Generals in Evony: The King’s Return - The Best Generals and Introduction to the Hero System
Evony: The King’s Return is a strategy war game based directly on the popular browser-based game from the late 2010s, in which players are entrusted with their very own fortress and are tasked with building their cities and developing them into powerful empires. The best way to do this is by progressively constructing new buildings, upgrading existing structures, and continuously training new troops.
An important part of your town’s defenses, development, and army, are your Generals. These powerful heroes have specific sets of skills and passives that, when assigned to certain positions within your army and town, can help to improve its production, the strength of your troops, and even the spoils you receive from battle. However, there are several nuances you need to consider when it comes to appointing generals, particularly since there are quite a lot of them you can unlock. In this sense, knowing which to use and which to ignore can be a bit complicated, especially since upgrading and enhancing these heroes is expensive, and you’d only waste resources if you upgrade sub-par or mediocre generals.
If you’re a beginner in Evony: The King’s Return, then this guide is for you. In the following paragraphs, you’ll find an introduction to the generals system in the game, as well as a few of our recommendations of best generals for specific roles in the game.
Obtaining New Generals
Early on during the tutorial, you’ll receive your first general, in the form of Charles. This character is your standard cookie cutter hero, with nothing that really stands out. He’ll be your first leader in the game, but you’ll quickly replace him once you get better characters.
You can unlock new generals in Evony: The King’s Return in the Tavern building as soon as you hit level 5. Once you reach this level, you’ll be prompted by the tutorial to complete a simple puzzle, and will receive the Tavern key as a reward. With this item in hand, you will unlock the Recruit feature in the tavern, through which you can hire new generals using gold. There can be up to three random generals in the Tavern in the beginning, with the current choices refreshing every few hours.
As you continue to upgrade the Tavern, your choice of generals will increase to a maximum of six at level 16. Leveling up this building will also increase the odds of getting rarer and more powerful heroes every time the roster refreshes. In fact, until your Tavern reaches level 10, you can only find White and Green heroes, which are the lowest rarities. Suffice to say, you won’t be investing a single coin in these as it would be a waste. You should always wait until you get golden generals before considering dumping resources into upgrading them—anything below the best rarity is seldom worth it.
Most generals in the Tavern can be purchased with gold, though some will have special recruitment conditions such as participating in events. You can always check the conditions for recruiting specific characters in the Portraits menu, which you can access in the Tavern. And with that being said, the best way to find specific generals is by paying the 50 gems to manually refresh the selection of heroes, until you find the one you’re looking for. This is one of the best ways to spend your gems, especially if you manage to score a powerful champion.
Understanding a General’s Stats and Skills
Now that we know that only the golden Generals are the ones worth upgrading after you finally unlock them, let’s go ahead and break down the different stats and skills that each of these offer to your cause.
A General’s Portrait
First off, let’s start by analyzing a General’s portrait:
As we mentioned above, the color of the border itself denotes the rarity of the General, with gold being the highest and best of them all. These borders also come in white, green, blue, and purple. Additionally, if your character has a helmet on the upper left corner of its portrait, this means that it’s a “Historic General”. This historic status is very important as it grants your general an extra specialty.
The reason why you only want golden generals in your squad is because they are the strongest in the game. And the reason why you only want characters with Historic status is because the extra skills and stat growths they get from it will make them leaps and bounds better than the rest.
Stats, Personal Skills, and Specialties
Every general in Evony comes with their own set of stats, which determine their effectiveness at most tasks in the game. And though their skills and specialties are often more important for this regard, their stat distribution could give you a general idea of what these generals are better at. With that said, let’s go over all the basic stats in the game:
- Leadership: Affects troop HP and their march speed.
- Attack: Affects the attack damage of the general’s troops.
- Defense: Affects the troops’ defense.
- Politics: Affects the ratio of wounded-to-dead soldiers after battles, and the gathering speed of the general’s troops.
You can always view a detailed breakdown in the “Cultivate” menu of a general that you have unlocked. Check it out if you want a better look at how your character’s stats can benefit their armies. It’s worth mentioning here that golden generals with Historic status have both the best base stats, as well as the best stat growth per level, which is another reason why you really only want to commit to leveling these.
Aside from stats, a general also has specialties, and personal skills. Both of these elements are basically a series of passive boosts that can greatly improve the character’s proficiency at certain tasks. Both purple and gold generals have a maximum of three specialties, though the latter gain an additional specialty if they have Historic status. Meanwhile, personal skills are often much more significant than specialities, and are only present in purple and gold heroes who have Historic status.
The Best Generals for Every Task
If you’ve learned anything about the generals in Evony: The King’s Return so far, is that if it isn’t gold and historic, it isn’t worth it. However, while it’s pretty easy to know which generals are the best, judging from their portraits, figuring out which of these are the best at specific tasks is a different matter. Luckily, in the spirit of keeping things simple and straightforward, here’s a quick rundown of the best generals for every situation:
For developing your town
The heroes in this category are usually ones who, with their passive skills, can secure additional goods when farming NPC enemies in the world map, as well as speeding up the rate at which your troops can gather resources from collection points. Some of the best generals are the following:
- Baibars: Gives a 25% chance to score a double drop from monsters.
- Queen Jindeok: Increases the resources received from gathering from the world map by a set percentage. Also increases resources farmed from alliance gathering spots.
For leading your armies
Your choice of general here will vary greatly, depending on the type of troop favored by your army. The strongest generals for each category will usually have passives that benefit the said specific unit type. Here’s a list of some of the best generals for every troop type:
- For Infantry: Scipio Africanus.
- For Cavalry: Hannibal.
- For Ranged: Simeon.
- For Siege: Napoleon.
For defending your city
When it comes to defending your city, your ranged and siege damage are the most important elements. However, the defense against a variety of troop types is also incredibly important. In this sense, the best heroes for this purpose are not only the ones that have increased damage with siege and ranged units, but that can also increase the defense against infantry, and cavalry. And some of the best generals that fulfill these criteria are the following:
- Tran
- Joseph
There’s much more to the system of generals in Evony: The King’s Return. However, with this basic introduction and list of best generals, you’re now ready to get started. Feel free to leave your comments and questions in the section below!
