The Battle System

Basics

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

In Grepolis when two units fight against each other, the basic attack values of the aggressor is compared to the defense value of its opponent in the respective weapon type (weapons are either for stabbing(Sharp), crushing(Blunt) or ranged(Distance)). The outcome of the battle is affected by certain other factors such as the strength of the city wall, divine powers, as well as the random good fortune factor that changes for each battle.

Agora

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

The Agora is the central point for the administration of your troops. Under defense, you see listed the troops that are presently in the city. These will defend against any incoming attack.

With a click on "outside of" you see all the troops that belong to your Polis but are presently outside of your Polis this includes your troops that are attacking an opponent or providing militarily support to an ally.

The "simulator" enables you to test how a battle should work. This is a very powerful tool as it gives you a feeling for the tactical strengths of attack and defense. However the simulator is not exact, it only provides what the most likely outcome should be. It does not factor a random good (or bad!) fortune values as part of the battle, which your troops will be subject to during every attack.

"Culture" indicates you the current culture value of your city. Cities with a low culture value possess no expansion power and cannot colonize other cities. See in addition the culture chapter.

Attack

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

Once you have constructed military units and want to attack the opponent you must click on the city or the farming village that you want to attack and select "attack". You need to consider that these villages and cities can have defenses of their own. A poorly prepared attack can quickly prove to be a very big loss!

No player can be attacked during their beginners protection. This begins when they have registered and lasts for up to seven days.

All units have different characteristics so that many units are better for attacking and others better for defending. In the attack the units use either a blunt weapon, a stabbing weapon or a ranged, or distance, weapon. In the defense, each unit has again a different defense value against every weapon type. Unit_Summary.

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 it`s 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: Colonising

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.