Evony: The King’s Return Level Guide: How to Level Up Generals Fast

Generals decide almost every fight in Evony: The King’s Return. Their level drives stats, star ranks, specialties, and the buffs your troops depend on. This Evony: The King’s Return level guide covers every unlock, EXP cost, and farming route. You will also see why your monarch level caps everything, and how to grind subordinate cities safely.

Why General Levels Matter More Than Power Score?

Every level a general gains adds points to Leadership, Attack, Defense, and Politics. The size of that jump is the stat growth rate, shown next to the green arrow on the general’s page.

Those four stats feed directly into gameplay:

• Leadership raises troop HP, march speed, and subordinate city training speed.
• Attack raises troop attack.
• Defense raises troop defense.
• Politics improves gathering speed, gold output, and your death-to-wounded rate.

Level also gates progression. Stars, assistant slots, and specialties all sit behind level requirements. A low-level general stays locked out of most of their kit.

The Monarch Level Ceiling

Here is the rule that trips up new players. A general cannot be raised above your current monarch level. Farm all the general EXP you want; the bar simply stops.

So general progression is really two projects running at once. You raise monarch level to lift the ceiling, then you farm general EXP to fill the space underneath it.

Fastest Monarch EXP Sources

Offerings at the Shrine are the backbone of monarch EXP. The payout scales with Shrine level, and the Offering monarch talent adds up to 20% more.

Gem cost per offering climbs through the day, resetting daily. Six offerings run about 675 gems total, which is the usual sweet spot. Tributes let you offer for free, so hoard them from relics, the alliance shop, and the black market.

Other reliable sources stack on top:

• Hydras always drop a chest containing monarch EXP, scaling from roughly 5,000 to 17,000 by level.
• Normal monsters at level 31 and above give about 2,600 EXP each. Anything below level 30 is barely worth the march.
• Resource tiles at level 13 and above pay 10,000 EXP, rising to 20,000 at level 16.

What Each General Level Unlocks?

Star enhancement uses gold and medals, and each star raises stat growth. The level gates are fixed.

Level 22 and level 25 are the two milestones worth planning around. Level 22 completes standard enhancement and opens the door to ascension. Level 25 unlocks specialties, which carry some of the largest buffs a general can hold.

General EXP Requirements at a Glance

EXP costs stay gentle early, then climb hard past level 25. These are cumulative totals from level 1.

Look at the jump between 22 and 25. You need nearly four times the EXP for three levels. That is where casual leveling stops working and farming routes start mattering.

Fastest Ways to Earn General EXP

Attacking NPC Subordinate Cities

This is the most reliable EXP engine in the game. NPC subordinate cities can be hit repeatedly, provided your own subordinate city slots are already full.

If your slots are open, the city gets occupied instead of farmed. So fill every slot first, then park next to a target.

The scaling here is brutal in your favour. Three hits on a gold city carry a general from level 1 to 22. Seven hits reach level 25 and unlock specialties.

Historic cities push it further. Community testing puts level 1 to 30 at roughly 18 hits, and level 1 to 35 at roughly 61 hits.

Note: EXP varies slightly by civilization, so your numbers may drift a little.

PvP Against Player Cities

PvP pays out based on power you actually destroy, not power you face. Hitting an empty city earns nothing.

As a rough guide, the main general takes about a quarter to half of the power reduced. One clean hit on a well-stocked keep can return over 1.9M EXP.

The catch is risk. You lose troops, you can be countered, and you drop your bubble. Subordinate cities are safer for pure grinding.

Monster Hunting (Skip It for EXP)

Monsters are fine for drops and prestige, but terrible for general EXP. A level 12 Kamaitachi returns around 4,500 EXP after a huge troop investment.

A single green subordinate city hit beats that ten times over. Hunt monsters for loot, and level generals elsewhere.

Farming Subordinate Cities Without Losing Troops

Losses on subordinate cities are deaths, not wounds. Those troops do not come back from the hospital, so composition matters enormously.

Two rules control everything here.

Rule one: send siege machines only. Testing across mounted, ranged, and mixed compositions found siege-only was the sole setup producing zero deaths.

Rule two: layer multiple tiers. Combat is turn-based, and each attack targets one troop type and tier. A single-tier march wastes turns and takes heavy return fire.

The numbers speak for themselves. Around 140,000 T11 siege machines alone lost close to 4,000 units on a purple city. Ten thousand each of T1 through T11 lost nothing.

Sample Layering by City Tier

These are community-tested starting points, not guarantees. Your research levels, monarch gear, and general buffs all shift the requirement.

Set your monarch gear to siege attack, defense, and HP before farming. Weak buffs are the usual cause of unexplained losses.

If you are still taking deaths, drop to a lower city tier. Grinding green cities safely beats feeding gold cities your workshop output.

Double Your EXP Output With Assistant Generals

This is the biggest efficiency gain available, and plenty of players miss it.

Once a main general reaches level 20 with 3 stars, they can carry an assistant general. Both generals earn EXP from the same march.

The setup takes a few minutes:

1. Build several siege march presets with layered troops.
2. Give each preset a different level 20+, 3-star main general.
3. Attach a low-level general as the assistant on each preset.
4. Cycle the presets as fast as marches return.

Run four presets and you level eight generals in the time one used to take. Community reports put both generals at roughly 450K EXP each per purple city hit.

One important thing to note: you can no longer bring subordinate city mayors along when attacking NPC subordinate cities. Assistant generals replaced that trick entirely.

What to Spend Resources On After Leveling Generals?

Levels alone will not carry a general. Three systems build on top of them.

• Cultivate adds up to +500 per stat. Gold works to +300, then gems take over.
• Ascending pushes eligible generals from 5 stars to 10, using Blood of Ares and fragments.
• Specialties unlock at level 25 and upgrade through Veteran, Master, Expert, Grandmaster, and Genius.

Spread these across too many generals, and you finish none of them. Pick two or three keepers and commit.

Common Leveling Mistakes to Avoid in Evony: The King’s Return

• Farming with open subordinate city slots – You will capture the city instead of farming it.
• Sending one siege tier – Layering is the difference between zero losses and a wiped march.
• Ignoring monarch level – Your general bar stops dead at the ceiling, whatever you farm.
• Leveling generals you will dismiss later – Focus resources on historic generals you intend to keep.
• Adding skill books to duty generals – Duty roles gain nothing from books or equipment.

Conclusion

General progression in Evony rewards planning far more than grinding. Lift your monarch level first, because that ceiling controls everything else.

From there, the path is clear. Fill your subordinate city slots, build layered siege presets, and farm the highest NPC city you can clear cleanly. Attach assistant generals so every march levels two generals instead of one.

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