The Battle System

Basics

"To brave men, the prizes that war offers are liberty and fame" - Lycurgus of Sparta

Grepolis uses a very simple system in determining the outcome of battles. When the units meet in battle, the basic attack values of the attacking unit is compared to the defending unit's defensive value of the corresponding weapon type. There are 3 weapon types:

Weapon Type	Name
	Blunt Attack
	Sharp Attack
	Distance Attack

For example: You are attacking a city with a large amount of Swordsmen in it. They have a high defence value against Ranged attack, but a low defence value against Sharp attack. Hoplites would be the best unit to attack with in order to defeat them since they have an attack value of 16 Sharp.

In addition to the basic attack and defence values, there are other factors as well:

• The level of the City Wall: Level 1-25
• Divine Powers
• The random value of Luck: Between -30% to +30%
• And morale

Agora

"War is not so much a matter of weapons as of money" - Thucydides

The Agora is where you can carry out the daily administrations of your troops. There are three options in the Agora which directly impact your troops:

• Defence: Shows the total number of troops in the city and separates them into those troops which are yours, and those which are support and where they are from.
• Outside: This will tell you if you have any troops stationed outside your city and where they are. This includes those troops which are currently attacking or supporting.
• Simulator: If you have a spy report you can enter the information into here to determine what the outcome of the battle should be. You can account for spells, myth units, and enter values for luck and morale.

The final tab - Culture - allows you to hold various events to increase your culture points (or CP) which will then allow you to control more cities. The higher your CP, the more cities you can control.

Attack

"The Spartans do not ask how many but where they are" - Agis II of Sparta

Now that you have that grand army, you'll want to begin attacking or raiding other players and Farming Villages for resources and battle points. You will need to make sure that your target are no longer under Beginner Protection. If they are, then no attacks can be made against them.

• You can still attack when under beginners protection, you just cannot be attacked.

If you have selected your target, just click on them to bring up the attack option. This will be available for Farming Villages, ghost cities, and cities belonging to other players. You should make sure to get a spy report before attacking another player, especially if they are just as active as you. If you plan your attack poorly, then you will be facing the loss of your troops and may find yourself under attack.

Because each unit has different attack and defence values, some are more suited to attacking and others to defending. It would be wise and prudent to familiarize yourself with these values so that you can create an effective fighting and defending force. For this information see either the troop table or one of the many guides on the Wiki.

Support

"Brave men are a city's strongest tower of defense" - Alcaeus

There will be times when friends and allies will need your assistance in defending their cities. This assistance can be in the form of troops, resources and divine aid; though typically support will be a request for troops to help defend a city. To send support to another player's city, you need only click on the Support button the comes up when you select the city. From there you can send as many troops as you are able to spare. Remember that land units will need transport boats to be sent along.

If your units take part in the battle at the other city, you will receive a report letting you know how many you lost. Once that city is out of danger, you can recall all or some of the troops home through the Agora under the Outside tab.

Support can also be a tactical tool as well. If you are facing an attack, you can dodge by sending your troops as support to another city and then recall them as needed. As well as using it for dodging attacks, you can use troops as a tripwire to determine whether other players are attacking a favorite city used for raiding.

Attack/Support Command Cancellation

If you order your troops to a location, but then change your mind for whatever reason, you can cancel the order within the first 10 minutes of the travel period. This can be a very useful tactic to employ as it may cause a player to enlist their Militia and send their own troops out of the city. However, after the 10 minutes are past, you will not be able to recall your troops.

Defence

If you find yourself under attack, it will likely be for one of two reasons: the attacker wants your resources, or to take over your city. In Revolt worlds, players may put a city into revolt as a way to panic the other player, but if there is no Colony Ship en route to your city, you can assume that all they want are your resources. To help prevent numerous attacks, there are a few things that you can do to make your city less attractive:

• If you are in an alliance, contact them and ask for support
• Increase the level of your wall to gain a better defensive bonus
• Build more defensive troops to help defeat the attacking army
• Enlist the city militia
• Increase the size of your warehouse to protect more resources
• Use up as much of your resources as possible to deny the attacking player any loot

If you are able to do any of these things, you may be able to prevent future attacks on your city. You should also make sure that you are familiar with the best way to defend against attacks and be prepared for them. The following table will help to illustrate which units are best at defending against which units:

Unit	Strong vs	Weak vs
	Distance (Best) and Blunt Archers, Slingers and Catapults	Sharp Hoplites and Chariots
	Sharp (Best) and Distance Hoplites and Chariots	Blunt Swordsmen and Horsemen
	Blunt (Best) and Sharp Swordsmen and Horsemen	Distance Slingers
	Distance (Best) and Blunt Archers	Sharp Hoplites and Chariots
	Blunt (Best) and Distance Slingers, Archers and Swordsmen	Sharp Hoplites and Chariots

Defensive Ratios to Know:

• 6/4 (Swd/Arc) - Weak against blunt (Horses) strong against others; You can add medusa to balance/

• 1/1/2 (Swd/Arc/Hop) - No weaknesses

• 3.5/1 (Arc/Char) - No Weaknesses (I need to run the math on this again - its between 3.5 and 5 but i dont remember exactly)

To clarify, what this means is that a good defence would be1200 swords and 800 archers or 600 swords, 200 archers and 400 hoplites.

Speed

The higher the speed of a unit, the quicker it will arrive at the target and return. The speed of a unit can be the difference in getting support in place or having the attack land at the right time. Since troops are usually sent in mixed groups, the speed of the entire group will only be as fast as the slowest unit.

• For land troops, that is the Catapult which has a speed of 2
• The Colony Ship is the slowest naval unit with a speed of 3

City Walls

Building your Temple will give you access to City Wall which provides a defensive bonus to your troops when you're under attack. Each level of your wall increases the bonus. A fully built wall can help enormously in defending against attack, and even more so with the Tower in the later stages of the game.

Espionage

Main article: Espionage

Knowledge is power, and in Grepolis, having accurate information about your enemy is crucial to a successful attack or defense. It is vitally important to know the size and disposition of your enemies army. If you underestimate the defense effectiveness of the opponent, you will probably lose a major portion of your army. An overestimating of the opponent is to be sure less tragic, but also not optimal. You could dawdle away time with the construction of an army that would not have been necessary in this size at the time of the attack.

To be able to get a view behind the hostile city wall, it is necessary to construct a cave. Once you have constructed this, you can delegate a spy.

In order for you to send a spy behind the enemy lines you must place silver coins in your cave. With these you pay the spy and can then delegate them to infiltrate the enemy city through the context menu. However, successful espionage is not always certain. If the city to be spied upon has more Silver in its Cave than you do in yours your spy fails. In this case, you receive no information about the hostile city. Instead the hostile city gets an information about the fact that you tried to spy it out.

If the espionage attempt is successful - in other words, if you have more Silver stored than your opponent, you will receive a report on the composition of the hostile troops.

Advanced

"The Spartans do not ask how many but where they are" - Agis II of Sparta

Who wants to stand still when you can learn even more secrets? With the information in the previous chapter, you are ready to carry out the most important tasks. If you want to optimize your efficiency and pick the best battle tactic, read the following articles.

Basic Defense

Each city has its own base defense. Base defense means that the population defends itself, although no units stand in the city. Therefore if you send only a single sword fighter into an empty city, he will nevertheless die. The Base defense is increased by increasing the city walls.

Luck

Mood affects your fortune in that it is a chance factor in every battle. It can vary between -30 and +30. It is always indicated from the viewpoint of the attacker. If one as an aggressor has +30% mood this means that the fighting ability of the attacking units is 30% higher.

Night Bonus

The International server does NOT have Night Bonus enabled. Due to the fact that it is being played by an international audience with a wide range of players from all over the world. As such, there is not a time slot where this can be implemented, and it would be unfair to some players if it was implemented at a specific time.

The United States server has night bonus enabled on select worlds. Please view the settings for each world to see whether or not it is enabled.

Catapults

Is that defensive wall of your enemy too strong for you? Then you require powerful catapults that can tear the hostile city walls apart. Alexander the Great used them to a great effect and they were constructed exactly for such siege purposes. In the truest sense of the word, they catapult (throw) large rock pieces at the enemies walls and thus reduce their effectiveness. That often makes the catapults an indispensable component of a conquering army. They are not only effective against stone walls, but also against people. Any hostile units in their range are quickly destroyed. Buildings can also be damaged with the Stone Hail research. Catapults do have a disadvantage as they move very slowly although they do carry an extraordinarily high amount of booty.

Anti-Timer

The anti-timer is that little +/- 10 seconds that you see when sending support. It is essentially there to make it harder for people to always land attacks within a second of each other. It is a deliberate feature, not a bug! Your attack/support will land within 10 seconds of the time you are given, it could be 10 seconds earlier or 10 seconds later (or any in the middle!), it is really down to luck.

Founding your Empire

Conquering or founding other cities will help your original city to develop further. No city can become a great power on its own. You need to establish further cities - perhaps also on further islands - if you want to be able to create a large Hellenistic empire. In the following chapters, you learn how you can conquer and reliably absorb other cities into your empire.

Cultural value

In order to be able conquer other cities permanently, one must have a high cultural value in his/her own city. This makes it easier for the inhabitants of the conquered city to accept your domination. That is perhaps also the historic reason why Sparta never reached the size and attractive force of Athens.

The cultural level of a city can be found by clicking on the Agora building. It will indicate how many other Polis the city can influence.

There are four different events that raise the cultural value of a city: "Theater plays", "Olympic games", "Victory procession" and "City festival". They also have various requirements, most of which include having your academy developed to level 30. Each event also has a certain amount of time that it take. Some of the events take up to five days. As additional requirements City festivals and Theater plays require a certain amount of resources for each event. While Olympic games require a donation of 50 Gold. (Gold can be obtained either by acquiring a premium account or recruiting people.) For a Victory procession you must acquire 300 battle points.

Establish City

Main article: Colonizing

If you are not powerful or advanced enough to conquer a city by force you have the option of establishing a new one through colonization. While this can be helpful it means that the new city will start from scratch unlike the conquered cities that retain all buildings from their previous owner.

Conquer City

"Against danger it pays to be prepared" - Aesop

The third and final prerequisite for conquering or founding new cities is the building of a colonial ship. A colonial ship contains all the necessary resources and citizens to create a new community. It is important to remember that you should never sent out a colony ship without providing it with sufficient millitary protection. You need a strong naval force to protect your colony ship en route to its destination, and a strong land army to protect your new citizens and maintain order once your ship arrives. Remember that the population of the city is not immediately happy to have you and your army there, and even if you already taken care of the majority of the city's military defenses, the millitia and inherent city defenses can still revolt against you and make it difficult to capture or maintain your hold on the city if your army is not strong enough to subdue them. Your colonial troops require a certain amount of time in order to convince the original population of the city to defect to your empire and become your own. If the colonial troops survive this time without the hostile population revolting, the city changes over into your possession. Once this time has passed and your colonial troops have survived, you no longer have to fear any uprisings and can administer the city just as you do your original Polis.

Did you get conquered?

Did they take everything? Don't worry, in Grepolis this does not mean the end for you. If your city should be conquered you can start again and use the lessons you have learned to avoid any mistakes you may of made previously. Naturally we understand you would wish to remain with your original Alliance. Your new city will be placed in a position where the other players around you are of a similar game level to yourself and with the knowledge you have gained previously you have the possibility of this time becoming much more successful and powerful.