There is a specific, quiet delirium that takes hold at three in the morning when the rest of the world has surrendered to sleep. For us, it is the glow of a tablet screen and the shimmering fog of a digital war zone. While others find solace in the mindless rhythm of a scrolling feed, we find ours in the cold, hard logic of the pincer movement. We don’t just play strategy games; we inhabit them.
For Terrence, it began in 2014—not with a bang, but with a spreadsheet. "I remember the first time a sophisticated alliance maneuver actually worked," he recalls, leaning back with the weary grin of a veteran coder. "It wasn’t just about the victory; it was the realization that a collection of strangers from four different time zones could synchronize a strike within a three-second window. It was poetry written in latency and steel." To Terrence, a UC San Diego software engineer by trade, a game like Evony is a living codebase. Every general is a variable; every troop formation is a function. His love for the genre is rooted in the "Deep State" of gaming—where the UI ends and the true mathematics of power begins.
Sybella’s entry point was more architectural. Coming from a Drexel University background in game design, she views every strategy map as a conversation between the creator and the player. "I’ve spent five years as a journalist deconstructing why we play," she explains. "Strategy games are unique because they demand an emotional investment in your own intellect. When you lose an RPG, you blame the boss’s stats. When you lose a strategy match, you have to look in the mirror and admit you were outthought. There’s a brutal honesty in that which I find intoxicating."
We are, in many ways, an unlikely duo. One looks for the "patch" in the plan; the other looks for the soul in the system. Yet, we are united by a singular obsession: the shared victory.
There is a profound, almost primal joy in the "teaching moment." We have spent years in the trenches of high-level alliances, watching brilliant players falter simply because they lacked a specific piece of the puzzle—a nuance in hero synergy or a misunderstood event mechanic. This is why we write. We aren't interested in gatekeeping the "meta." Instead, we want to peel back the curtain.
Our mission is to translate the complex into the communal. We love the "Aha!" moment when a struggling player realizes that a New General isn't just a trophy, but a key to a door they’ve been banging on for months. We share our experiences—the catastrophic failures as much as the glorious conquests—because in a strategy game, information is the only currency that matters.
The joy of Evony, or any deep strategy title, shouldn't be reserved for the top 1% of spenders or the most reclusive theorists. It belongs to anyone willing to sit down and ask, "What if I move my knight here?"
We love these games because they are a rare space where patience is rewarded over reflexes, and where a well-placed plan can topple an empire. We share our vantage point so that you can find your own. After all, the throne is far less interesting if you’re sitting on it alone. We’d much rather see you in the field, standing beside us, with a plan that actually works.