’t a big deal. Then slowly one realizes, “maybe I don’t want to be available for that.“ Unfortunately, it’s gonna happen whether you’re available or not. And then you get to the point where upgrading certain buildings take literally six months or a year to upgrade. OK, I didn’t realize that by playing this game I was going to be committing to years and years of constant daily activity and play. And there’s no way to put this game on pause. It is going to play whether you can be there or not. It becomes ridiculous. All consuming, and purposely addictive. If you have no life, and are willing to make your alliance members your new family, then knock yourself out. However, if you have a job, or a spouse, good luck. I enjoyed the game. But it was just way too consuming and demanding. I quit.

The cool pull-pin puzzle games they advertise, or the walking shooting game they advertise, and even the fact that they say “Don’t you get tired of games that advertise one thing but the game is completely different?” is ridiculous because that is exactly what these people do!!! These are not the puzzles you play in the game. The pull pin ones look way more fun. You can never get a hold of customer service, the game lags and glitches in crucial battle times resulting in the player losing resources that are not paid back by the Evony makers, the maps don’t populate quick enough so many times you are looking at a blank field until the slow server can catch up, the app updates sometimes lock you out of your game, if another player is being aggressive toward another player or threatening other players evony does nothing to help and just tells the player to call the cops. So the game is so-so but the developers need to use some of all that money they make off of a so-called “free” game and put it back into the game for the customers. You can play for free but you will get no where fast. Most players pay around $25-$50 a month. Some spend thousands of dollars on this game just so they can rule the server. This game growth is about how much money you spend, not how skilled you are at managing your own city.

Updating my review after a year, I’m still seeing the same issues: reaching a meaningful power level in the game remains a heavy financial lift, often costing 1000s. The highest VIP tier now costs $450K in real world money, and there are already a couple of hundred players at that level of spending. My server has 11 players that have now spent over $60K each and 60 players that spent $2K each on the game (based on honorary VIP levels). Worse yet, for all the push to make players pay more, game stability hasn’t improved; troops can be lost in an instant due to lag (that dreaded red WiFi issue) during SVS and battlefield events.Despite player feedback, the developers haven’t managed to resolve glitches, and the game’s management seems unwilling to reduce the extreme costs of gameplay. Over the past year, even the game’s top spenders initiated a coin strike after some players were banned for so-called “illegal” gameplay - essentially, using third-party auto-rally features to hunt monsters. Ironically, when players need thousands of hits on Ymir6 just to upgrade one of the 25-to-30 buildings, it’s only natural they’d seek some automation.In response, Evony introduced their own auto-rally feature, but restricted it so heavily (8-hour limits, 2000 stamina per day, etc.) that it barely meets players’ needs. While they’ve created a unique, mostly pay-to-win gameplay model, Evony struggles to deliver a consistent, enjoyable player experience. And their customer support? Best left unsaid.