Realistic Item Evaluations

Contents 1 Author's Note 2 Resources 3 Special Items 4 Resourcing Items 5 Hero Items 6 Speedup Items 7 Scalable Items 8 Battalion Items 9 Medal Items

[edit] Author's Note

Evony uses game cents to denote the worth of an item. But that has nothing to do with how useful an item really is in practice, and is their way of setting prices on items for the Evony Item Mall. Evony doesn't subscribe at all to good practices; game cents (c) actually cost $0.10 USD, and this is a means of making paying players feel like they aren't being as badly ripped off as they might think. The value of an item depends on playing style, when you get the item or reward, and your current situation.

So here I'll give the run-down on the items and how valuable they are. Keep in mind that I am a non-playing player and I don't value ANYTHING Evony tries to sell as worth very much, especially since I compare their 50c items with a $5.00 USD Subway Footlong Sandwich, and I think that you shouldn't buy a 50c item unless it's worth a full meal to you. Of course, your point of view might be different in that respect. As an alternative yardstick, I'll value the ability, as used optimally, to add another 500 Archers to your army by day 7 as worth $1.00 USD. This, in turn, is predicated on the fact that players can derive substantial enjoyment from defeating/pillaging other players.

[edit] Resources

Evony allows you to buy resources using game cents. On day 1, this may be an extremely powerful opportunity. $0.10 USD gets you 16,000 Lumber which can be sold for 45,000 Gold (if you're good), and come day 5 you can use this Gold to train an extra 45 Archers. For $1.00 USD, you can get an extra 450 Archers. Pay a few bucks this way and you can have an invincible army coming out of protection. Unfortunately, this becomes weak by day 2 and nearly useless after days 2-3, while on day 1 this option FAR OVERSHADOWS any other offer Evony might be giving you.

Amulets may yield you resources as well, and these are most useful on day 1, so if you're going to buy Amulets, use them immediately and then sell the resources you get in this way. A 40,000 Stone award can get you 160,000 Gold on day 1, which can be sold for 640,000 Stone on day 5 or its equivalent in other resources, which means that you can get another 640 Archers. Hence on day 1 a 40,000 Stone award is one of the best rewards you can get and is worth $1.28 USD according to my valuation scheme, followed by 40,000 Iron, 40,000 Lumber, and 40,000 Gold.

[edit] Special Items

Advanced City Teleporter

• Evony valuation: 90c ($9.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.03 USD
• The only time you'd use a city teleporter is 1) You need to go to a state to join an alliance, which isn't going to work all that great if you have more than one city; 2) You need to escape from someone better than you, which isn't going to help because the place you're going to will also have good players; and 3) You want to chase after someone else who's fleeing from you, which is a stupid thing to do because if they're fleeing you, they probably don't have that much resources left, and you're leaving a place where you had been in a position of power. In summary, I wouldn't ever find occasion to use this item.

City Teleporter

• Evony valuation: 30c ($3.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.02 USD
• The only time you'd use a city teleporter is 1) You need to go to a state to join an alliance, which isn't going to work all that great if you have more than one city; or 2) You need to escape from someone better than you, which isn't going to help because the place you're going to will also have good players. In summary, I wouldn't ever find occasion to use this item.

Dynamite

• Evony valuation: 20c ($2.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• You'll never run out of time for building things. You'll only run out of resources. This means you'll never really be saving time using Dynamite. Never buy or use this item, it's absolutely useless. Destroy your own buildings, yielding nothing, and for $2.00 USD! What an insult to the players' common sense!

Michelangelo's Script

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.25 USD only if late-game
• There are some things you should never use this item on (resourcing, Cottages, Inns, etc). Then there are some you really want to: Rally Points and maybe Feasting Halls to go along with them.

National Flag

• Evony valuation: 6c ($0.60 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD only if late-game
• You would never have occasion to use this.

New ID

• Evony valuation: 200c ($20.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD only if late-game
• You would never have occasion to use this.

Ritual of Pact

• Evony valuation: 500c ($50.00 USD)
• My valuation: $4.00 USD only if you're alliance host, $0.00 USD otherwise
• This only helps you if you're the alliance host. Otherwise, don't bother wasting your rare item on someone else's alliance; they can kick you once you use your item to help them. This allows your alliance to instantly have up to 100 members, but numbers aren't what counts in an alliance. This item is extremely helpful in establishing your role as host of a powerful alliance, if you can achieve it. You can reach at least 99 members with a lv-10 Embassy, but that requires an item as well (Michelangelo's Script) not to mention a great deal of resources and time.

Speaker

• Evony valuation: 3c ($0.30 USD)
• My valuation: $0.01 USD only if you're alliance host, $0.00 USD otherwise
• Come on, Evony, you're charging people money to talk in your chat channel? The same one filled with 90% garbage? That's not ethical, and I'm not even sure that's legal (right to free speech, anyone?). And it's quite obvious that this is also an attempt by Evony to stop spammers. Problem? New players start out with speakers, rather than getting speakers solely from quests, so they get to spam anyway (EvonyAlliance.tk anyone?). Evony: Fail.
• Anyways, the only thing a speaker is good for is for advertising that your alliance is seeking members, and it's useful in that regard, but you're better off writing to players; you'll know what quality the player has. Don't use it to help an alliance you're not part of; you never know when you could be kicked out.

Speech Text

• Evony valuation: 100c ($10.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.20 USD
• Primarily used to prevent enemies from taking over your city. If an enemy would otherwise be able to take over your city, you're almost screwed anyway, so this doesn't help that much. Besides, you can always use Comforting:Disaster Relief or Comforting:Praying to keep your loyalty up and prevent the enemy from taking your city.

Truce Agreement

• Evony valuation: 30c ($3.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• If you're resorting to using this item to stay alive, quit the server and start over again. You can't catch up to enemies that are pillaging if you don't pillage as well.

[edit] Resourcing Items

Advanced Quarrying Tools

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $1.20 USD if used by day 1, $0.60 USD if used by day 2, $0.30 USD if used by day 3, $0.06 USD if used after week 1
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Since you're only resource-strapped at the very beginning of the game, and the beginning is the only time when Stone sells for a lot, day 1 is the best time to buy this item. If you do, and you focus on Quarries, you can get 15k Stone per hour raw output by day 1, for a bonus of 4k Stone per hour, of which the sum total over a week can be sold for up to 600,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 600 additional Archers (if you're good).

Advanced Tax Policy

• Evony valuation: 280c ($28.00 USD)
• My valuation: $2.60 USD if used on day 4, $1.00 USD if used after week 1
• I'd recommend using this item starting day 4, when you get your Cottages up (according to the build described above), and have 16,000 citizens between your two cities at 50% tax rate for 8000 Gold an hour total. Over 7 days this nets you 1.4 million Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 1400 additional Archers (if you're good).

Arch Saw

• Evony valuation: 8c ($0.80 USD)
• My valuation: $0.40 USD if used by day 1, $0.20 USD if used by day 2, $0.15 USD if used by day 3, $0.02 USD if used after week 1
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Since you're only resource-strapped at the very beginning of the game, and the beginning is the only time when Lumber sells for a lot AND resources matter, day 1 is the best time to buy this item. If you do, and you focus on Sawmills, you can get 15k Lumber per hour raw output by day 1, for a bonus of 4k Lumber per hour, of which the sum total over a day can be sold for up to 200,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 200 additional Archers (if you're good).

Blast Furnace

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.80 USD if used by day 1, $0.40 USD if used by day 2, $0.18 USD if used by day 3, $0.04 USD if used after week 1
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Since you're only resource-strapped at the very beginning of the game, and the beginning is the only time when Iron sells for a lot AND you need resources, day 1 is the best time to buy this item. If you do, and you focus on Ironmine, you can get 15k Iron per hour raw output by day 1, for a bonus of 4k Iron per hour, of which the sum total over a week can be sold for up to 400,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 400 additional Archers (if you're good).

Blower

• Evony valuation: 8c ($0.80 USD)
• My valuation: $0.40 USD if used by day 1, $0.20 USD if used by day 2, $0.15 USD if used by day 3, $0.02 USD if used after week 1
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Since you're only resource-strapped at the very beginning of the game, and the beginning is the only time when Iron sells for a lot AND you need resources, day 1 is the best time to buy this item. If you do, and you focus on Ironmine, you can get 15k Iron per hour raw output by day 1, for a bonus of 4k Iron per hour, of which the sum total over a day can be sold for up to 200,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 200 additional Archers (if you're good).

Double Saw

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.80 USD if used by day 1, $0.40 USD if used by day 2, $0.18 USD if used by day 3, $0.04 USD if used after week 1
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Since you're only resource-strapped at the very beginning of the game, and the beginning is the only time when Lumber sells for a lot AND you need resources, day 1 is the best time to buy this item. If you do, and you focus on Sawmill, you can get 15k Lumber per hour raw output by day 1, for a bonus of 4k Lumber per hour, of which the sum total over a week can be sold for up to 400,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 400 additional Archers (if you're good).

Iron Rake

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.03 USD
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Food doesn't gain much value until long after you are resource-strapped, so you'll never need to use this, nor will you benefit much from it.

Plowshares

• Evony valuation: 8c ($0.80 USD)
• My valuation: $0.01 USD
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Food doesn't gain much value until long after you are resource-strapped, so you'll never need to use this, nor will you benefit much from it.

Quarrying Tools

• Evony valuation: 8c ($0.80 USD)
• My valuation: $0.60 USD if used by day 1, $0.30 USD if used by day 2, $0.10 USD if used by day 3, $0.02 USD if used after week 1
• The 25% bonus is based off the original, raw output, before considering technologies, mayors, and captured valleys. Hence, you'll often see a bonus of only 10-15%, which is not enough to make much of a difference. Since you're only resource-strapped at the very beginning of the game, and the beginning is the only time when Stone sells for a lot, day 1 is the best time to buy this item. If you do, and you focus on Quarries, you can get 15k Stone per hour raw output by day 1, for a bonus of 4k Stone per hour, of which the sum total over a day can be sold for up to 300,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 300 additional Archers (if you're good).

Tax Policy

• Evony valuation: 45c ($4.50 USD)
• My valuation: $0.40 USD if used on day 4, $0.15 USD if used after week 1
• I'd recommend using this item starting day 4, when you get your Cottages up (according to the build described above), and have 16,000 citizens between your two cities at 50% tax rate for 8000 Gold an hour total. Over one day this nets you 200,000 Gold (if you're good) to net you up to 200 additional Archers (if you're good).

[edit] Hero Items

Anabasis

• Evony valuation: 8c ($0.80 USD)
• My valuation: $0.01 USD if used on day 1, $0.00 USD if used after week 1
• Once you begin pillaging, you can gain many times the experience provided by this item in one battle. This item is only good used immediately to promote your best high-Politics hero from lv-1 to lv-3, preferably a hero already with 65+ Politics to boost it to 67. That adds about 2% of your raw outputs to your final output. But you'd have to be pretty lucky to have a lv-1 hero on day 1 with 65+ Politics, and gaining 1000 exp naturally takes only a few hours.

Chain Helm of Beowulf

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $0.10 USD
• Heroes have to specialize in one of three areas - Politics, Attack, or Intelligence. Heroes that don't excel in any of those three are heroes that you wouldn't use for anything, and that's exactly what this item is likely to give you. You're better off hiring heroes from a lv-1 Inn and tossing him into pillaging battles; you'll get to the same attribute level you want with the hero at a lower level, which means faster level gains later. Also, a lv-30 hero costs a lot: 600 Gold an hour, a big chunk of your city's entire tax output in the first few days. There's a lot of better things you can do with that kind of money.

Epitome of Military Science

• Evony valuation: 30c ($3.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.10 USD if used on day 1, $0.03 USD if used after week 1
• Once you begin pillaging, you can gain many times the experience provided by this item in one battle. This item is only good used immediately to promote your best high-Politics hero through the low levels, preferably a hero already with 65+ Politics to boost it to the 70's. That adds about ~5% of your raw outputs to your final output. But you'd have to be pretty lucky to have a lv-1 hero on day 1 with 65+ Politics.

Hero Hunting

• Evony valuation: 40c ($4.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• It's a bad idea to go beyond a lv-1 Inn because the levels of the heroes available go up, which means you're less likely to get a hero focused on one attribute, and it's harder to level it up. Cycling through heroes also becomes more expensive. Given that, this item will only cycle through one hero, which will cost 3000 Gold to cycle through manually (and you can always just wait a few hours).

Hero Package

• Evony valuation: 188c ($18.80 USD)
• My valuation: $0.15 USD
• It's a bad idea to go beyond a lv-1 Inn because the levels of the heroes available go up, which means you're less likely to get a hero focused on one attribute, and it's harder to level it up. Cycling through heroes also becomes more expensive. Given that, a Hero Hunting will only cycle through one hero, which will cost 3000 Gold to cycle through manually (and you can always just wait a few hours).
• For each Holy Water you use, you take away 3 attribute points at random from a hero, most likely from the attribute that's the highest (and so the one which you want to keep high). Then you put the 3 points into the attribute that's the highest. Higher level heroes require multiple Holy Water for the same effect. This then is equivalent to gaining a level, at least for the lower levels.

Holy Helm of Mars

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $0.60 USD
• Heroes have to specialize in one of three areas - Politics, Attack, or Intelligence. Heroes that don't excel in any of those three are heroes that you wouldn't use for anything. Unlike the lower-quality items of this category, this item gives you a hero with at least one good attribute, but a lv-50 hero with lv-90 as its highest attribute is a lot like a lv-1 hero with lv-46 as its highest attribute, and you can easily level-up the latter to catch up once you start pillaging on a large scale, and if you can't do that, well you probably also don't have the resource output to even pay off the salary costs of a lv-50 hero (1000 Gold an hour). You're better off hiring heroes from a lv-1 Inn and tossing him into pillaging battles; you'll get to the same attribute level you want with the hero at a lower level, which means faster level gains later.

Holy Water

• Evony valuation: 20c ($2.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.01 USD
• For each of these you use, you take away 3 attribute points at random from a hero, most likely from the attribute that's the highest (and so the one which you want to keep high). Then you put the 3 points into the attribute that's the highest. Higher level heroes require multiple Holy Water for the same effect. This then is equivalent to gaining a level, at least for the lower levels.

Leather Helm of Robin Hood

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $0.05 USD
• Heroes have to specialize in one of three areas - Politics, Attack, or Intelligence. Heroes that don't excel in any of those three are heroes that you wouldn't use for anything, and that's exactly what this item is likely to give you. You're better off hiring heroes from a lv-1 Inn and tossing him into pillaging battles; you'll get to the same attribute level you want with the hero at a lower level, which means faster level gains later. Also, a lv-15 hero costs a lot: 300 Gold an hour, a big chunk of your city's entire tax output in the first few days. There's a lot of better things you can do with that kind of money.

On War

• Evony valuation: 100c ($10.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.16 USD if used on day 1, $0.05 USD if used after week 1
• Once you begin pillaging, you can gain as much experience as provided by this item in one battle. This item is only good used immediately to promote your best high-Politics hero through the low levels, preferably a hero already with 65+ Politics to boost it to the 80's. That adds about ~15% of your raw outputs to your final output. But you'd have to be pretty lucky to have a lv-1 hero on day 1 with 65+ Politics.

Plate Helm of Lancelot

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $0.30 USD
• Heroes have to specialize in one of three areas - Politics, Attack, or Intelligence. Heroes that don't excel in any of those three are heroes that you wouldn't use for anything. Unlike the lower-quality items of this category, this item gives you a hero with at least one good attribute, but a lv-30 hero with lv-70 as its highest attribute is a lot like a lv-1 hero with lv-46 as its highest attribute, and you can easily level-up the latter to catch up once you start pillaging on a large scale, and if you can't do that, well you probably also don't have the resource output to even pay off the salary costs of a lv-30 hero (600 Gold an hour). You're better off hiring heroes from a lv-1 Inn and tossing him into pillaging battles; you'll get to the same attribute level you want with the hero at a lower level, which means faster level gains later.

[edit] Speedup Items

Archimedes Notes

• Evony valuation: 35c ($3.50 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• Most useful if you're going to put in a massive build order, say 10k Archer Towers on a single Walls, which would take 14 days, in which case this saves you 4 days. But you'd have to wait an awful long time to even get enough resources to put in a build order of that size, probably 4 days or longer, so in the end construction takes even longer. Meanwhile with fewer Archer Towers you're more vulnerable to attack, and since military units help each other in Evony, this means that your existing Archer Towers will be easily destroyed. I would never use this item.

Beginner's Guidelines

• Evony valuation: 5c ($0.50 USD)
• My valuation: $0.01 USD
• Sure, it feels good to speed up construction, but the only time this is useful is if you have a project finishing in 15 minutes, you need to go away for a long time (such as sleeping) starting before those 15 minutes are up, and you have all the requisite resources, space, and requirements needed to begin another build order, probably a big one that will last for 6-10 hours. If your build order's going to last that long, chances are the current project will take longer than another 15 minutes. Needing to use any of these items at all is an indicator of poor planning. You're never in such a rush to finish a build order that you'd need to use one of these.

Civil Code

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• The only time you'd use this is if you're starting a new city and getting at least 16 lv-2 cottages right away, which case this item helps you reach population max a little while early. But it won't even earn you 3000 Gold. It's barely possible to max out build queues so much that you run out of population, not if you have a good number of Cottages.

Intermediate Guidelines

• Evony valuation: 20c ($2.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.04 USD
• Sure, it feels good to speed up construction, but the only time this is useful is if you have a project finishing in 150 minutes, you need to go away for a long time (such as sleeping) starting before those 150 minutes are up, and you have all the requisite resources, space, and requirements needed to begin another build order, probably a big one that will last for 6-10 hours. However, even if you do speed up construction by 2 and a half hours, you'll find sometime in that day that you don't have enough resources to continue building stuff - not if you're actively building military units, at least.

Master Guidelines

• Evony valuation: 80c ($8.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.25 USD
• Useful for those late-game technologies that seem to take forever (longer than 30 hours). This won't be of any use to you early game.

Merchant Fleet

• Evony valuation: 5c ($0.50 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• What, you can't wait 30 minutes? Then that's an undeniable sign of poor planning. Also note that trades on the marketplace generally aren't that big, and sometimes your order gets broken up into smaller chunks. This item only advances one of those chunks.

Napoleon's Diary

• Evony valuation: 30c ($3.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.00 USD
• Most useful if you're going to put in a massive build order, say 10k Archers, which would take 20 days, in which case this saves you 6 days. But you'd have to wait an awful long time to even get enough resources to put in a build order of that size, probably 6 days or longer, so in the end construction takes even longer. Meanwhile with fewer Archers you're more vulnerable to attack and have fewer pillaging options, and since military units help each other in Evony, this means that your existing Archers will be easily destroyed. And you can always build one more Barracks which will far outstrip this item's benefits. I would never use this item. I did find a use for this when I accidently queued 1200 archers at one barrack, was going to take 48 hrs, I used this item and it took 14.4 hrs off, so saved me waiting an extra half a day to get my barrack back in action. It was a better alternative to canceling and losing resources.

Primary Guidelines

• Evony valuation: 10c ($1.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.02 USD
• Sure, it feels good to speed up construction, but the only time this is useful is if you have a project finishing in 60 minutes, you need to go away for a long time (such as sleeping) starting before those 60 minutes are up, and you have all the requisite resources, space, and requirements needed to begin another build order, probably a big one that will last for 6-10 hours. If your build order's going to last that long, chances are the current project will take longer than another 60 minutes. Needing to use any of these items at all is an indicator of poor planning. You're never in such a rush to finish a build order that you'd need to use one of these.

Senior Guidelines

• Evony valuation: 50c ($5.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.10 USD
• Useful for those mid to late-game technologies that are longer than 8 hours. This won't be of any use to you early game.

Ultimate Guidelines

• Evony valuation: 120c ($12.00 USD)
• My valuation: $0.15 USD
• Useful for those late-game technologies that seem to take forever (longer than 30 hours). If it's shorter than 100 hours, use Master Guidelines instead if possible. Because it's only useful on late-game, long-term technologies (well, almost), it's actually less valuable than Master Guidelines. This won't be of any use to you early game.

[edit] Scalable Items

Corselet

• Evony valuation: 10c ($1.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

Excalibur

• Evony valuation: 40c ($4.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

Ivory Horn

• Evony valuation: 60c ($6.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

Penicillin

• Evony valuation: 120c ($12.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

The Art of War

• Evony valuation: 40c ($4.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

The Wealth of Nations

• Evony valuation: 40c ($4.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

Ultra Corselet

• Evony valuation: 60c ($6.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

War Ensign

• Evony valuation: 30c ($3.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

War Horn

• Evony valuation: 10c ($1.00 USD)
• My valuation:
• Hard to say.

[edit] Battalion Items

Junior Battalion

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $0.15 USD
• On average, gives you 175 Workers and 175 Warriors. Since you'll need to use these at some point in the game, this item is worth about as much as 175 Workers and 175 Warriors. Both of these units are worth about one fifth of an archer, so this is equivalent to 80 Archers.

Senior Battalion

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $0.60 USD
• On average, gives you 225 Scouts, 300 Pikemen, 200 Swordsmen, and 150 Archers. The Pikemen and Swordsmen are a waste. However, this is otherwise the equivalent of 300 Archers.

Veteran Battalion

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $1.00 USD only if used after early-game
• On average, gives you 200 Cavalry, 150 Cataphracts, and 325 Transporters. All of which are useful mid to late-game. This is equivalent to ~1900 Archers. However, these units aren't as good as Archers are. Just don't use this until mid-game or you'll food-screw yourself.

Mechanics Battalion

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought
• My valuation: $3.00 USD only if used early-mid-game, $1.60 USD if used later
• On average, gives you 150 Ballistae, 150 Battering Rams, and 250 Catapults. This is equivalent to ~7200 Archers, making this one of the best items in the game. The most important of these three are the Ballistae. Use at the right time to start pillaging lv-5 NPC cities way ahead of everyone else, which can translate into long-term strategic victory. Just don't use this until mid-game or you'll food-screw yourself.

[edit] Medal Items

(Any particular medal)

• Evony valuation: Can't be bought directly
• My valuation: $1.00 USD if this completes your set
• Only useful if you can get another city upon completing your medal set with this item. Otherwise, the medals can be used to raise loyalty, but medals are far rarer and harder to obtain than the same amount of Gold, so unless you're high enough rank that you don't need a medal, you should always use Gold to reward heroes instead.

Junior Medal Box

• Evony valuation: 80c ($8.00 USD)
• My valuation: $1.00 USD if this completes your set
• Only useful if you can get another city upon completing your medal set with this item. Otherwise, the medals can be used to raise loyalty, but medals are far rarer and harder to obtain than the same amount of Gold, so unless you're high enough rank that you don't need a medal, you should always use Gold to reward heroes instead.

Medium Medal Box

• Evony valuation: 140c ($14.00 USD)
• My valuation: $1.00 USD if this completes your set
• Only useful if you can get another city upon completing your medal set with this item. Otherwise, the medals can be used to raise loyalty, but medals are far rarer and harder to obtain than the same amount of Gold, so unless you're high enough rank that you don't need a medal, you should always use Gold to reward heroes instead.

Senior Medal Box

• Evony valuation: 240c ($24.00 USD)
• My valuation: $1.00 USD if this completes your set
• Only useful if you can get another city upon completing your medal set with this item. Otherwise, the medals can be used to raise loyalty, but medals are far rarer and harder to obtain than the same amount of Gold, so unless you're high enough rank that you don't need a medal, you should always use Gold to reward heroes instead.