The bad: The app has a tendency to lag. To be at the top of the leader boards requires spending a lot of time and money. Plundering villages can be a mind-numbing grind. Some players can't handle the tension of being attacked or betrayed by other players.
The tally: 6 / 10
About the Game
As an aspiring conqueror, you start a game of Valor by taking control of a small, undeveloped city. Your first task is to construct a number of buildings for resource production and troop recruitment. A building usually takes only a few minutes to construct initially, but upgrading it to higher levels may eventually take several hours. Each building that you have adds to your point score, which is a loose measure of your power in this game. When you conquer other cities, their buildings contribute to your point score as well.
If you want your buildings to finish faster, you can spend gold to buy special items called speed ups, which can take away between fifteen minutes to eight hours of your construction time. Except for very rare circumstances, the only way you can acquire gold is by purchasing it online with real world money.
It won't be long before you'll be able to recruit troops for defense and offense. Troops allow you to raid other cities for more resources. The safest ones to attack are barbarian villages, which are computer-controlled cities that never retaliate. Attacking other players, however, is a risky affair because they may call upon their buddies to attack you in return. Early on, it is generally wise to raid only barbarian villages and weaker players who do not belong to a strong guild.
Joining a guild of players whose cities are near enough to support each other usually keeps you from being attacked during the early stages of the game. The fear of reprisal from other players often discourages one from attacking a member of a strong guild. In that sense, Valor is not unlike prison. Anyone who isn't part of a gang gets screwed over and over again.
The only way to conquer other cities is by producing a very expensive unit called the Scholar and attacking the city with it. Scholars are easily killed, so they are usually escorted by many other troops for protection. Once you conquer the city, you lose your scholar, which is integrated into the local populace. Each subsequent scholar that you recruit becomes more and more expensive to produce. By the time you have several cities whose resource production is maxed out, however, scholars won't be too difficult to come by.
Despite the minimal graphics, battles in Valor are among the most heart-pounding experiences a gamer may have in a non-life-threatening situation. Hardly any other entertainment medium can induce as much fear as the realization that you are being attacked in a war game. Like building construction, it may take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours for an invading force to reach your city depending on how far the attackers have to march. As long as you are online, you will see an icon that shows you are being attacked as well as how many separate attacks are incoming. Unless you spend real world money to spy on your attackers, you won't know how many troops are attacking you nor what the composition of the troops is. The uncertainty of the outcome as well as the agonizing wait for the attack to hit is what induces so much fear and excitement in this game.
Valor has features for communication among players. Each guild has forums for members to post in. Players may also send private messages to each other regardless of their guild affiliation. These communication channels allow players to coordinate attacks or to send troops to defend guild mates. Players can also use private messages to arrange their transfer to other guilds, negotiate alliances, threaten each other, or send misinformation. More serious players rely on other apps such as Palringo or Qurki to chat with each other in real time.
Because players of Valor operate in a persistent world, attacks may come at any time, even when you're offline. Some of the better players may try to determine what your time zone is so they can attack you in your sleep. One underhanded tactic is for a player to act like your friend and to later ask where you're from. If they've gained your trust, you will likely tell them the truth. When you're offline, you won't be able to call for help or dodge attacks.
When I was still playing Valor, I kept my iPhone with me at all times, even when I was asleep. I'd sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to keep my construction queue full and to make sure I wasn't being attacked. At one time, I even set my alarm so I could attack another player whom I knew would likely be asleep at that time.
Yes, I was hooked. I never played any other game during the two months that I was a Valor player. Eventually, I quit. It wasn't because of the tension that arose from the game, although I've heard that some players quit for that reason. Neither was it because of the betrayals that occurred, which I feel is par for the course in multiplayer war games. It was because I had allowed the game to take up too much of my precious time, and most of it was spent on unexciting activities. By the time I controlled four cities or so, raiding barbarian villages felt like a mind-numbing chore. Nevertheless, I had to keep at it to maintain enough resources for troop and building production.
The truth is that to be at the top of the leader boards, one would have to spend some real world money and a lot of time on this game. I never spent money on Valor, but I spent nearly all my free time on it. I wasn't among the top ranking players, but I was strong enough to keep the best ones from making any serious attempt to conquer my cities.
Room for Improvement
My biggest frustration with Valor is its terrible lag. It takes a while for the app to respond to button presses, which makes inputting data more painful than necessary. The world map takes a little too long to draw, although the latest version of Valor has reduced the lag in its map drawing considerably.Another complaint that I have with the game is that raiding barbarian villages is time consuming without being fun. It would have been great if this process were automated somehow. Alternatively, the game could do away with barbarian villages by having all cities controlled by players only.
Finally, I don't like the idea of allowing players to spend real world money to give themselves significant advantages over other players. I realize that PlayMesh, the company that made Valor, needs a revenue stream to keep itself running, but the company could have used other business models that still maintain a level playing field in the game.
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