Most players on Evony know that if you attack barbarian towns up to a level 5 barbarian town, all you need to send is ballistas and transports.  Doing this you will suffer 0 losses and get a big chunk of resources.  If you attack an evony barbarian level 6, then you will lose around 70 to 75 ballistas on each attack.  These losses go up as the barbarian town levels go up.

There was a diamond in the rough though.  If you have invested time into building level 10 barracks and were slowly and steadily pumping out catapults, which have the longest range in the game, then you could hit level 6 and level 7 barbarian towns without suffering any losses, similar to ballistas before the patch.  Now though UMGE has released another sneaky patch without telling the evony gamers and the latest patch takes out this feature.  What hurts even more is that you lose more catapults than if you had sent ballistas.

On a level 6 barbarian town, you will lose consistantly 70 to 75 ballistas.  On the same town attacking with just catapults and transports you will lose 130 to 140 catapults!  These catapults are supposed to have more range and less speed, meaning they should be shooting from a greater distance and moving in to be killed even slower than ballistas.  Something has gone awry with the evony calculations though as they are getting killed easier and more often than ballistas.

To put it into perspective, a ballista can be made in a level 9 barracks, of which most players will have up to 10 in each and every city they own.  Ballistas only take 10 minutes to build 1.  Catapults on the other hand, require much more hard to get technology advances, a level 10 barracks and catapults take 20 minutes to build 1.  Most players will only have a small number of level 10 barracks, maybe 1 to 3.  So a loss of 130 catapults puts the player back 43 hours.  nearly 2 days of catapult building!  Compared to 20 minutes to rebuild 70 ballistas.

So it still remains that the best way to keep your troops fed is by attacking evony barbarian towns under level 6, OR attacking other players.

Unlike a lot of other MMORPGs that gamers come together to attack NPCs, Evony is very PVP centric.  There are still NPC cities dotted around the Evony game map, but the main emphasis on the game is wiping out rival alliances.  Making your alliance the biggest and the best.

 In Evony your alliance of up to 100 online gamers can have 4 different statuses with other alliances.

No status is they haven’t had any communication, they display a white flag on their castles on the map screen and are generally OK to attack with your army of troops.  Castles that have no status against you are fair game, but usually frowned upon attacking them if your Evony Alliance is at war with another alliance.

Nuetral is a status just above no status.  For most alliances this means don’t attack them unless they attack you.  They have been in contact with your alliance leader and have gone into an easy truce.  They can still be attacked, but its not very nice at all to do.  This status is sometimes used after a WAR with an alliance has ended, this is to let other people of the alliance know that its not OK to keep attacking with their armies.

Friendly status is used as a form of multi alliance alliance.  This will change the castle flags on the map to blue to show that you can’t  attack them and show where your friends are.  It is appropriate for you to ask for help of friendly alliances, they can help attack a single common foe, but can’t do a lot of the things that your alliance members can do, such as speak in your alliance window, reinforce your castle with archers/warriors, or transport resources or gold to your castle.  You also can not attack resource squares like swamps, forrests or flats of people that your alliance is friendly with.

HOSTILE status means your at WAR with that alliance.  WAR can be declared from either alliance, it doesn’t need both alliances to agree like the other statuses.  Once war is declared the flags on the map change to red to let you know that castle is your enemy.  They will also be at war with you; so will see your flag as red too.  When you are at war with another alliance, these castles are the ones you should be attacking.  Talk in your alliance chat and collude with other members of your alliance to attack these people.  If you are hostile with another alliance it is generally frowned upon  for gamers to attack people that you are not hostile with.  This is because you should be working together as a team to hurt or even take over the castles of your enemy.