Defending in Evony has become increasingly difficult and especially so after the K45 update was dropped. Many have questions about how to build their defense and this article sums up what I learned plus what other more experienced players has tested and told me.
Keep in mind, there is not one single answer for what you should do, as everything in Evony the answer is as always: It depends!
Maybe not the simple answer you were looking for but if you read through this article, I hope to give you enough information so you can choose for your self what to do based on how you play and what your goal is.
Remember that you need to make a strategy based on how much or how little you spend money in the game. If you are a low coiner or free to play, you must take this into consideration. You can grind for RSS and build troops, however buffs and debuffs is very hard to obtain without spending a decent amount of money. At least getting the required buffs as low coiner or F2P takes a great amount of time. Meaning that building a K40 keep with necessary buffs and troop power (5B and upwards) is not gonna be possible as very low coiners or F2P.
If you spend a decent amount of money (VIP 15-18), K40 at 10B power with decent buffs should be possible over time.
This article is mostly for those spending little or medium money in the game.
1. A few basics first:
Before we discuss keep defense it’s important to go through some basics to better understand the how’s and why's.
Buffs/Debuffs:
In Evony a big part of battle mechanics is about buffs and debuffs! One of the deciding factors in a battle (beside troop numbers/types) is gonna be the buffs and debuffs. These mechanics is the most misunderstood part that many players fail to understand. Meaning that you can build a billion troops in your keep for defense but if you don’t have the necessary buffs and debuffs to support them they will simply all die and be cannon fodder for the attacker. You want a tough keep and not a squishy one!
Taking this into account it’s easy to see that before you build any kind of defense you first need to make sure you have the correct set of buffs and debuffs to support your defensive troops and build.
Buff:
A buff is a parameter that will boost a specific value for your own troops either when they are defending or attacking. Each troop type has three types of buffs:
- Attack (boosting your troops attacking power)
- Defense (reduce damage from enemy troops)
- HP (Enables to withstand more damage)
DeBuff:
A DeBuff works in same way as a buff, but it does not apply to your own troops but rather a DeBuff will reduce the buff of the enemy troops. Meaning if the enemy has 2000% ranged attack and you have a 1000% DeBuff for ranged attack you will reduce the attackers ranged troop attack to 1000%. A DeBuff can maximum reduce an attacker’s buff by 50%. Meaning that if the attacker has a ranged attack of 2000% and you have a theoretical ranged attack DeBuff of 1500%, you can only debuff 1000%.
Main type of refines for buffs/debuffs:
You can refine buffs and debuffs either in percentages or as flat absolute number. Buffs can be either percentage buffs, such as “+25%,” or absolute buffs (flats), such as “+100.
The +% is applied to the troops original status (not the green number). For example, if a troops attack is 200 and the buff is +25%, the attack after the buff is applied is 250.
For absolute values, for example, if the troop attack is 200 and the buff is +100, the attack after the buff is applied is 300.
Typically, percent buffs are the best strategy for T11 troops and up, while flat refines are best for T10 and down. I won’t go into details in this article but the other advantage of flat refines versus percent refines is that flat refines cannot be debuffed by the enemy while percent buffs can and will be.
Sources of buffs and debuffs:
Your main source of buffs for keep defense will come from your main wall general and his gear and refines plus the assistant wall general. In addition, research in academy and military academy is also an important source for buffs. While these are the main sources there is also many other sources that will boost your buffs, although by less a factor:
- Dragon on your main wall general
- Some duty officers
- Civ and Art treasures
- Monarch gear
- Keep champions
- Blazons
- Spiritual Beast Seals
- Ideal Land - Council Of State
This are some of the most common sources, but this article will not go in depth for buff sources, just know they exist and are important!
When it comes to debuffs your main source by far will be your sub city’s generals and gear. A common mistake is that many players put gear and refine their sub generals for buffs. However, buffs on sub city generals will only apply to the troops for that sub city and not your main keeps troops! Therefore, any buffs for a sub general are completely useless. You only care about putting on generals and gear that gives debuffs since debuffs will apply to all the troops in your keep and you don’t refine any of the gear. Typically, the gear you use is Achaemenidae gear or civilization gear. Apart from sub city generals a few other sources for debuffs are:
- Academy
- Keep Champions
- Civ treasures
- Art treasures
- Blazons
- Senate
Layers and basic battle mechanics:
To better understand how to defend we need to discuss the basic battle mechanics of Evony. In Evony each battle happens in rounds on a “virtual” battlefield. For each round one layer can only attack one other layer per round. The battle is finished when all turns has finished for all tiers and layers.
Also, when a battle starts all units will start at a set distance from each other (1500). For each turn the units move forward according to their stats (speed). Meaning mounted troops will always charge first and quickly move ahead, followed by ground, archers, and siege.
Given these mechanics it is therefore important that as a defender you should always have some troops of all types and tiers in your keep if you want to soak up attackers’ layers. Remember that it doesn’t matter how many units you have just that you have some. Usually, an attacker will attack you with a fully layered march, meaning all types and tiers from T1 and up to T14/15. 14 tiers times 4 is a total of 56 layers (if all four T15 unlocked it's 60). If you as a defender has less layers, you will be at a disadvantage since the attacker then has to waste less turns fighting trough your layers. Remember that one layer can only attack one other layer per turn, it doesn’t matter if attacker has 500k of one tier and you only have 10 of the same, attackers 500k layer still needs to waste one turn hitting your 10 troops of a certain layer. An advantage if you’re a defender is that defender always has the first round in a battle.
Troop types:
The last factor in a battle is troop types and how they work. As we all know there is four types of troops:
- Mounted
- Archer
- Ground
- Siege
Mounted and ground are melee troops, meaning they only fight at close distance, archers and siege are ranged troops and fight at a longer distance from each other. The simple way it works is as follows:
- Mounted is used against ground.
- Ground is used against archers.
- Archers is used against mounted.
- Siege is used against siege.
Pros and Cons of each troop type:
Pros
Mounted = Attack, Speed
Ground = HP, Defense
Ranged = Range
Siege = Range, Load
Cons
Mounted = Defense, Range
Ground = Attack, Range
Ranged = Speed, Defense, HP
Siege = Attack, Defense, HP
Given each troop types of pros and cons and how they work is therefore essential to how you build your defense and what types of attacks you want to be able to defend against. As a smaller keep/power player you will mostly be attacked by ranged and secondly ground. As a bigger keep and more powerful player this will shift to siege mostly, secondly ranged/cav.
2. Basics summed up.
So before moving on we learned the following:
- Buffs and DeBuffs is a deciding factor to the outcome of a battle.
- Secondly the troop numbers, types and layers is the other deciding factor.
Use this information to better understand how PvP works and make your choices based on these factors. Next, we move on to types of defensive strategies and their pros and cons.
3. Keep defenses.
Based on your coining level and preferences, here we discuss the typical and most used defensive builds in Evony.
NOTE! Everything discussed further down is mostly related to defending against solo attacks. Powerful rally’s is a lot more complicated and is not fully covered here. But basically, if you’re a T1 trap keep do not take rallies, port! If you’re a siege defense keep you need at minimum reins to take rallies, but your buffs and troop layering is also hugely important.
Pure ghosting:
Simply a build where you don’t have any big defensive layers at all in your keep. You simply rely on always ghosting all your PvP marches and don’t have any defense at all. By far the cheapest build of them all! Lightweight and a lot of fun!
I would recommend this build for all F2P and very low coiners. Rather than wasting resources on some type of defense that never will be adequate, you can spend all your resources towards building good PvP marches.
T1 trap:
A T1 trap is simply a keep with mostly T1 troops and very little of any other layers in the keep. You rely on your T1 troops to kill all the attackers’ troops and win on the power exchange due to how few points T1 troops give away as opposed to the higher tiers of the enemy. Any PvP marches you have stays ghosted. A T1 trap keep is usually built with either mounted or ground troops, mounted being the most common build.
I don't recommend this build for any F2P or very low coiner, reason being that it will take a lot of time and resources building it properly. Time and resources you rather could be using for your PvP marches.
Only do this if your already heavily invested into such a build!
Siege defense with Meat Shield:
A meat shield is not the same as a trap keep, when having a meat shield it’s simply there to soak up certain enemy attacks and to give higher tier troops more time to kill incoming enemy layers and prevent attackers troops to get to your secondary layers. This is usually a big layer of T1 troops but can also be some bigger layers of higher tier troops depending on what you want to soak up damage for and what type of attack you want to defend against. But in this build, you also heavily rely on a lot of higher tier troops to defend together with any meat shields. The main type of troop in such a build will be heavy siege layers all the way up the tiers from T8 an up.
Again this build is not recommended for F2P or very low coiners, you need to spend a decent amount of money in order to realize this build and get it to where it needs to be. (VIP 15-18)
So, what type of defensive build should you choose?
Currently as the situation is with the extreme buffs from K41-43 attackers becoming more and more common, if you are a F2P player the only viable strategy is a pure ghosting keep without defense imho.
T1 trap defense keep will need at least some low spending in the game or take a lot of time and efforts. This is due to the extremely powerful marches from the k42 and upwards, the number of T1 mounted troops plus buffs/debuffs needed is simply to time consuming and expensive. (Again if you are already heavily invested into this try as best you can)
Before K45, if you built a T1 trap keep correctly, you could withstand easily a k40 attacker having 200 million T1 mounted troops as defense. Given that most K40 ground attacks is between 2000/2500% and march sizes around 4M. Now that k41 and k42 is more common to meet, even k43, the situation has changed. A K42 with 3000% and above ground attack can easily solo wipe 500 million T1 mounted troops. Add in the addition of T15 troops and march sizes of 5M troops and upwards for the attacker and the exchange will be even worse for you as defender. So, to withstand such attacks you would now need upwards to 1B of T1 mounted troops and very good buffs/DeBuffs to defend.
Unless you already are well on your way to build a good T1 trap keep, I would now advice F2P or very low coiners to avoid building a T1 trap keep. Its simply to time consuming to build the required number of troops and to gain the correct type of buffs and DeBuffs. As a k30-k35 you will have more fun focusing on pure offense and spending your resources building a few good PvP marches. Focus first on a ranged march, then secondly on a ground march.
4. T1 trap keep details.
If you are a k35-38 and already well on your way building a trap keep, focus firstly on improving your buffs and DeBuffs. The better these are the more damage your T1 mounted can soak up and deliver before they die. If you use T1 mounted as a defensive layer you need to work on improving this troops buffs. And you want to focus on all flat refines!
So, in order of priority here is my suggestion:
As a pure trap keep, the wall general does not matter, only the flat refines for the gear. You can use queen Jinedok or Shajarr if you wanted.
If you have Thebes wall dragon, refine 4 mounted HP gold flat refines for it.
When you select gear for the main wall general, focus on gear that adds percent DeBuffs against ground troops. Cause ground attacks will be your main enemy when you run mounted T1 wall. Secondly go for ranged/cav debuffs.
Refine the helmet and leg armor for 4 HP mounted gold flat refines each.
After this you continue with the weapon and ring, adding 4 gold mounted attack flats for each of them.
Lastly you refine the chest armor and boots with 4 mounted defense gold refines each.
As you can see the end goal is to refine all 6 gear pieces with all mounted gold flat refines plus using gear that adds ground enemy DeBuffs mainly, secondly archers/cav.
While you work on the flat refines for the wall general you also need to, at the same time, spend all resources you have towards improving your sub generals:
First, make sure you use sub generals that have gold books that DeBuffs either enemy ground troops or DeBuffs that apply to all 4 troop types. You want to focus firstly on DeBuffs that reduces enemy ground troops HP and defense stats. Secondly archers/cav.
Forge Achaemenidae gear for all your sub generals. Every sub general you have should in the end each have a full set of 6 pieces each. (One complete set adds -15% debuff) And again, you only select gear that adds DeBuffs for enemy ground troops, HP and Defense firstly. You do not care about any buffs! Always complete one complete set for one general before starting on the next.
Work on the second specialty category for every sub general, when fully done this will ad another -10% of DeBuffs.
You do not refine any of the gear you add to your sub generals!
You can also equip some of your sub generals with some of the newer spiritual beasts. These will also add DeBuffs if you improve them.
Remember that every sub general you have stacks with the amount of sub city's you have so it's easy to se that all of these debuffs will add up quickly.
As you work on the gear and refines for the wall general and sub generals, continue to build your T1 mounted troops. I would say you now need minimum 500m T1 mounted troop to be able to defend against more powerful solos. However, take note, the better buffs/DeBuffs you can achieve, the more capable your defense will be and your T1 mounted troops will be able to soak up and kill more enemy troops. End goal for this build I would say is 1B T1 mounted troops and all refines, and gear completed fully.
Typical keep troop configuration:
Archers T1-T14, 50-100k of each layer
Siege T1-T14, 50-100k of each layer
Ground T1-T14, 10-20k of each layer
Mounted T1, 500M-1B, T2-T14 1k of each layer
Any PvP marches you have is excluded from these numbers as they must stay ghosted.
As you can clearly see, if you’re a low coiner or free to play player, building all this will be extremely time consuming and take a lot of time! This is why I don’t suggest going down this route unless you already have invested into it already. The time and effort spent on building your T1 trap keep is better spent improving and building your offensive PvP marches!
5. Siege defense with meat shield keep details:
This build is mostly for those spending some money in the game and can reach the needed number of resources and buffs to support it (VIP15-18). Typically, this build is for those at around k38 and upwards and are aiming for K40 at some point.
With this build you want to make a more balanced defense, meaning you will make large defensive layers for all tiers and troop types. Your main defense force will be siege machines, the siege machines are great for defense since they will sit far back in the battle and fire at enemy troops from a long distance. But you need to have other troops in your keep protecting your siege machines from being reached by the enemy.
However, before we talk about troop numbers and layers, as always, we first need to discuss the buffs and DeBuffs. Since this build rely heavily on your siege machines doing the heavy lifting for your defense, we also need to make their buffs as good as possible.
Its not possible to give one right answer for how to build a good siege defense, however there is a few things we can say in general. When you have built a proper siege defense, what you will face will mostly be siege solos, secondly cav/archers. Therefore, it’s important that you focus both your buffs and DeBuffs towards siege firstly then secondly cav/ranged. Nobody will solo attack a proper built siege keep with ground so these buffs are less important.
Buffs/DeBuffs:
When it comes to buffs, before you build any larger number of T12-T14 siege layers you firstly need to have at minimum the following siege buffs (the higher the better):
- Attack >1500% (at K40 2200%)
- HP >1200% (at K40 2000%)
- Defense >1200% (at K40 2000%)
For the DeBuffs you need the following at minimum:
- Attack >1200% (at K40 1500%)
- HP >200% (at K40 400%)
- Defense >200% (at K40 400%)
Remember that when it comes to siege debuff, the hardest one to get are the HP and secondly defense DeBuffs. Attack DeBuffs are way easier to achieve. Rule of thumb is that your siege attack buffs should be higher than your HP/Defense buffs by about a factor of 1.2.
You get your siege defensive buffs mainly from the following sources:
- Main wall general, gear and refines plus dragon.
- Assistant wall general
- Academy
- Military Academy
- Duty generals
- Spiritual beast seals
- Monarch gear
- Keep Champions
- Civ treasures
- Art Treasures
- Blazons
- Senate
When it comes to siege DeBuffs you’re by far largest source of DeBuffs will be from your sub general’s and gear. Therefore, you need to prioritize generals and gear that gives siege HP and Defense DeBuffs, secondly archer/cav. There is not too much Achaemenidae gear that adds siege HP or Defense DeBuffs, therefore you most also at some point add selected Civ gear pieces to further improve your DeBuffs.
Choose ach/ares gear that gives firstly any siege debuffs, secondly cav/archer. Besides Ach/Ares gear you can add certain civ gear pieces to further improve it. Suggestions for civ gear pieces is (in priority):
Han Dynasty Leg Armor
Abbas Bracers
Aztec Round Shield
Sasanian Bracers
Augustus Leg Armor
Heian Helmet
Sasanian Helmet
Sasanian Leg Armor
Sub generals is also important, below image shows some possible good suggestions, don't forget adding a few red stars also on your sub gens:
Other but far smaller sources of siege DeBuffs can be obtained from these additional sources.
- Academy
- Civ treasures
- Keep champions.
- Art treasures
- Monarch gear
- Blazons
- Senate
Remember that as you improve and grow your Siege defense, your attackers will at some point switch over to attacking you with siege instead of archer/cav. As you get enough siege layers and buffs/debuffs your siege and secondly ground will kill most incoming archers attacks before they can do much damage to your other troops (cav) and higher tier siege.
As you grow, you must actively work on all sources you have to obtain the needed buffs and DeBuffs to support your growing numbers of siege!
Meat Shield:
In addition to building your higher tier siege numbers up, and improving their buffs/debuffs, most players also choose to keep some form of a meat shield of T1 troops. For this article I will use again mounted since this is the most common choice and what I know best. So how many T1 mounted troops is needed? Well, it depends, if you have some flat refines for them you need less, without flat refines for them you need more. I would suggest at minimum the following for your T1 mounted wall:
- 500M – 1B T1 mounted troops
- At least 4-8 HP gold flat mounted refines, put 4 on the dragon and 4 on either the wall generals’ helmet or leg armor.
- You could also add 4 gold mounted attack flats, depending on your build but not critical.
As you can see, when having a siege defense, you must prioritize any refines you do for your meat shield against refines you want for your siege machines.
Wall Generals:
The most common way to setup your wall generals now is as follow:
- Choose a main general that adds siege Attack, HP and defense buffs firstly, ranged secondly. Same for your assistant general.
- When it comes to gear refine, I suggest the following:
- Weapon: Siege Attack percent
- Chest armor: Siege defense percent
- Boots: Siege Defense percent
- Helmet: HP mounted flats/siege HP percent
- Leg armor: HP mounted flats/siege HP percent
- Ring/Bracer: Siege attack percent
Percent or flat refines?:
Unless you have some sort of special build, I would recommend to use percent for most of your siege buffs. At least when you reach K39/40.
But whether or not flat siege attack or percent refines is right for you, what attacks and enemies you face, keep size/power and continent must be the deciding factor. Let's look at some practical examples to better understand:
If you are a K39 with the following siege buffs/debuffs:
Buffs:
Attack: 2000%
HP: 1500%
Defense: 1500%
Debuffs:
Attack: 1500%
HP: 300%
Defense: 300%
Then you get attacked by a K42 with the following buffs:
Attack: 3000%
HP: 2000%
Defense: 2000%
Attacker Debuff:
Attack: 1000%
HP: 750%
Defense: 750%
In this example we can deduct the following:
Your siege attack is fully debuffed by the enemy, meaning your effective attack is reduced from 2000% to 1000%. For your HP and Defense buffs your also fully debuffed, they are reduced from 1500% to 750%. As you can see you are also far from fully debuffing enemy siege attack and even worse at debuffing his HP and Defense. The result of this exchange is therefore big losses for you due to the huge difference in buffs and debuffs. The only fix for this is to improve your siege percent buffs or simply port to avoid the attack.
Let's look at an example for your T14-T9 siege. Here you can see effective values for percent's if fully or half debuffed compared to flat values that can't be debuffed. Note: To calculate the percent buffs added by general gear refines, this is added to the original base stats off a troop type, not the buffed stat (green number).
As you can see, depending on enemy buffs/debuffs whether or not you should use a general with flat gear refines or percent gear refines or a mix will depend highly on the situation. In general for T11/12 and up percent refines makes more sense. But for T11/T10 and down flats makes more sense since it can't be debuffed. Point being that being fully debuffed (50%) on siege attack will now be common, but for siege HP/Defense being fully debuffed is not common, this makes the situation more complicated for flats versus percent refines around the T11 tier and down.
Using some siege attack flats on your wall general would be in more specialized build, like if you had larger meat shields in your keep of siege T1-T4. But I won't cover such builds here. Then again if you have a mounted meat shield of T1 you must also set aside some flat refines for this also. It's a difficult balance.
Important: You absolutely must have a ring or bracer on your main wall general that adds +15% siege attack range! Without this your siege defense is at a great disadvantage!
Troop layers and types:
Starting point:
When it comes to your defensive layer, I would suggest the following as a good starting point:
- T1-T14 Siege machines, 2M of each layer
- T1-T14 Ground troops, 2M of each layer
- T1-T14 Archer troops, 2M of each layer
- T1-T14 Mounted troops, 1M of each layer
Obviously, these numbers are not set in stone but use them as a general reference starting point. Don’t build out the higher tier siege before you have the needed buffs and DeBuffs.
End goals:
As you grow your keep and buffs you can increase the layers, as you reach K39/K40 I suggest the following as end goals:
Siege machines layers:
- T1-T8, 3M of each layer
- T9-T11, 10M
- T12, 5M
- T13, 10M
- T14, 5M
Ground Layers:
- T1-T11, 3M of each layer
- T12-T14, 5M of each layer
Archer Layers:
- T1-T11, 3M of each layer
- T12, 10M
- T13-T14, 3M of each layer
Mounted Troops:
- T1, 500M to 1B
- T2-T14, 2M of each layer
Again, use these numbers as a general guide. A few points related to these numbers:
- The added archer troops, T12, is to help against mounted rallies.
- If you face an archer solo or rally, ghost your mounted troops, T14 at least.
- If you face a cav solo or rally, ghost your ground troops, T14 at least.
- T13 Siege will be the main damage dealer and thus should always have the highest number, but you need some T14/T12 siege to protect your T13 siege.
- The higher number for T9-T10 siege is to help soak up/kill any ranged solo or rallies since they are very good at killing incoming archers.
Note!
An important trick in SvS and battlefield is to always have a preset of healing layers. Typically, you add 1000 troops of all types and tiers and save it as a preset. For each time your attacked you immediately heal this preset so that you always have full layers in your keep, it will greatly improve your defenses! In addition, you can use this cheap preset to reinforce players and buildings.
Builds beyond K40 and upwards is not covered in this guide, but its basically the same. You continue improving your buffs and increase your troop numbers accordingly.
6. Some general and common misunderstandings
When reinforcing a keep, each reinforcement will fight with its own buffs, debuffs are more contested, most believe that the highest debuff will apply. The battle report will only show the main keeps buffs and debuffs no matter what.
When reinforcing a building, each reinforcement fights with its own buffs but highest debuff will apply, what is shown on the report is only the buffs of the last player who entered the building so don't pay attention to that.
In a rally, each joiner fights with its own buffs but will get the debuffs from the rally setter or the highest debuffs joining rally (debuffs it's not known for sure)
Always inspect your battle reports to gauge where you are at with your build and if you have the needed buffs/debuffs. Especially your max debuffs can only be read if you get attacked by someone who have very high buffs. If your report shows less than 50% debuff for any stat it means you know your max debuff.
Also check your reports to see how your layers do against different attacks and make necessary plans/adjustments accordingly.
7. Ending Notes
I hope you find this defense guide useful and remember I’m not claiming this is the definitive answer to any and all defenses! What is discussed here are the most typical builds that i know are proven to work decently well. Obviously, there are a lot of fine details to discuss and what is the right build for you is not necessarily the right build for another player.
Remember, as a reasonably strong K39/40 you should be able to take solos from enemy's of K41/42 without going hugely negative. But from strong K43 and up you can't expect to defend well anymore, the buff/debuff discrepancy will simply be to high so avoid those. Even some very strong K42 can be difficult.
I will continue to revise this guide whenever possible, based on input I get and whatever new information I receive that can be added or revised. If you find anything you think is wrong or you have any further questions, please contact me on discord or in game. I love to discuss Evony topics and battle mechanics 😊
- CZAR