Evony

Evony is set in a persistent world during the medieval period. The player assumes the role of a lord or lady of a city or alliance. New players are granted "beginner's protection," which prevents other players from attacking their cities for seven days or until they upgrade the town hall to level five or higher. This lets new players accumulate resources and troops and accustom themselves to the game before other players can attack them.

The player sets tax rate, production, and construction. Resources include gold, food, lumber, stone, iron, and the city's idle population. As with similar games, the player first must increase the city's population and hourly resource production rates and construct certain buildings in the city, and then start building resource fields and an army. An army can include siege machines, such as ballistas, catapults, and battering rams, and foot troops, such as archers, warriors and swordsmen.

In a three-star review for Stuff, Joel Lauterbach wrote, "Evony has done an amazing job at making the game look and feel appealing to all gamers, however once a player scratches the surface and sees the investment-heavy time-killing game mechanics, many are likely to be put off."

The Guardian noted that Evony's 2009 ad campaign featured women, increasingly unclothed, which had no connection to the game. In 2009, Gavin Mannion wrote that Evony's "latest ad is seriously pushing boundaries of what is acceptable to publish on Google". Other ads used stock photographs from pornographic DVD covers and promoted the game via "millions of spam comments". The company denied responsibility. That same year, Evony's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to blogger Bruce Everiss after he alleged deceptive marketing but withdrew their claims two days into the case.