Guide to get rose and cross medals in server 32 (and other late servers)
//DISCLAIMER//
I created this account specifically for the purpose of putting up this guide. Getting medals has been a vexacious issue for players on my server, and judging by the amount of posts on these forums on the issue, it's not constrained only to my server.
Evony staff have not helped the problem, no doubt realising that frustration leads to players using their credit card to resolve the issue, that is their right and I don't begrudge them their money. Perhaps less forgiveable is the information that has appeared to be blatantly wrong (High intelligence heros help drop rates) or purpously obscufated.
In any situation where people are trying to achieve an outcome, but results seem nebulous and vague, with very low hit rates, there will spring up numerous theories about how the outcome is best achieved. No-one argues about how best to replace a car's engine (either it works or it doesn't), but there is considerable debate over how to tell the future (low hit rate, nebulous and vague results). The ensuing problem is a proliferation of plainly ridiculous solutions, personal techniques that never seem to be backed up by evidence and misinformation.
In this spirit I must say, this method works for ME, on SERVER 32. I don't doubt it will work for YOU on SERVER 32, and I am reasonably sure it will work for YOU on a LATER SERVER. The one caveat I will say is that, it won't get you medals instantly, it will still take a couple of days to get 10 medals, but I promise you that you WILL get them, and I can remove some of the ambiguity associated with getting medals. No player knows exactly how the medal mechanic works, any player saying they do is mistaken or blatantly lying, for this reason I will be saying "I don't know why this works/how this works" alot. Don't misinterpret this as ignorance, it is intellectual honesty.
//My Method to Obtain ROSE and CROSS Medals//
Step 1 - Essentially getting medals seems to be a numbers game, the more attacks the better. So you will want a high level feasting hall and rally spot, in more than one city. This is not essential it just speeds things up.
Step 2 - Fill up your feasting halls, it really doesn't matter how good or bad the heros you get are, high int heros seem to find medals as much as low int heros.
Step 3 - Train 000s of warriors, I have 30k in each city for various reasons, less than this will do, but I would not go below 8k personally, 8k is the maximum amount you will ever send out.
Step 4 - Look around your city and find level 2 - 4 valleys, THE TYPE DOES NOT MATTER, FLATS COUNT TOO. Attack a level 2 valley with 200 warriors, level 3 with 600 level 4 with 1000. If you conquer the valley, then recall your troops, filling up your valley slots is going to be good for you, it helps your production and makes grinding for medals more convenient (I hate abandoning or recalling repeatedly). You will take some minimal losses, you can revive from the medic camp if you want, but they are easily replaceable. For some reason taking losses seems to boost the medal drop rate.
Step 5 - DO NOT RE-ATTACK A VALLEY UNTIL THE TROOPS HAVE REGENERATED. This takes about an hour, you should have no problem finding level 2 - 4 valleys around your cities, flats are usually not taken as they give no production bonuses.
//RESULTS//
I don't have the screenshots, so I must throw myself on the mercy of the reader to trust me when I say that yesterday I obtained 3 rose and 1 cross from this method. It took me three days with this method to obtain 6 Rose and 4 Cross medals prior to that. Getting medals is now not a problem for me, whereas prior to this method I was tearing my hair out.
Comparing to other methods, I have used them all including conquering and abandoning a valley, scout attacking, repeatedly attacking a single defeated valley and attacking certain types of valleys, my method is the only way I have been consistently getting medals. Well meaning attempts to analyse statistically the effects of "valleys", "intelligence" or any other variable are doomed to failure. Any person who knows statistics will tell you that to find minor effects of around 1-3 percent requires a HUGE sample size, we are talking thousands to achieve statistically significant differences with a decent alpha level.
//PRE-EMPTING RESPONSES//
1. But method "A" works better than this one !
If it works for you then GOOD, I can't argue with results, if you can get better results than 4 - 5 medals a day over a couple of days, then post that method to the thread and we will discuss it.
2. Internet site "A" says that their method works !
Most guides are written for earlier servers, are from dubious sources or flat out say that it is just a percentage drop rate. One of my alliance members was trying to use a guide that said there was a 12% drop rate, CLEARLY there isn't a 12% drop rate on my server, if they got this wrong how can you trust anything else they say?
3. It's too simple to work
Super hard or complicated methods will just tire you out, perhaps abandoning and conquering the same valley works, (though it didn't for me), but this method requires SO much work it really sucks all the fun out of the game. My method doesn't require constant supervision, alot easier to maintain for days on end.
4. Why so much talking, just give the method and don't qualify everything you say.
I really want you guys to understand that this method works, I don't want to throw it up and have everyone say "Just another guide based on nothing". This method works for Rose and Cross medals, I PROMISE you that. I want you to have medals, and there are so many guides out there, and so much misinformation that I thought this might get lost in the trash. The amount of effort I put into this is indicative of how confident I am that it works.
