Revolt

In Grepolis there are two processes by which you can obtain a new city, Colonising and conquering. Of these, conquering is considered the most effective; however it is also slightly more complex. There are two methods of doing it, Conquest and Revolt: Some worlds use conquest and others use revolt, which method is used depends upon the Settings of the world that you play. On this page you can find information about the Revolt method.

• Note that as will all other methods of taking new cities, the Colony Ship can only be used once. Once you have taken your new city, the Colony Ship will disappear.
• Additionally, note that Ghost Towns can be taken much earlier in Revolt worlds, as they do not require any additional research beyond Colony Ship - unlike Conquest worlds.

General Overview

Revolt was first implemented on May 5th 2010 in World Zeta and involves the player stirring up a revolt in the city they want before sending a colony ship and conquering it.

Prerequisites

In order to conquer a city using this method you need to have the following things:

• Conquest researched
• A Colony ship and all it entails
• At least one land unit
• At least one transport boat(regular or fast)
• At least one Bireme, Trireme, or Light Ship
• Sufficient culture points to have another city

Although this is the minimum perquisites required it is strongly recommended that you have a substantial land and naval army in order to defeat any defensive forces in the city you are attempted to take.

Choosing a City

Requirements

• City Points: The points of a city indicates how developed it is; a 175 point city will have only the basic building structures while in the largest 17,786 city all the buildings will be built to their full extent. Therefore it is important when choosing a target to aim for a city which is the right size; if you conquer one which is less than 2000 points then it will likely stunt your growth.
• Opposing Player’s Points: Don’t bite off more than you can chew, if you target a player’s city who is much larger than you he will likely have enough defence to destroy your attacking forces. Ghost towns are good targets as they can’t offer resistance.
• Opposing Player’s Alliance: If your opposing player’s alliance is strong and well-organised then it would be dangerous to take them on without a powerful alliance behind yourself.
• Location: Think about the location of your second city with care; conquering a city on the same island as your first or upon an island with no farms will limit your growth. Also consider how you can send support between cities, a 48 hour trip by colony ship would not help you if you came under attack.
• Alliance Claims: If you are in an alliance then make sure the city has not been reserved by an alliance mates.

Basically, you want a city that will not cause too great of consequences, but is large enough for it to have been worth it to conquer. Remember, there is no way to abandon a city, so once you have a city, you are stuck with it until it is conquered by someone else.

Examples

Here are three examples of a city to conquer and the best option will be pointed out below.

Example cities

Some examples:

• You are just starting out, you are a 3k player with no alliance
  • City belongs to a 20k player who is in a decent alliance.
  • Probably best not to go for it. Even if they are terrible at playing, their army will simply outnumber your's and you will find it very hard to do. Given your size, it is probably best to A) Join an alliance ASAP- not that the best alliances are not always the biggest! and B) conquer the city of a similarly sized player or ideally a Ghost Town.
• You are a 3k player with a very good alliance.
  • City belongs to a 30k player who is in a bad alliance.
  • Go for it! They may be much larger then you, but they are on their own. Wait, try to figure out when they are offline and strike then. Get your alliance mates to clear his city for you, tell them the time that your CS is due to land (to the second) and get them to support you afterwards.

A note from Tom: What I am trying to illustrate with the above examples is that it doesn't really matter about your size. What really matters is your alliance. I am also assuming that you are a complete novice... If you have been playing grepolis for a while and know what you are doing then the size of your opponent shouldn't really matter. Just join a good alliance, build up and plan carefully. Knowing your target's offline times is invaluable. I joined Pella 6 months after it started. However I joined a great alliance, small but active, and now I am moving up the ranks with 4 cities. All it takes is some co-ordination. It also helps if morale is active as it means that the bigger players can't attack back without getting destroyed.

Preparations to conquer

There are a number of preparations which you will need to take before the actual process of conquest begins.

Reserving a city

Remember to use the new Reservation Tool to ensure that you don't step on anyone's toes!

Clearing a city

Before conquering a city, you will need to clear it, or kill all of the troops occupying the city. In order to do this, you should go about this process:

1. spy on the city to find out how much resistance you will meet
2. attack the city with appropriate forces to destroy all of the troops in the city

After this, you just need to make sure that the city stays cleared of troops.

Building a Colony Ship

You must build a colony ship to conquer a city, this might take some time because you need to collect up 10000 of each resource and then wait around 12 hours to build it, so make sure you have built it before continuing onwards.

The conquering process

Now for the most important information on this page, how the actual process works. It is slightly more complicated than conquest; send a specially designated revolt attack to the city you want to conquer (you must select 'revolt attack' when sending the attack) and if it is successful the seeds of a revolution will be sown. A 12 hour period begins in which your agents go among the city under revolt spreading lies and rumours so that dissatisfaction with the current ruler builds. Once this period is up then the population will rise into a full revolution and if you manage to land a colony ship during this new 12 hour period then the city will be captured. Summary:

1. Send an attack which is specified as a revolt attack.
2. 12 hours after the revolt attack lands, a 12 hour period starts in which your Colony Ship can land.
3. sometime 12 to 24 hours from when the revolt attack lands, your colony ship lands
4. the instant the colony ship successfully lands, the city is yours.

Now, for more details

Timing attacks

You want to keep your attacks as close together and decisive as possible.

The Revolt attack

When sending the revolt attack itself, you should actually send 3-4 waves of nukes (many, many troops designed to completely overwhelm a city's defenses) and all of the attacks should be designated as revolt attacks, so that even if only one gets through, the revolt is still started.

Keeping the city cleared

Because the defender has control over his or her city even while the revolt is occurring, you will need to send periodical clearing waves to keep the city free of defending troops

The Colony Ship

You want to land your CS as soon after your last clearing attack as is possible. It is also good to try and land it as soon as the second 12 hours* starts as it gives the defender less time to get support from allies.

Because of the slow speed of the Colony Ship, you might need to start sending it even before the revolt attacks sometimes, so remember to keep track of this, otherwise you might not actually get the city.

In addition, you will want to make sure that there was no last minute support for the defender, so you should time a clearing wave to arrive a few minutes before the colony ship in order to make sure that your colony ship does not get killed.

And just remember, as soon as your Colony ship is ten minutes out of the harbor, you have reached your point of no return and you must continue with the conquest, or else you will loose a quite valuable colony ship for nothing

Note: Depending on the world configuration, the revolt time may differ. Check the world settings on the game forum for exact details.

After you have conquered

Once you have conquered, there will be a multitude of things to do to settle in

Researches

Sometimes the city you conquered will have researched some things that you consider worthless. In order to fix this however, you must use up a culture point so be very careful about resetting researches. Note that demolishing the academy of your new city will NOT reset researches.

God

If the conquered city has a temple and it was worshiping a god, then it will keep this god. You should try to use a different god in the new city then you are using elsewhere, you do this in order to make sure you have as many god powers available as possible

Neighbors

Try to get to know your neighbors and your island of your new city, it may be useful in the future

For the defender

Note: If you have any buildings, units or researches queued and a colony ship lands in your city, all of these things will be cancelled.

As a defender in the conquer process, you have a couple of options.

Detecting the conquer attack

• You will know that a conquest attempt is on the way as the attacker will have started a revolt in your city.
  • However, the attacker could try to land their Colony Ship at any point during the second 12 hour window so you still need to look out for the CS.
• Look out for an abnormally long travel time on an incoming attack.
• Note that the final attack is not always the CS, some people send attacks afterwards in order to confuse you.

Preparing for the attack

Remember that you do still have control of your city.

• Ask a friend to send you support to arrive just before the C-Ship lands (if you don't know when the CS is landing, ask for it to land just before the first 12 hour window ends).
• Send out your defending troops to attack a 175 point city far enough away that your defensive troops will arrive right before the C-Ship, but do not send defensive troops to any city that might have troops of its own
• If you have any Fire Ships, then keep them at your city to destroy the clearing attacks. They will not be able to harm C-Ships or transport boats, so if you send them out with your defensive or offensive troops, then they will end up assisting the conqueror

Additional tactics

Sometimes, people will designate every single attack they send as a revolt attack simply to scare people and just in case they find that they can get a new city. So if someone starts a revolt on you, do not panic completely, prepare for the revolt attack, but if it does not come, then do not be surprised.