Conquest

Whilst you start the game with a single town, eventually you will wish to expand your empire by increasing the number of towns you own. You have two methods available to do this; either you build your new town from scratch (colonising), or you take that of others (takeover). In this section of the Wiki you can read about the latter.

There are two methods of doing a city takeover: Conquest and Revolt. Some worlds use conquest and others use revolt; the method is used depends upon the Settings of the world that you play. This page is intended to provide a quick introduction to taking over towns in general.

Prerequisites

Before you can take over someone else's town, there are some basic requirements which must be met first. They are: Buildings, Units, and Culture.

Buildings

Building	Minimum Level	Purpose
Academy	Level 28	Required to research Colony Ship (Academy level 13), and Conquest Academy level 28)
Harbor	Level 10	Required to build Colony Ships

Units

To take over a city you require a Colony Ship (also referred to as a CS). This unit is built in the Harbour, and becomes available once it has been researched.

Unit	Name	Cost
	Colony Ship	10,000 10,000 10,000 170

You will also need sufficient amount of troops escorting your CS to secure your victory both by land and sea.

Culture

The final requirement is that you must have sufficient culture points or CP to take on a new city. When you begin the game you have room for two cities; one of the slots is filled by your first city. So a second town will not require additional CPs, but any further cities will.

Take over methods

Conquest by siege

This type of conquest applies to siege worlds as well as ghost towns on Hyperborea worlds (where it is not possible to conquer active players). On revolt worlds you "conquer through revolt" (see next chapter).

You can divide the take over into two parts. In the first section you attack the target town and ensure your CS lands safely. In the second part, during the siege you occupy the town and prevent the previous owner from reclaiming it.

Attack

Picking a target

In this phase you need to pick a target and guide your CS safely to it. The maximum travel time of a CS is 48 hours, so the target must be within this distance. Some Island Quests contain rewards that increase the distance units can travel by allowing them to travel faster for a certain period of time. This will allow the time of the CS journey to be extended depending on the unit speed of the world and the length of time the effect is active for.

Sending the attack

Click on the target town to bring up the military tab as you would with a normal attack. You must include:

• CS (this will change the normal attack automatically to a takeover attack)
• Land units (land victory is compulsory)
• Naval units (naval victory is compulsory)

The most important unit in your attack force is the colony ship. It should not get destroyed under any circumstances, otherwise the conquest will be aborted and the surviving troops will retreat. Hence it might be good tactics to send in one or more waves of attacks to eliminate the opponent’s defences, before the actual conquest is carried out.

Sending along defensive units, or rearguard armies

In the final attack for conquest it is also very important to send along defensive units. These include Biremes and Trireme to fend off naval units, and enough units with strong defensive values to hold off the enemy’s land units. Of course you can also support the conquest from other cities. What is important here is that any rearguard armies are sent in the "support" mode, so when they arrive they can help the troops that are already involved in heavy fighting with the capture of the city.

A town can only be supported by divine units if the god of the town is the same as the god of the divine units. This is true for towns under siege too. So if you want units from different gods supporting the town, you must send them alongside the CS. If not, you must match the god of the town under siege.

Siege

Once you land your CS safely despite having smashed the core of the city’s military defence by destroying all land and naval units there, the inhabitants are not particularly well-disposed towards a new ruler. Your conquering army needs a certain time to convince the citizens that you are the better ruler and to defect to your side.

The duration of the siege differs from world to world. On most worlds it depends on the speed factor, but it can also be set independently. By researching democracy the siege duration can be extended by 10%.

During the siege period the defender has no control over the city. But your troops can get attacked nevertheless, just as they can also be supported. You can see incoming attacks and supports if you go to the city from which the colony ship was sent, and click on the icon displaying the conquest under "Troop movements“.

Important: During siege attacks will work toward lifting the siege, and supports will work toward success of siege. So in attack phase attacks help you, in siege phase supports help you.

Success of Siege

If the conquering troops survive the siege period without being crushed, the city changes hands. All buildings and technologies that have been researched remain undamaged, unless you have specifically attacked them with a divine power or with catapults. Your CS cannot be used again, it disappears. Troops escorting the CS remain in your new town as support units until you withdraw them.

Failure of Siege

A colony ship is destroyed if someone attacking the besieged town wins the land or the sea fight, meaning he has defeated either all land units or all naval units and he has not lost all his troops himself in the process. In this case the siege is lifted; your CS has been sunk.

Ghost Towns

If you send attacking troops to a target town before CS lands and these attack troops arrive after CS lands they behave differently in towns with owners and those towns which are deserted. If a town has an owner, these troops have coffee and return home without lifting the siege. If the town is deserted and is a ghost town, they attack your siege troops and have a chance of lifting the siege.

Conquest by Revolt

This type of conquest applies to Revolt worlds. On all other worlds you "Conquer by Siege" (see chapter above).

In this system there are two parts to takeover: first you must convince people that their current ruler is not suitable to rule (attack to initiate revolt), then you must land your own CS to show you are the suitable ruler (during Red Revolt, land CS).

Attack

Once the prerequisites are met, you need to send an attack in revolt mode (by picking the proper icon in attack overview) and then eliminate at least all land units in the targeted city. The residents there start to ask themselves if they are in fact governed by the right ruler. It takes a while before the rumours and grumblings of the citizens have spread within the town and the dissatisfaction escalates. Hence, it will be 12 hours after a successful attack, before the revolt in the polis erupts (this time is fixed; it does not depend on world speed).

Several revolts can be instigated in one city at the same time. But only players who have started a revolt can conquer the city, meaning no-one can capitalise on a revolt that was sparked by another player.

A player cannot start a new revolt in a city when he has already instigated one within the last 24 hours. Extending the revolt time is therefore not possible.

Revolt

During the revolt, the population of a city is willing to accept you as their new ruler. After all, you have demonstrated with your successful attack that you are a more competent commander than the current ruler of the city. Therefore, if you execute another successful (normal) attack incl. a colony ship during this period, you can take over the city immediately.

But there are two things you should know:

• Even if the population revolts against its present ruler, he still has full access to the polis, he can command and recruit troops and call in support units, which you should of course dispatch before or when your colony ship arrives.
• And, in this case (unlike with revolt attack), both the land and sea battles must be won!

Note: you only have 12 hours after the revolt has started to have the colony ship arrive in the contested city. When this time has passed, the owner will succeed to stifle the revolt. (This time frame is not dependent on world's speed.)

Ghost Towns

You can of course also conquer ghost towns on worlds with the revolt system. But since there is no leader to revolt against, an attack to spark a revolt is not needed. All you have to do is to send a colony ship (accompanied by escorting troops for protection) to capture this city and incorporate it into your empire. If the ship survives its arrival, the city will be yours immediately, provided that you fulfil the necessary cultural requirements for owning another city. In the city, from which the colony ship sets sail, you don’t necessarily have to have researched "Conquest" for this manoeuvre.

If your towns have been taken over

And your enemies have taken everything from you? Don’t worry - in Grepolis this doesn’t mean the end of the world. If your beautiful city becomes the prized possession of another player, you will get the chance to start a new empire right away, where you can avoid all the mistakes you may have made in your previous attempt. Of course we are aware of the fact that, when restarting, you will be a bit behind the longer-established cities. But we make up for that by placing your new polis in a location where your neighbours have a similar level as you. So, starting anew is a great opportunity to use the knowledge you have gained and to grow and become a lot more powerful the next time.