Evony Guide To Ghosting Troops

Introduction to Ghosting in Evony

Ghosting is probably the most important defensive PvP tactic in Evony until you are keep level 33. The idea is to make sure all of your troops are out of the keep so that if or when someone attacks you, they lose enemies to your traps and archer tower. On the other hand, you lose nothing in terms of your troops.

In Evony The Kings Return, there is almost always a larger or more powerful player to attack you if you are unbubbled. Ghosting is an essential technique to make sure when you get hit, you don't lose anything at all (except the wall repair).

Scenarios to Use Ghosting in Evony

There are a few cases when you cannot be bubbled in Evony.

One is battlefield, specifically BoG (Battle of Gaugamela) or BoC (Battle of Constantinople), where you teleport into a battlefield with no bubble.

Another is Server versus Server (SvS), when you teleport to the other server, you only have a temporary 5min bubble. After that, you must rely on teleporting, ghosting and other defensive techniques to stay alive.

Basics of Ghosting in Evony

The basics of ghosting is just two simple steps, send out your troops and then recall marches when you need them or you need to move:

1. Send out all of your troops on 60 min rallies (longest) against an enemy or boss
2. When ready to use your troops or to teleport, recall quickly via the arrows next to your marches

There are a few caveats to ghosting, one is that you cannot teleport when your troops are ghosted, which means you're stuck in place. Hence, to teleport, you must quickly recall your troops and use an advanced or regular port to get around.

Another is that ghosting requires stamina against bosses, so you want to make sure you have some spare stacks of stamina in your inventory. It would be unpleasant to get hit while you are buying stamina with your troops in the keep.

Conversely, ghosting against enemies does not cost stamina, but it does reveal your enemy (and their alliance) your troop composition and when you are unghosted. It's safer to ghost against an inactive non-alliance player.

Finally, the faster you can ghost all your troops, the more effective it will be. More on this in the next section.

Ghosting Best Practices and Tips

Following steps above will get you an ghosted keep, but there are many tips, tricks and best practices to improve basic ghosting troops. Some of them are useful in reverse attack scenarios and others just get the job done faster.

Ghosting: Separate March Preset for Usable Troops

Create a separate march preset for troops you want to attack with. For bosses, this would be mounted troop preset with a mounted general you may want to kill on an enemy server or BoG. For enemies, this would be layers of troops with a good PvP ratio against your target.

Ghost this preset rally first so this rally is easier to recall and use. Ghost everything else afterwards.

Update: Since the game update that shows the general leading each march, this is not as important as previously. However, ghosting your most important march first still comes with the benefit of keeping that march safe first.

Ghosting: Bookmark your Target

Bookmark a target you want to ghost rally against. It will be faster to set rallies, instead of looking for a target. Your target can be a boss or an enemy.

Ghosting: Choose the Right Target

While ghost rallies against bosses cost stamina, ghost rallies against enemies do not. However, an active rally against a human player or alliance is very risky because the entire alliance will know how much power you have, and when you un-ghost. In addition, it will deactivate your shield if you have a shield on.

In general, it's much safer to ghost rally against bosses.

There are circumstances where ghosting against a non-active player on the enemy server is ok, but you never really know if its a trap.

Ghosting: Use up your Resources

In Battlefield, this is not an issue, but in general, if you are unbubbled, you should make sure you have no significant amounts of resources of any type in your keep. Enemy troops will plunder all opened resources you have, so it's safer to always keep a low inventory in keep. Send it out to the alliance warehouse or use them.

Ghosting: Turn off Subordinate City Links

Turn off fight for other subordinate cities or unlink your sub cities when you ghost. Otherwise when you get hit, your subordinate cities will suffer. Advanced players will turn subordinate cities on and off quickly to ghost, defend or attack. Remember to turn your subordinate cities back on before an attack, so that the enemy gets hit with potential debuffs from mayors of subordinate cities.

Ghosting: Turn off Alliance Notifications for Rallies

Turn off the notifications that gets sent to your alliance chat/battlefield chat for a ghost rally. Often people who don't pay attention to the rally duration will join a 60min rally against a Fafnir or Phoenix. It also helps to not spam alliance chat with ghost rally notifications during any critical battles. Furthermore, when rallying against large enemy players or buildings, you help ensure your alliance quickly joins the correct one.

Ghosting: Force Ported after 10 Attacks

If you are hit continuously while ghosting, you might be force teleported to a random location on the map, at which point, your troops return back to base. In fact, some players will use this tactic followed by an arrest warrant to find and zero you, which can only take a few seconds. This is a dangerous time and you either have to ghost again, or put on a bubble if you can.

Ghosting Offensive Tactics in Evony

There are cases where ghosting can be used as an offensive manuver rather than defensive.

Ghosting: Recall Troops to Defend

When an enemy player attacks your ghosted keep, there's a chance your ghosted troops may be able to defeat the oncoming attack. In this case, recall your troops, link your subcities and wait to get a defensive win.

Ghosting: Recall Troops to Trick

When an enemy scouts your city, you can make yourself look weaker by ghosting, essentially creating a trap. Ghosting one or more marches while being scouted and baiting a player to attack, then quickly un-ghosting before the attack hits is a great way to get a defensive win.

Ghosting: Recall Troops to Attack

Another scenario could be that a player attacks your ghosted keep, but your ghosted troops may be able to win against the attacking city. Right after they hit you, recall your troops and send them in for a quick attack.