Philosophy

As you look at the many generals in Evony for mayors, you are looking for what are called “debuff” generals. These are generals that reduce one or more attributes of the attacking general and/or attacking army. While you can “debuff” the enemy’s ability to attack, the enemy’s health (HP), or the enemy’s ability to defend against your counter-attack (defense), these last two amount to the same thing in practice. Both of them reduce the enemy’s ability to survive your counter-attack, while the first one reduces his/her ability to attack you.

So which strategy do you prefer? The best defense is a strong offense? You will want to go all out building ranged and particularly sieged troops. Or do you depend on your own PvP march to do the real damage and you just want to survive while that happens? If so focus on ground and mounted troops.

There are strong arguments each way, and both positions are presented better in other places. Alternately, take a hybrid approach and look for the few names that appear on both lists. These may not be the strongest mayors in one or both categories, but that they show in the list at all means they are still among the top choices available.

At this time, I do not recommend the use of peace time mayors for either free or light spenders. I explain why here.

In the Mayor Comparison Table, see how radically the lists change as you look at different levels of investment in your mayors.

I recommend Free Players set the investment level selectors to a low Covenant level, 2 or 3 Red Ascending Stars, and 3 Purple Specialties for the first 3 Specialties. Unless you know yourself to be able to invest highly, you should otherwise set the Specialty levels no higher than 3 Orange and 3 or 4 Red Stars.

As you look at this table, there are 12 columns not counting the name and index column. It is a bit overwhelming. In approaching this table, here are a few tips.

Reducing the Enemy’s Ability to Attack You

If you plan on ghosting most of the time, and the primary use of your mayors is for the occasion when you find yourself needing to attack a target on your own, this section is for you. Your goal is to reduce the enemy’s attack buff. You want to survive any counter attack the enemy makes when you attack, knowing your march will always be outnumbered by the defending troops.

• If you are setting up a Archer March, that is the bulk of your troops will be Archers, and your general pair specializing in leading ranged troops, then sort the table by Ground Attack Debuff. That is because the Ground Troops are the biggest threat you face. Then optionally sort, as a secondary sort, by any of the other attack debuffs.
• If you are setting up an Infantry March, that is the bulk of your troops will be Infantry, and your general pair specializes in leading ground troops, then sort the table by Mounted Attack Debuff. That is because the Mounted Troops are the biggest threat you face. Then optionally sort, as a secondary sort, by any of the other attack debuffs.
• If you are setting up a Cavalry March, that is the bulk of your troops will be Cavalry, and your general pair specializes in leading mounted troops, then sort the table by Ranged Attack Debuff. That is because the Ranged Troops are the biggest threat you face. Then optionally sort, as a secondary sort, by any of the other attack debuffs.

Reducing the Enemy’s Ability to Survive Your Attack

This is for people who want to make the enemy regret the decision to attack their keep. They plan on having enough of something to totally destroy any incoming march. To make this possible, they want to make each attack by their own troops count for as much as possible. Note that this is a difficult route to take, and that ghosting is strongly recommended instead.

However, at some point in your development, hopefully after you have wings, you will be too big to ghost, and may need to consider this. To decide what to do, you will need to understand your keep’s troop counts. You might have millions of each troop type, but one type will out number the other two types; you need to know which type this is.

• Sort the table by Siege HP Debuff. Siege HP Debuffs are the hardest to come by, and are eventually needed by everyone.
• Set up a secondary sort by
  • Range HP if Siege Machines and/or Ground make up the biggest part of your troops.
  • Ground HP if Cavalry makes up the biggest part of your troops.
  • Mounted HP if Archers make up the biggest part of your troops.

Your goal is to take what you will attack, and make it die faster by reducing its’ health. You hope to kill it before it can hurt you (significantly). Then one troop type has nothing it likes to target, and will target other troop types, things it normally ignores, reducing the burden on your other troops.

If you take this approach, you are not bringing your mayors with you when you attack, because you are saving your subcity troops for your own defense. You do this because you are now big enough that you are generally joining your team’s rallies and thus cannot bring them anyway. You need that troop depth to be able to absorb wounded from the rallies and keep on rallying.

Trying to find balance

Some authors advocate an approach where you look at the overall amount that each general reduces the enemy’s stats, regardless of what specific attribute is being debuffed. There are trade offs with this hybrid approach, as while it is great that you are both reducing attack and reducing toughness, the resulting generals are not the strongest in either category. My instinct is that a free or light spender is probably better off specializing with generals from either the attack debuff set or the toughness debuff set, rather than attempting to do both with one of these lists.