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 defence value of its opponent in the respective weapon type (weapons are either for stabbing(Sharp), crushing(Blunt) or firearm(Distance)). The outcome of the battle is effected 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 defence, 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 the city 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 defence. 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
If you have already constructed a couple of 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 defences of their own. An ill thought out 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 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 firearm use. In the defence, each unit has again a different defence value against every weapon type. Unit_Summary.
Support
"Brave men are a city's strongest tower of defence" - Alcaeus
Often it occurs that allies 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.
Defence
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.
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 then of decisive importance if you are attacked suddenly and you must quickly order your units home. When farming native cities faster units will give a higher raw material profit in the same time.
You can recognize the speed of the units in the unit survey. If you send several units together, the speed depends on the slowest unit.
City Walls
The city wall increases the defence of a city enormously. It influences both the base defence and your troops defence.
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 defence of your homeland.
Espionage
Knowledge is power. That counts naturally also in Grepolis. It is vitally important to know the size and disposition of your enemies army. If you underestimate the defense effectivenesses 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. The espionage success is not certain. If the city to be spied upon has more Silver in it`s 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 - As in you have more Silver stored than your opponent, you will receive a report on the composition of the hostile troops.
Dependent on which party wins, become the spying, or however also the spying and the spy out the silver coins invested by the aggressor drawn-off. If the player, that has becomes spy out less silver in the cave than the client of the espionage, he notes nothing of the espionage attempt, it is drawn-off it no silver.
Advanced
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 optimise your efficiency and pick the best battle tactic, read the following articles.
Basic Defence
Each city has it`s own base defence. Base defence 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 defence 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 timeslot where this can be implemented, and as such would be unfair to some players if it was implemented at a specific time.
Catapults
The defensive wall of your enemies too strong for you? Then you require powerful catapults that can tear hostile city walls apart. Alexander the Great used them to great effect and they were constructed exactly for such siege purposes. In the truest sense of the word, they catapult large rock pieces at the enemies walls and so reduce it`s effectiveness. That often makes it an indispensable component of a conquering army. They are not only effective against stone walls but also people so any hostile units in range are quickly destroyed.
Catapults have the disadvantage that they move very slowly although they do carry an extraordinarily high amount of booty.
Cities conquer
Other cities exploit will help your city, themselves further to develop. Yet alone never becomes your city a powerful great power. You need to establish further cities - perhaps also on further islands - around a large Hellenistic empire. On the following sides, you learn how you can conquer and durably take in other cities.
Cultural value
In order durably to be able to take in other cities, must have your own city a culture value, that eases it for the inhabitants of the other city, to accept your domination. That is perhaps also the historic reason why Sparta never reached the size and attractive force Athens.
The culture step of your city, that you learn with a click on the Agora, indicates you, how many other Polis you of this city out of take in can.
To raise by the culture value you can celebrate rustling city festivals. This epic party will boost your culture value and will make your city far outside of your Polis famously and attractively. To the selection, "theater game", "bread and games", "triumph train" and "festival" stand for that.
Establish City
Main article: Colonising
If you are not powerful or advanced enough to conquer a city you have the option to found a new one. Whilst this can be helpful it means your new city starts from scratch, whilst conquered cities retain all buildings from the previous owner.
Conquer City
To possess the third and last prerequisite around other cities, the building of a colonial ship is. With a colonial ship, all the pioneers and its life necessary materials come into your new city. You will not send as a rule your colonial ship without a sufficient military protection out of water units and country units into your new city. Yet the persons are not welfare sunned you there and even if you already smashed the hard kernel of the military defence, can destroy the reason defence of the hostile city your colonial ship. Your colonial troops require a certain time in order to convince the population of the city to be conquered, to overflow into your warehouse. If the colonial troops survive this time without of hostile troops destroyed to become, the city changes into your possession over. You have henceforth no uprisings at all of the population more to fear and can administer your new city such as your own home town.
Did you get conquered?
Did they take everything? Dont 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.