I never don a cloak and dagger.  While in evony, it is mostly what I call, the student's background game, the office geeks checking in point with colleague's who understand that 9 to 5 means 12 or 16 hours days and what better way to muddle through it all, then by taking a break and stopping by to chat with people who greet you like you are best friend who just showed up and made everyone's day.  In evony, your alliance members are like family.  Yes, sometimes there is all the drama of growing up evony-style but I like to think for this lone woman, it has actually taught me that in everything there is a place, a niche for every type of person.  Aside from these alliances, which are pretty significant, there is prestige.  Everyone starts out in the bleak world of prestige ranking somewhere around 16k.  The top players hold a prestige rank in the low 3 and 2-digits.  This number represents who you are in terms of battles fought and won, building up your city or cities, and it represents your strategy in playing the game. 

Last week when I wrote my first article I was at prestige of 313833, today it is 342024.  My rank in terms of prestige is 2078.  It is just a sample of battles that are to come.

Statistically speaking, I need to keep my eyes on the prize.  There are many things players can do to level out the playing field and up your numbers over time. Here are just of few of the things I did last week to garner the 30K increase.  Keep in mind, I have been saked and have had to start building up or conquer an existing city so while I feel like a newbie, I am not completely starting from scratch.

Barracks

This is where troop building occurs, for every 10 troops you gain 1 point of prestige.  They eat lots of food in this game, hence the -112K in food.  The number 1 thing to do is first train warriors to 3000.  With limited resources, they are easy to train and it take no time at all.  Unfortunately, you can only use this as a stepping stone until you garner enough resources by attacking barbarian cities.  To build troops takes resources hence, food, lumber, stone and iron are required to everything.  These staple items can also be traded and bartered for in the marketplace. Building troops takes time, so the more barracks you have in your city, you can share the training time.  Currently, I have 13 barracks in my city, but my goal is to have them all at level 9 or 10 so I can build lower level troops like warriors, midlevel troops like archers and high level troops like ballistae and tranporters.  Each level of troops can carry a certain amount of plunder but having transporters helps carry the bulk of the plunder of resources back from an attack.  Not every attack is going to conquer a city.  No, you need waves of attacks for that but to plunder for resources is a daily activity, usually you want to build your city as close to a barbarian city (NPC) as possible.  The more NPC's the less time it takes to plunder and obtain the resources you need to build troops.  At a minimum, I would build no less than 10 barracks to support troop building.  In the last week, this garned me much prestige as I brought up six barracks to lvl 9.  You will need level to train ballistae.  Below is the chart I use to get you attacking a barbarian city to lvl 5 using ballistae and warriors.

Chart for Attacking Barbarian City (NPC) Level 1-5

Warriors       NPC         Losses

2500                1               400

6000                 2             1000

13500               3             3000

22000               4             8000

35000               5           22000

Transporters   Ballistae       NPC

 100                     50                1

300                     150               2

300                      250              3

400                      300              4

500                      500              5

The losses for ballistae will be zero so long as the following Technologies are equal in level.  If you mix up the level, you will experience high losses and since ballistae take 4 times as long to build up, most people cringe at the thought of these losses.  To build technologies as I am always building technologies, takes an Academy.  In the Academy, Horseback Riding and Archery need to be equal and at a level.  Do not send ballistae out on attacks especially if one is a level 8 and the other is a level 9,  This will inflict losses.  While all technologies should be a level 10 both  Military Tradition and  Informatics should be upgraded first.  They will provide you with information about your enemy that will help you decide how to win or strategize on how to move resources in a timely manner during the attack so that your remain troops and resources are available to help you resume in the event that you decide not to use a Truce Agreement or City Transport.  These items can only be obtained through the Amulet. or by using Evony Cents.  The Truce Agreement last only 12 hours and you cannot march and no one can march troops against your city.  There is a 12 hour grace period that follows in which you cannot use another Truce Agreement, so use them wisely.  A City Transport is a wonderful tool, it allows you to move your city to another coordinate, altogether to avoid incoming troops.  Most people use this to move closer to alliance members who can then assist in properly protecting your city.  To do this, you must have an Embassy, and Inn and a Feasting Hall for Heros.  The Embassy allows troops of other alliance members to lie in waiting so that if an army comes against you, when you open your gates and win the battle because 100k archers are in your defence, you not only gain prestige you increase you honor, as well.

Goodluck! I will be writing more tips as I progress in the game and build up my troop levels.