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 1-20
• Divine Powers
• The random values of Luck and Morale: Between -30% to +30%

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 both you and your target are no longer under Beginner Protection. If you are, then no attacks can be made by you or against you during this period.

If beginner's protection is no longer active and you have selected your target, just click on them to bring up the attack option.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

Often it occurs that members of your alliance or friends need your aid. As well as supporting them with raw material deliveries, you can also send them units. Select the city that you want to support and click on support. Select the troops you wish to send and again click support.

If your units are attacked at the supported players city, you receive a report telling you how many you lost. Once your units are no longer required there you can recall them. Go to Agora, click on "outside" and recall the troops you no longer need there back to your city.

Attack or support interrupt

Attacks or supports can be interrupted within the first 10 minutes. After that, the troops are already so far that they can no longer hear you.

Defense

If you are regularly attacked it will usually be because your opponent wants your raw materials or he wants to conquer you. If there are no colonial ships in the attack, you can assume that they want mainly to steal your raw materials. To help prevent this you can do several things:

• Build as strong a defensive army as you can
• Contact your alliance and ask for alliance aid
• Use your raw materials regularly to build up your city and/or army
• Increase the level of your warehouse and the city wall.
• Call upon militia for help in the farm

All units have different characteristics so that some units are better suited for attacking and others better for defending. You can find more information on this in Unit Overview.

Speed

Time is money - this saying is also true in Grepolis. The speed of your navy units and land units are of decisive importance if you are attacked suddenly and you must quickly order your units home. When farming native cities, faster units will give you a higher raw material profit in a shorter period of time.

You can find the speed of the units in the unit survey, represented by the chevron symbol directly underneath the unit's attack value. If you send several units together, the speed depends on the slowest unit.

City Walls

The city wall increases the defense of a city enormously. It influences both the base defense and your troops defense.

Building the city wall is important early in the game so that you can defend yourself better against farming attacks from other players. In the later game, a fully expanded city wall is the base of an effective defense of your homeland.

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.

Mood

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

Grepolis.net has no Night Bonus enabled. Due to it being an international server with a wide range of players from all over the world, there is not a time slot where this can be implemented, and as such would be unfair to some players if it was implemented at a specific time.

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. Catapults do have a disadvantage as they move very slowly although they do carry an extraordinarily high amount of booty.

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 its highest level(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 300 enemy units need to be eliminated.

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.