Alas, welcome good readers to the preliminary review of Civony-Free Forever. For those who are well-rounded (ie., older), you will be familiar with Defenders of the Crown. For the more youthful, Civilization and Age of Empires. Ok, so imagine all of those rolled into one + IRC and you have Civony.
I. Startup.
Joining Civony is free. Really. You go to http://www.civony.com and create your free account. You don't even have to validate your email address (it just has to be unused).
Playing Civony couldn't be easier. It loads and runs in any modern browser with Flash 9 installed. Major points for that. In fact, that is so odd and foreign to me that I kept clicking in and out of the browser, forgetting that I was actually on a WEB PAGE. I ran it in a Firefox tab without any issue. It's even better to run it Full Screen to get the game immersion feeling.
It's hard to believe, but EVERYTHING you need to play this game is on this screen. Pretty much everything you click no spawns an in-game pop-up menu. Very efficient. Some notes:
PRO: The chat window sizing button (lower right of the chat component, with 3 horizontal lines in vertical sequence) toggles between three different chat sizes: the default (shown), double height and full height of the screen.
PRO: The chat interfact is very easy to use. The circular buttons to the immediate left of the player names in the chat window select the channels. Clicking on a player name brings up a menu for that player (shown).
CON: There is a LOT of chat. No restrictions on player naming.
PRO: Everything is on one screen. Super efficient.
CON: Everything is on one screen. Everything means something. Every tab is clickable, every icon is clickable. Everything has a mouse-over. I found it extremely overwhelming.
III. Building.
After checking out your TOWN, you can click on your CITY (top menu bar) which will zoom out a bit and show the surrounding area. This allows you to build resource areas.
You have a limited number of resource areas to build in, so choose wisely. Also, your population is "used up" extremely quickly by filling up all your resource slots. Building items has an excellent feature called "Finish Now". If you're a beginner, you can choose to Quickbuild your items that require less than 5 minutes of real-time to build. Great advantage to noobs.
PRO: Building items is quick and easy, so is upgrading them. Just hover/click to find out what to do with the areas and slots you are given. The resources required are clearly listed.
CON: It's SO easy that the noob ends up not really paying attention to how fast the resources are used up! :)
PRO: You can actually leave your browser open and build up resources (I left mine open without touching the game for over 3 hours and came back to a pile of resources that had stockpiled)!
CON: It's not really that clear what you are supposed to do once you get logged in. There were a lot of chat messages like "what do I do now?" or "how do you play this game" or "hay y0u haX0rs, \/\/hat is the \_/p?" (ok, that last one wasn't really relevant, but amusing nonetheless).
IV. The Catch.
OK, let's get down to the nitty gritty. Free game? Detailed? Chat and Endless Online play? What's the catch? There IS a catch, right? I mean, that +5 Sword of Everything-Slaying-No-Saving-Throw-Costs3cpToRepair-Endless-Healing at the end of the well-lit, doorless, dungeon hallway (guarded only by 2 kobolds with rusty daggers) can't be THAT easy to get... is it?
No. It's not.
As I started playing the game in more depth, I came across all these items that HELP you along:
Ok, I just changed my mind about playing this at work. It's gonna cost me my job, my severance pay and my mead money!
PRO: It's a free game. There are a lot of freebies they give you to get started. You get a bunch of "Amulets" that you can use to spin a "Wheel of Fortune" for extra items, resources, or even a high-level hero.
CON: The in-game items are pretty expensive. $30US gets you 300 in-game cents. A fairly modest item costs 50 cents (or $5US). That's pretty pricey to increase your population once by 20%.
PRO: There is a very amusing feature created by the Developers called "Edit Browser Headline" in which you can change the title of the window being displaying from "Civony - Free Forever!" to whatever you want (like "Microsoft Technet Search"). I wonder if they developed this at their day jobs as System Administrators... Hmmm....
PRO: Beginners have "7 day Protection" that stops anyone from attacking them.
V. Final Assessment.
If you enjoy Civilization or Age of Empires, and your work firewall doesn't block the game, it's a low-investment-high-time-sucker.
It's a well-written browser game requiring very little system resources and only a moderate time investment to get started.
I give it high points for a compact interface, easy of startup, compatability and the fact that it is FREE. Thumbs-down for lack of noob help, and overpriced items that are basically REQUIRED to make an impact in the overall world.One quick final note... I still can't figure out why the game is called Civony, but the in-game title says Evony.
Great review, well-written, thorough, and amusing. I found myself wanting to give it a try, looking at the interface and all the little clickies. But in-game items costing as much as $3000 US!!!
:jawdrop:
Does anyone ever actually spend that much? Holy franklin mint!
But I think it might be fun for a casual player. The Edit Browser Headline feature made me laugh, clever bastards. }:)
Thank you Linathor for an excellent review, very thorough! Funny, too. I just created a Civony account, and will be playing it for a few days to really get a feel for it. Thanks for the idea! For the few minutes I was playing and getting my city set up, it looks like ALOT of fun. Except the 3000 bucks for in-game items XD. Again, Thanks alot! Will post again when I get more of a feel for it!
First off, I'm having quite a ball already. Though I haven't spent any real money so far, I'd like to think my little city is coming along nicely. That is, as nicely as half a day of playing (or so, partially counting offline time, wherein, surprisingly, my resources still grew,) can get. I can only imagine how things'll go once I lose my newb shield (immunity from attacks for 7 days.) Will post more (and more detailed, of course,) later.
Well, I've been playing Civony/Evony for a few days now, so let me go ahead and throw my own few notes on it. First of, it doesn't have any sound, which isn't exactly a bad thing, nor is it necessary, but I almost would have liked to have sound cues to certain things, such as when my army left or return for or from a plundering, or maybe when you receive mail or reports, or completed quests. Next, I really enjoyed attacking a nearby city. I sent a letter to the lord of a city just north of me, requesting he surrender gold and resources to my main city at once, or be conquered. After a while, there was no answer, so I went about demolishing him. It was only once I got his people's loyalty to 2, and plundered everything I could that I realized that this was his only city, and that meant I couldn't conquer it. Aside from that little disappointment, I've been having a blast. I've been building an even larger army with the resources I plundered, and I plan to continue the process, growing stronger with every victory! ^^ I also love the fact that they give you a free "Aries Amulet" every morning. These can be used to spin the "Wheel of Fortune," and win you resources, gold, heroes, equipment, items and even "Cents" (the coins you get for paying them real money.) This is a great game for anyone who loves to micro-manage, conquer, and build a civilization (or my favorite part, the army!) and is good to go for either home, or work. ;)
I, have been mortified. My resources were running low, a nearby prosperous and large city looked promising and I sent in some scouts. They reported NO soldiers, no infantry, no siege equipment not even a basic militia. They also reported ZOUNDS of resources and gold. My army had been larger than ever, so I couldn't pass up my chance. I sent in what seemed more than enough to my inexperienced war-knowledge. I was decimated. My scouts never reported any wall fortifications. In this case, a decent number of "traps" and ALOT of "Archer Towers." My men never stood a chance. They were wiped clean. Shortly there after, the lord of the city sent me the following letter: "Looks like you had some bad luck trying to plunder me! My suggestion is that you don't try it again! I will be willing to work with you... If you're getting picked on, I might be able to launch a counter-attack to help. Your fate is in your hands. Don't make me make an example out of your town...." Not wanting to upset a clearly over-powering Lord, I immediately sent a return letter, stating that I accepted his invite to be allies.
If it's too good to be true... it probably is... ;)
Wow... that's quite a story. Sounds like you were creamed (Army -10), but also shown mercy (Luck +5) at the same time. Probably a good thing that you gave your neighbor a good laugh (Mirth +2) or he might have returned the "favor" (Home City=0). Very diplomatic of you to accept his invite. (Wisdom and Diplomacy +1).
I'm not entirely sure I trust him, so I'm gonna keep my eyes on him. I don't figure I'm gonna attack him until he shows straight out aggression towards me, though. It just seems too odd to be attacked and then offer an alliance with someone you could totally crush.
It looks a lot like WoW and it's one free to play basis. You can however buy stuff from their site to enhance your character. But it's perfectly playable without paying a single coin. Classes are pretty cool and it sports a nice dual class system. You have a choice in different servers.
The down sides
You seem to start out with a nice big inventory compared to other MMO's but looks deceive. because off all the runes, quest items and junk loot that mobs drop it tends to get cluttered up pretty fast and the only way of enhancing bagspace is to pay diamonds. These diamonds you can gather in game but are hard to get OR you can buy em from the website. But a healthy and normal inventory management remedies that.
You also feel that being able to buy stuff from their website tends to unbalance the trading system. For instance. In order to learn a new elite skill I had to bring several components to the teacher. these components how ever were crafting stuff for which you needed higher lvl crafting (lvling these are slow unless you spend diamonds. So what do you do you check AH and there are lots of them on there but they are priced soo high that i blew all but 10K of my money on buying them. They are priced so high because the once crafting it have spent bought diamonds on increasing their crafter lvl.
So while you are in no way obligated to buy from their website. Your life is made A LOT easier with doing so.
A connection with the world is hardly there so don't expect big involvement like you do in Lotro but more a generic feeling like with WoW
The last and probably biggest downside.
Comes from the free to play. This is a possitive thing you think. And not paying for the download and server time is wonderfull. It also makes it possible for all those young and most of the time immature players to play this game. Which they couldn't otherwise because it costs money. So yeah you come across a lot "captainawesome" and "Megaguy" who are nagging about how they need help and money.
So there are some big downsides to the game but also some good advantages.
To sum up
Good
Free to play
mindless chopping and burning
Ideal for a few hours of mental relaxation after a hard day of work
Bad
Unbalanced trading system
Not buying diamonds makes the game harder and sometimes a bit frustrating
Free to play opens the game to everyone.
If I had to score the game it would probably get a 7/10
Graphics 7/10
gameplay 9/10
Sound 5/10
I really haven't had the time to try out any of those games myself, so I look forward to what you have to say.
Review of Civony/Evony - Free Forever.
Alas, welcome good readers to the preliminary review of Civony-Free Forever. For those who are well-rounded (ie., older), you will be familiar with Defenders of the Crown. For the more youthful, Civilization and Age of Empires. Ok, so imagine all of those rolled into one + IRC and you have Civony.
I. Startup.
Joining Civony is free. Really. You go to http://www.civony.com and create your free account. You don't even have to validate your email address (it just has to be unused).
Playing Civony couldn't be easier. It loads and runs in any modern browser with Flash 9 installed. Major points for that. In fact, that is so odd and foreign to me that I kept clicking in and out of the browser, forgetting that I was actually on a WEB PAGE. I ran it in a Firefox tab without any issue. It's even better to run it Full Screen to get the game immersion feeling.
II. Interface.
So, you start with this:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/na53L9h2NdeUmtkbPJkHcA?feat=directlink
It's hard to believe, but EVERYTHING you need to play this game is on this screen. Pretty much everything you click no spawns an in-game pop-up menu. Very efficient. Some notes:
PRO: The chat window sizing button (lower right of the chat component, with 3 horizontal lines in vertical sequence) toggles between three different chat sizes: the default (shown), double height and full height of the screen.
PRO: The chat interfact is very easy to use. The circular buttons to the immediate left of the player names in the chat window select the channels. Clicking on a player name brings up a menu for that player (shown).
CON: There is a LOT of chat. No restrictions on player naming.
PRO: Everything is on one screen. Super efficient.
CON: Everything is on one screen. Everything means something. Every tab is clickable, every icon is clickable. Everything has a mouse-over. I found it extremely overwhelming.
III. Building.
After checking out your TOWN, you can click on your CITY (top menu bar) which will zoom out a bit and show the surrounding area. This allows you to build resource areas.
http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/TTZLqy5WzNWFbQFWfdEYhg?feat=directlink
You have a limited number of resource areas to build in, so choose wisely. Also, your population is "used up" extremely quickly by filling up all your resource slots. Building items has an excellent feature called "Finish Now". If you're a beginner, you can choose to Quickbuild your items that require less than 5 minutes of real-time to build. Great advantage to noobs.
PRO: Building items is quick and easy, so is upgrading them. Just hover/click to find out what to do with the areas and slots you are given. The resources required are clearly listed.
CON: It's SO easy that the noob ends up not really paying attention to how fast the resources are used up! :)
PRO: You can actually leave your browser open and build up resources (I left mine open without touching the game for over 3 hours and came back to a pile of resources that had stockpiled)!
CON: It's not really that clear what you are supposed to do once you get logged in. There were a lot of chat messages like "what do I do now?" or "how do you play this game" or "hay y0u haX0rs, \/\/hat is the \_/p?" (ok, that last one wasn't really relevant, but amusing nonetheless).
IV. The Catch.
OK, let's get down to the nitty gritty. Free game? Detailed? Chat and Endless Online play? What's the catch? There IS a catch, right? I mean, that +5 Sword of Everything-Slaying-No-Saving-Throw-Costs3cpToRepair-Endless-Healing at the end of the well-lit, doorless, dungeon hallway (guarded only by 2 kobolds with rusty daggers) can't be THAT easy to get... is it?
No. It's not.
As I started playing the game in more depth, I came across all these items that HELP you along:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/bQH49GxtwlMfQlqUsUo7Tg?feat=directlink
Ok, I'll bite. How much does it actually cost for these in-game items?
http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/db564nPaWRo7mG8DAycvyw?feat=directlink
Ok, I just changed my mind about playing this at work. It's gonna cost me my job, my severance pay and my mead money!
PRO: It's a free game. There are a lot of freebies they give you to get started. You get a bunch of "Amulets" that you can use to spin a "Wheel of Fortune" for extra items, resources, or even a high-level hero.
http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/TpXGS_eNU7Xf90M4lJfaHg?feat=directlink
CON: The in-game items are pretty expensive. $30US gets you 300 in-game cents. A fairly modest item costs 50 cents (or $5US). That's pretty pricey to increase your population once by 20%.
PRO: There is a very amusing feature created by the Developers called "Edit Browser Headline" in which you can change the title of the window being displaying from "Civony - Free Forever!" to whatever you want (like "Microsoft Technet Search"). I wonder if they developed this at their day jobs as System Administrators... Hmmm....
PRO: Beginners have "7 day Protection" that stops anyone from attacking them.
V. Final Assessment.
If you enjoy Civilization or Age of Empires, and your work firewall doesn't block the game, it's a low-investment-high-time-sucker.
It's a well-written browser game requiring very little system resources and only a moderate time investment to get started.
I give it high points for a compact interface, easy of startup, compatability and the fact that it is FREE. Thumbs-down for lack of noob help, and overpriced items that are basically REQUIRED to make an impact in the overall world.One quick final note... I still can't figure out why the game is called Civony, but the in-game title says Evony.
LOL.
Great review, well-written, thorough, and amusing. I found myself wanting to give it a try, looking at the interface and all the little clickies. But in-game items costing as much as $3000 US!!!
:jawdrop:
Does anyone ever actually spend that much? Holy franklin mint!
But I think it might be fun for a casual player. The Edit Browser Headline feature made me laugh, clever bastards. }:)
Nice writeup. Hope we get to hear more like this.
Thank you Linathor for an excellent review, very thorough! Funny, too. I just created a Civony account, and will be playing it for a few days to really get a feel for it. Thanks for the idea! For the few minutes I was playing and getting my city set up, it looks like ALOT of fun. Except the 3000 bucks for in-game items XD. Again, Thanks alot! Will post again when I get more of a feel for it!
First off, I'm having quite a ball already. Though I haven't spent any real money so far, I'd like to think my little city is coming along nicely. That is, as nicely as half a day of playing (or so, partially counting offline time, wherein, surprisingly, my resources still grew,) can get. I can only imagine how things'll go once I lose my newb shield (immunity from attacks for 7 days.) Will post more (and more detailed, of course,) later.
Well, I've been playing Civony/Evony for a few days now, so let me go ahead and throw my own few notes on it. First of, it doesn't have any sound, which isn't exactly a bad thing, nor is it necessary, but I almost would have liked to have sound cues to certain things, such as when my army left or return for or from a plundering, or maybe when you receive mail or reports, or completed quests. Next, I really enjoyed attacking a nearby city. I sent a letter to the lord of a city just north of me, requesting he surrender gold and resources to my main city at once, or be conquered. After a while, there was no answer, so I went about demolishing him. It was only once I got his people's loyalty to 2, and plundered everything I could that I realized that this was his only city, and that meant I couldn't conquer it. Aside from that little disappointment, I've been having a blast. I've been building an even larger army with the resources I plundered, and I plan to continue the process, growing stronger with every victory! ^^ I also love the fact that they give you a free "Aries Amulet" every morning. These can be used to spin the "Wheel of Fortune," and win you resources, gold, heroes, equipment, items and even "Cents" (the coins you get for paying them real money.) This is a great game for anyone who loves to micro-manage, conquer, and build a civilization (or my favorite part, the army!) and is good to go for either home, or work. ;)
I, have been mortified. My resources were running low, a nearby prosperous and large city looked promising and I sent in some scouts. They reported NO soldiers, no infantry, no siege equipment not even a basic militia. They also reported ZOUNDS of resources and gold. My army had been larger than ever, so I couldn't pass up my chance. I sent in what seemed more than enough to my inexperienced war-knowledge. I was decimated. My scouts never reported any wall fortifications. In this case, a decent number of "traps" and ALOT of "Archer Towers." My men never stood a chance. They were wiped clean. Shortly there after, the lord of the city sent me the following letter: "Looks like you had some bad luck trying to plunder me! My suggestion is that you don't try it again! I will be willing to work with you... If you're getting picked on, I might be able to launch a counter-attack to help. Your fate is in your hands. Don't make me make an example out of your town...." Not wanting to upset a clearly over-powering Lord, I immediately sent a return letter, stating that I accepted his invite to be allies.
Wow... that's quite a story. Sounds like you were creamed (Army -10), but also shown mercy (Luck +5) at the same time. Probably a good thing that you gave your neighbor a good laugh (Mirth +2) or he might have returned the "favor" (Home City=0). Very diplomatic of you to accept his invite. (Wisdom and Diplomacy +1).
;)
I'm not entirely sure I trust him, so I'm gonna keep my eyes on him. I don't figure I'm gonna attack him until he shows straight out aggression towards me, though. It just seems too odd to be attacked and then offer an alliance with someone you could totally crush.
As, always, updates to come! ^^
Runes of Magic is another Free MMO.
It looks a lot like WoW and it's one free to play basis. You can however buy stuff from their site to enhance your character. But it's perfectly playable without paying a single coin. Classes are pretty cool and it sports a nice dual class system. You have a choice in different servers.
The down sides
You seem to start out with a nice big inventory compared to other MMO's but looks deceive. because off all the runes, quest items and junk loot that mobs drop it tends to get cluttered up pretty fast and the only way of enhancing bagspace is to pay diamonds. These diamonds you can gather in game but are hard to get OR you can buy em from the website. But a healthy and normal inventory management remedies that.
You also feel that being able to buy stuff from their website tends to unbalance the trading system. For instance. In order to learn a new elite skill I had to bring several components to the teacher. these components how ever were crafting stuff for which you needed higher lvl crafting (lvling these are slow unless you spend diamonds. So what do you do you check AH and there are lots of them on there but they are priced soo high that i blew all but 10K of my money on buying them. They are priced so high because the once crafting it have spent bought diamonds on increasing their crafter lvl.
So while you are in no way obligated to buy from their website. Your life is made A LOT easier with doing so.
A connection with the world is hardly there so don't expect big involvement like you do in Lotro but more a generic feeling like with WoW
The last and probably biggest downside.
Comes from the free to play. This is a possitive thing you think. And not paying for the download and server time is wonderfull. It also makes it possible for all those young and most of the time immature players to play this game. Which they couldn't otherwise because it costs money. So yeah you come across a lot "captainawesome" and "Megaguy" who are nagging about how they need help and money.
So there are some big downsides to the game but also some good advantages.
To sum up
Good
Free to play
mindless chopping and burning
Ideal for a few hours of mental relaxation after a hard day of work
Bad
Unbalanced trading system
Not buying diamonds makes the game harder and sometimes a bit frustrating
Free to play opens the game to everyone.
If I had to score the game it would probably get a 7/10
Graphics 7/10
gameplay 9/10
Sound 5/10
So while you are in no way obligated to buy from their website. Your life is made A LOT easier with doing so.
That is usually the case with Free MMOs. But hey, there is still something to be said about free entertainment.