/!\ Guide very offensive style/!\

THIS IS A PURELY OFFENSIVE STYLE OF PLAYER

This is a guide to help improve your game and help you better understand on how grepolis works, by taking your time to read and incorporating the following into your game-play you will save yourself alot of time in the long term.

Contents
01: Basics
02: Defending
03: Attacking
04: Nukes
05: Army Guide
06: Navy Guide

[01] Basics

1. So the first thing you need to learn is this game isn’t about how many points you have, it’s about the size of your army so always give priority to training your troops over building your city.

2. The second thing you need to learn is you are only good as the alliance your are in. So you should always do whats best for your alliance and be a team player.

3. You should be constantly on the attack, anything that isn’t green or blue is an enemy that needs to die.

4. Any army attacking a enemy city should always be accompanied by at least a fleet of 50 LS (light ships).

5. Your caves should always have at least 25k silver stored in it, so if any good players wish ill towards your city it will trigger a report.

[02] Defending

The best form of defense is attack, with that in mind the best thing you can do is seek out all the threats within 8 hours distance by TS and get rid of them from your territory so they can’t attack you overnight. When you come under attack and you have organised your defense, you should launch counter attacks towards the city the attacks are coming from using navel nukes (to catch any CS that might be in their harbor) and blunt nukes (with their hoplites and chariots out of town it should be easy for your horseman to clear them out.). Counter attacks gives the attacker something more to think about and adds to pressure which will lead to them making mistakes with their attack, this will also makes others in their alliance think to twice about get involved in attacking you.

Acceptable Defense Units:
   
You should always leave your hops, chariot and Medusa’s in town if they are already in the town that has incoming attacks since they kill horses. Always activate the militia since you don’t wanna miss out on the free BP unless you know for sure it’s a naval attack.

Unnecessary Defence Units:
     
You can build these defence units but I would strongly advise against them since they just aren’t worth the farm space they take up.

Unacceptable Defence Units:
        
The above are units that need to be moved out when city come under attack. The red units are the one you shouldn’t have to move since you shouldn’t have them anyway.

Using only Biremes and enlisting the militia is the best way to defend in this game (especially in a revolt world) since they are the most efficient time, cost and population wise. They are also the fastest form of defence (barring Pegasus which can’t enter non-Athena worshipping cities.), they don’t use up alot of silver (unlike other defence units) which is always a bonus and best of all they are the most effective against noobs and stupid people (which is what you have to be to attack a member of this alliance) since they usually have only a few battleships accompanying their attacks.

Avoid training defence only troops like archers and swordsmen because they just take up precious farm space that can better used building biremes. I can’t see the point in using a army to defend your city when a fleet of biremes have so much more advantage over them as pointed out above and taking into account the 95% of the people in your ocean are noobs which means they are bound to come up short on light ships, so you need to take advatage of that fact. Last but least using only biremes makes it easier to time things to counter the CS landing when you dodge clearance attacks, which is something you will have to do if we ever get into a difficult war.

Defending a Siege In conquest even the most attacking players need a few defence land troops because they have to defend their CS for the 8 hours while the city they are trying to conquer is under siege. This is because there are two ways for the defending part to end a siege.
1. Destroy all the Naval units defending the Colony Ship and be the victor. This will destroy the Colony Ship.
2. Destroy all land units defending the city and be the victor. This will send all naval units back to their city except for the Colony Ship which gets destroyed.
So not only do you need enough biremes to protect the CS in the harbor you also need a enough lands troops to survive through the entire 8 hours while the city is under siege. While most people would build a defence city with lots of Archers, Hoplites and Swordsman, I will just use my sharp nuke to defend during those instead waisting a city on a defence army I won’t necessarily need especially at the beginning of server. Having 300 biremes and 1000 hops all my fellow shadows who can help seems sufficient enough to me. In the cases where I am taking a city where the enemy has alliance mates on the island I will just clear them out first before going in for the conquest.

Hiding Attacking Troops The smart way to hide ones troops is by sending your army/navy out to attack cities 4-6 hours away before you go to sleep so they are in transit the whole time you are asleep and return when you bake up. If you’re looking to save your troops then you should send to 175 points city but in most cases you sgould be earning ABP.

[03] Attacking

Defending is easy you stockpile your harbor with biremes and enlist the militia than just watch as the BP starts rolling in but attacking is whole different ball game because you need the know-how to do it right so that you don’t wipe your troops out and put your city out of commision for days. So go though this section very carefully, understand it and put it into practice.

The Grepolis Battle System takes the basic attack values of the aggressor and deducts it from the defense value of its opponent in the respective weapon types (blunt/ranged/sharp) to determine the outcome of the battle. So your job as the attacker is to find the weakness in defenders biggest defence unit and send in the type of nukethat best expolates it, by selecting the right nuke you are using a frontline (the most units of one type within your army) designed to easly wipe out theirs in the most efficient way, by taking out what makes them strong easly you leave your army with a distinct advantage for rest of the battle. I put emphasis on the word nuke because you as the aggressor get decide what kind of weapons come into play in the battle, by attacking your opponent with only one type attack you are taking their other two defence prowess totally out of the equation since they can’t use a abilty to defend off a weapon tht isn’t being used, makes sense right?

Just so I don’t confuse the heck out of you, I am gonna be breaking it down best I can using simulations and stats the best of my ability so please read on…

Demonstration: The spy report says the turtle on your island has the following:
500 Hoplites
200 Swordsman
150 Archers
hiding behind a level 10 wall.

Now all you would have to do is kill the hoplites on the frontline and other two units will just fall beacuse the hoplites units take up over 50% of the defenders army that means whatever their weakness is it will be the armies main weakness as a whole. So what kind of attack are hoplites most vulnerable to? the answer as it states below in the “Army Guide” is ranged attacks which slingers are best at. So all you have to is send a attack thats excels in ranged attacks and you will have a clearance but before we do that lets look at the maths.

Multiply the defence prowess of a unit by number of units of its kind in the city

Hoplites defense against ranged 7 x 500 = 3500
Swordsman defense against ranged 30 x 200 = 6000
Archers defense against ranged 12 x 150 = 1800
The cities total defense against ranged: 11300

Hoplites defense against blunt 18 x 500 = 9000
Swordsman defense against blunt 14 x 200 = 2800
Archers defense against blunt 6 x 150 = 900
The cities total defense against blunt: 12700

Hoplites defense against sharp 12 x 500 = 6000
Swordsman defense against sharp 8 x 200 = 1600
Archers defense against sharp 25 x 150 = 3750
The cities total defense against sharp: 11350

Breaking it down: Even though the maths above doesn’t show a huge difference between the types of defence there is only one way to go since the slingers are the only unit that can go through 500 hoplites and still have enough in their arsenal to take on the remaining two defence units. Here is what I mean…

**Note: All simulations have the level 10 wall added to them.**

The city can be cleared with 800 slingers but I am using 900 as the minimum to cover any militia but you should use all the sligers you have in your city.

The city can also be cleared using your hoplites from your ranged nuke to counter the second tier (swordsman) which would save you some slingers for only a extra 23 BP’s for the defender, which is worth it since it would give a better balance on your resources when trying to rebuild your army after the attack. Personally I am tight about giving the enemy BPD unless I know I am gonna rim them.

The city can also be cleared using your hoplites and horses from your ranged nuke to counter the second tier (swordsman) and the third tier (archers) for only a extra 47 BP’s for the defender since this is exactly the kind of inefficient of way of playing I am trying to get you to avoid, the above simulation is in red. Not are you giving the enemy free BPD, you are also killing the troops you need for farming so you can rebuild your army quick. Personally I only send in my horses only when I really have to when it comes to using my ranged and sharp nukes since they take alot of time and resources to rebuild.

Just to clarify sharp nukes wouldn’t against a defence that has lots of hoplites in the frontline (even if the sharp nuke is made up of chariots:http://i54.tinypic.com/25samx3.png).

And a blunt nuke would fail also since a horses main weakness are a bunch hoplites or chariots. To understand why they are so weak against this type of defence you need first understand what makes the slingers so strong so read on….

Breaking it down further: A attacking army consisting of a single type off attack are the most effective against majority of defences you will come up against in this game, like demonstrated in the simulations above. The slingers on the attack were able to do what the other two could not, this is because…

900 slingers combined produce a 20700 ranged attack, so when they come up against the 500 hoplites with their 3500 defense against ranged in the frontline they simply overpower them…

So when the remaining slingers come against the second tier of defence in the form of their nemesis the swordsman with a combined defense against ranged at 6000, they are able to outnumber due to having taken such a small hit when going through the first line of defence.

So even with more than half of the army killed going through the first two tiers of defence, there are still enough left to deal the remaining archers and any militia that might get activated.

You will see in the first simulation there were 221 slingers that survived but when the slingers simulated as taking on each unit one at a time there are 306 survivors this is because the slingers are coming up against a bigger defence as whole so their advantage of outnumbering the defence force is compromised.

To round things up here is the 16500 blunt attacking force going up against 9000 defense against blunt and getting butchered. While 226 would be a small lose if it were sligers or hoplites but losing that many horses is huge since horseman take up 3 farm spaces per unit so you’ve actually lost 678 FS going up against 500 FS defence.

Even though they have enough in their arsenal to get past the first to lines of defence they come up short when they come up against their nemesis the archers in the final hurdle.

[04] Nukes

Nuke is a term a used describe attacking army assembled to specialise in one particular type of attack (blunt/ranged/sharp). There are four types of nukes you can build Blunt, Ranged, Sharp and Navel. In this section I will cover the three land based nukes and the Navel one will be coverd in the “Navy Guide” below. All your OFF cities should specialise in a certain type of attack so when you send clearing waves based on type defence force the emeny has you incur the minimum of losses.

The three types of nukes:

**Note: As stated in the basics section all nukes come with a fleet of 50 LS so that leaves around 1600 FS for your army and 400 FS to build the boats to transport them in**

The ideal sharp nuke consists of: 800+ Hoplites, 150 Horsemen 3+ Manticores.

In my sharp nuke cities I always have 150 horses because hoplites are so slow when it comes to farming. If you build a nuke using chariots you would only need 75 horsemen. I also prefer Manticores over Medusas for reasons like this.

The ideal ranged nuke consists of 1000+ Slingers, 150 Hoplites 75 Horsemen 10Catapults.

Some people don’t like to have hoplites in their ranged nukes but I have them since I usually use the slingers when I have to go in blind so a more well rounded attack force is always better in those situations. I also don’t use any mythical units for this nuke instead I build a few catapults which come in very handy if you are looking to farm someone into quitting.

The ideal blunt nuke consists of 400+ Horsemen, 150 Hoplites 5 Harpys.

The blunt nuke are mainly used for raiding resources from cities that have been cleared in the last 24 hours. You never send your horses in blind with out knowing what kind defence force the enemy has.

Alterations can be made to the nukes to make them more aggressive, all you would have to do is remove the hoplites from the blunt nukes and replace them with more horseman. The same goes for ranged nukes only this time you would remove the hoplites to replace with more slingers or catapults.

[06] Navy Guide

LS: Light Ship As I have said before we win the most of our battles on the water rather than land, that’s what divides the good players from the bad. In conquest you will find it is important you go heavy on LS because not only are they needed for attacking but to break a siege on one of your cities or one of a teammates. To defend with your LS all you do is send your LS Fleet out to attack a 175 point city and than when it returns back home to find your city is under siege it attacks the CS harbor giving not only breaking the siege but you get ABP insted of DBP for your efforts.

Navy Cities I have seen some top players build navy cities which are half made up of LS and half made of biremes, which I have to say is wrong cuz bigger your fleet more the damage it will do to the enemy most efficiently.

Demonstration: In an specialized navy city you can hit 330+ biremes or 264+ LS. So we will be using those numbers in the simulations.

Here is one way of clearing 100 briemes.

Here is the more efficient way of defending against 100 LS.

Even though the difference isn’t that great it’s still there and having all your LS in one place means you don’t need to time them twice when sending as a clearing wave against big players. Just like it says in the Nuke section it’s all about efficiency so you save yourself time and resources when rebuilding your attack force.