Evony 1,000 Troop Layer PvP Guide: Setup and Presets

To protect your high-tier strike force in Evony player-versus-player (PvP) combat, add 1,000 troops of every tier and troop type outside your main damage dealers to your attack march. This setup forces enemy units to waste entire combat turns eliminating sacrificial stacks, preventing incoming damage from focusing directly on your most valuable troops.

Why 1,000 Troop Layers Work in PvP

Single-tier marches that succeed against PvE world bosses fail in PvP. Evony resolves combat between players through turn-based unit rounds where each tier and troop class functions as an independent stack. Defending garrisons prioritize targets based on set engagement rules. If your march contains only top-tier units, every enemy stack targets those units immediately.

Troop layering counters focused targeting through two core combat rules:

No Overkill Spillover: When an enemy stack attacks a unit group, all damage from that turn is dealt to that group alone. Massive excess damage does not carry over to your other units.
Turn Absorption: A sacrificial stack of 1,000 low-tier troops forces an opposing high-tier stack to expend its entire attack round eliminating that buffer, buying your main damage dealers time to attack without taking return fire.

Why 1,000 Troops Is the Standard Threshold

100-troop layers fail early: Micro-layers of 100 units often die immediately to subordinate city debuff attacks, wall traps, or low-tier return fire before the main round resolves. Once a layer is wiped out mid-turn, enemy units retarget the next available stack.
5,000+ troop layers reduce damage: Allocating several thousand troops to every tier consumes too much march capacity, depriving your primary damage dealers of the volume needed to break through defenses.
1,000 troops provide stability: A 1,000-unit stack survives incidental battlefield chip damage, guarantees that enemy units waste a full attack turn, and chips away at opposing defense layers.

Anatomy of a Balanced Attack Preset

In a layered preset, 1,000 units occupy each non-primary tier across all four troop types: Ground, Ranged, Mounted, and Siege. Your remaining march capacity is reserved entirely for your highest-tier strike units.

Across roughly 40 non-primary tiers, a 1,000-troop layer uses 40,000 to 50,000 march slots. In an endgame march of 1,000,000 or more, this leaves over 90% of your march capacity for your primary damage dealers.

The following table demonstrates layer distribution for a standard Ranged attack march from Keep 33 to Keep 35:

Unit Class	Layer Allocation per Tier	Primary Strike Allocation	Tactical Function
Ground (T1–T13)	1,000 per tier	None	Frontline buffer absorbing early physical attacks
Mounted (T1–T13)	1,000 per tier	None	Midfield screen delaying enemy ground and ranged targeting
Siege (T1–T13)	1,000 per tier	Optional	Long-range bait absorbing opposing defensive siege volleys
Ranged (T1–T11)	1,000 per tier	Max capacity (T12–T14)	Preserves top archers to deal unmitigated burst damage

How to Set Up Attack Presets in the Rally Spot

Configuring presets in advance eliminates manual slider errors during high-speed events like Server vs. Server (SvS) or the Battle of Gaugamela (BOG).

Open your Rally Spot, select the March Preset menu, and pick an empty preset slot.
Assign your primary offensive General, compatible Assistant General, and designated offensive Dragon or Spiritual Beast.
Scroll through the troop list and input 1,000 for every tier of Ground, Mounted, and Siege from T1 upward.
Input 1,000 for secondary Ranged tiers (T1 through T11).
Maximize your highest archer tiers (such as T13 and T14) to fill the rest of your march capacity.
Select Save Preset to store the configuration.
Test the preset against an NPC subordinate city or barbarian camp to verify that troop counts, general pairings, and beast bindings remain saved.

Costs and Adjustments

Hospital Healing Distribution: Layered marches take wounded across every tier and troop type. Recovering these units requires a balanced expenditure of Food, Lumber, Stone, and Iron, as well as general training speedups. Monitor your resource reserves before committing layered marches to back-to-back attacks.
March Size Limits Below Keep 30: If your maximum march size is under 700,000, a full 40,000-troop layer takes too high a percentage of your total capacity. Reduce layers to 500 or 750 troops per tier to preserve strike volume.
High-Tier T1 Wall Keeps: Massive defense keeps holding hundreds of millions of low-tier cavalry or infantry cannot be cleared by solo layered attacks alone. These targets require coordinated alliance rallies or specialized siege bomb marches to break the outer layers before standard attack presets can trade efficiently.