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Title: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Xanthippe on January 21, 2010, 09:56:42 AM http://en.grepolis.com/
Got an email from these guys today: Quote Howdy Xanthippe, I got a brand new game for you! With Grepolis, the new strategy game by InnoGames, you now have the chance to conquer Ancient Greece in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. The time for your start is perfect - today, we have started the second world for the English version. In Grepolis, you start in a small Polis (Greek for town) with a fistful of swordsmen. It is your task to make a prosperous Metropolis out of this town and build up a mighty army. Therefore, you do not only have to prove your abilities as a city planner, warlord and diplomat but also have to get along as well as possible with the gods of the Greek Pantheon. Zeus, Poseidon, Hera and Athena are influencing your fate with a lot of mythical units and divine wonders. 14 buildings, eight special buildings such as therms, theaters and oracles, eight mythical units as well as eight naval units offer you mere endless opportunities and tactical options in a complex fight system. At The West, the preparations for update 1.25 are proceeding on high priority in the meantime. You can look forward for some new features here as well. Curious about Grepolis? At youtube, Facebook and Twitter you can get further information about Grepolis. Your The West and your Grepolis team Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: schild on January 21, 2010, 10:01:03 AM Saw the combat stuff, exited. I really need to get on making a passive web game. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 21, 2010, 10:01:30 AM I like the West (playing 4 characters atm), but I'm suspicious of anything that smells even a little bit like Travian.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Nebu on January 21, 2010, 10:06:04 AM Messed with this a bit today. I realized quickly that I prefer single player to civ building games and quit.
I like the concept and hope that they continue to develop games of different historical eras. EDIT: I'm enjoying the game-related building queue emails that they are sending. They remind me just how rusty my German skills are. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 21, 2010, 10:39:15 AM I'm in Beta for Southwest as Grebong. See how this goes.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: LK on January 21, 2010, 11:08:46 AM Starting in a small town with a small force is not how I prefer to start a web game. I liked the West because I was one guy building something with others.
If Wurm Online wasn't so craptscular it'd be close to the concept of what I was looking for, but I have a sneaking suspicion that once I get what I want, I'll realize it was a sucky thing to desire. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 21, 2010, 11:17:28 AM It seems painfully likely that this game will devolve into a race to the top so you can farm the crap out of your neighbors and build the super powerup buildings so you can farm them even harder.
I hope I'm wrong. Most people don't like being farms... plus, the game is pretty. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 21, 2010, 12:01:13 PM I'm in as Spamwise, until something bigger and meaner decides to squish me.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 23, 2010, 08:00:29 AM I doubt that I will like this. At the moment it's just city building - we can only make swordsmen who are better at defending than they are at attacking. Unless a player city is off raiding one of the local farms with all their swordsmen, you'll lose if you attack them. That means that you need to build your city up to Senate 8, Farm 6, Barracks 5 to unlock the Academy so that you can research new units that have attack strength.
I have 10 invitations to join alliances. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 23, 2010, 10:29:12 AM I mainly dislike that for optimum resource flow you need to hit the nearest farming village every 20 minutes, which means that Romanian teenagers are inevitably going to outclick everyone else to victory.
I do like that your troop count is capped hard by the number of farms you have, so attackers can't build mega-armies by farming food from neighbors. Makes peaceful turtling more viable, which is how I usually prefer to play these types of games. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 23, 2010, 10:57:34 AM Also, if you check the simulator, you need significantly more troops on attack to decimate a defender. Hopefully this makes farming your neighbors somewhat less profitable... but we'll just have to see.
Agree on the "raid the computer village" thing. It's stupid. Trying like heck to build up a large enough force so I can farm all the villages on my island down to nothing. :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 23, 2010, 11:18:20 AM It also sucks when you randomly get assigned a starting town that's twice the distance to the nearest computer farm than most of your neighbours. Presumably the Romanian teenagers will just make accounts until they get a starting position that is most advantageous. Fortunately most of the people on my island suck even worse than me, so I'm relatively safe until the advent of sea power.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 23, 2010, 12:17:47 PM According to the help, the average distance to all the farming towns on an island is the same for everyone, and you quickly need to start varying your attacks to keep from depleting/aggravating the nearest village too much. So except for the very early game it seems like it evens out.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 23, 2010, 12:49:53 PM Ah, so because I'm in the middle of an L shaped island and the distance to the furthest town is shorter than for anybody else, I have to be further away from any nearby towns. There are a number of reasons why that won't even out, chief amongst them being the lack of a need to raid more than a handful of farms and the lack of a need to raid farms at all once you're raiding other players.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 23, 2010, 01:18:37 PM I dunno, I'm already at the point where I have to divide my attacks between 3 targets (this is with 15 sword dudes) to keep their moods from getting low enough that they might start fighting back. I'm pretty sure my "sample size" is large enough that my specific location on the island no longer matters.
(edit) Never mind that since I'm not hovering over the game constantly, differences of a few minutes don't matter that much anyway. If you were able to script or queue up attacks to set off again as soon as they return it might make more of a difference. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 23, 2010, 01:25:03 PM Wow. I only have my initial sword dudes, but I'm ranked as high as you. Pure infrastructure here. I swap between three villages too, but I also encourage gambling among my fellow islanders by occasionally strengthening. Then, when I see them strengthen, I pounce and take the better return. I'm not watching the game more than once per hour, but I still seem to be more on top of it than most of the folks on my island.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 23, 2010, 01:35:36 PM My strategy has been to keep my building queue full (mostly with resource upgrades, although I did go a little out of my way to build a barracks), and only build dudes when I have leftover resources after filling the queue. I think I worked out that it takes only about 10 attacks for a dude to pay back the cost of training him.
As far as I can tell, strengthening villages is a waste of time until you get to the point where you're farming every village on your island and you still can't keep their moods from dropping. I can spend half my attacks strengthening my closest village so that they stay happy (and probably have someone else reaping the rewards at the same time), or I can go raid another village that's less than twice as far away. Pretty easy choice. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 23, 2010, 01:42:20 PM I'm fairly focused on getting an Academy built. I'm at Senate 7, Farm 6, Barracks 2 so far, supported by Timber camp 8, Quarry 6 & Silver mine 4 (5 being built). I also upgraded my Warehouse to 2.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 24, 2010, 07:30:49 AM I've yet to find the fun.
But I'm playing. Kinda. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 24, 2010, 08:20:17 AM Kinda. Same. Senate 8, Farm 6, Barracks 3 (building to 4 now). It's like having a cave and spying on somebody who doesn't matter. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 24, 2010, 08:36:07 AM I've got 38 swords, I piss off the neighbor villages at light speed. :)
Also going for an academy, and maybe a city wall.... most of my island seems to be in the same alliance. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 24, 2010, 10:12:34 AM Well, it's Ikariam in a worse looking wrapping. Also the fun got lost somewhere.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 24, 2010, 06:02:52 PM Academy built. Now I just need the resources to be able to do the research. Choice of Slinger or Archer at this point. As with swordsmen, archers require only wood and silver - just more. Slingers require wood, stone and silver, but largely stone and much even less wood and silver than swordsmen. Slingers would seem to be more synergistic with swordsmen in the early game since they mostly use the resource that swordsmen don't.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 24, 2010, 06:14:15 PM Seems slingers are better offensive units, archers are better defensive units. Archers can carry more loot from villages...
Quote Beginner protection last 7 days from when you joined the world. So I have a few days more... might be better to go for archers and start building them up and use the stone for ranking up the academy for Hoplites. Not too risky as I'll have solid defense if somebody goes for Slingers... Only problem is that interest is waning fast. I might not make it to the point that anybody can attack. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Aez on January 24, 2010, 06:47:26 PM I'm a paying customer of The West. I'll pass this one, it looks like a standard tribal clone.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 25, 2010, 03:30:53 PM The archer can carry 24 units (compared to the swordsman's 16). I'm training up my second one at the moment.
I now have 19 open invitations to join alliances. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 25, 2010, 04:51:35 PM Seems like if you want to fuck other players up the trick would be to get hoplites before they get archers, since "sharp" is the swordsmen's weak spot (which the archers neatly cover).
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 25, 2010, 04:52:24 PM I'm trying to save up for horsemen since it seems like the swordsman is a decent defensive unit... level 10 academy is going to take a while, but them horsemen sure can carry a lot of stuff.
I'm up to 70 swordsmen, experimenting with the best way to build up a town then loot it. Seems like no matter what you do, the mood drops too fast. Also trying to get a temple... need resources... lots of resources... Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 25, 2010, 05:06:21 PM Seems like if you want to fuck other players up the trick would be to get hoplites before they get archers, since "sharp" is the swordsmen's weak spot (which the archers neatly cover). The sim says you're right. Hoplites annililate Swordsmen. Getting me some archers. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 26, 2010, 04:48:58 AM It's probably exactly like Ikariam. Math and everything.
Hoplites will own everything. Build them, upgrade them as many times as you can. Archers will be good for a little while, but you'll get way better offensive units soon enough. Hoplites will own all for eternity. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 27, 2010, 12:04:40 AM Awesome, I'm in the top 100. For the moment. :awesome_for_real: Building an academy and a cave right in a row bumped my points up really quick. I'll probably be back down to the 300s by morning.
The limited research points thing is freaking me out a little. I know I definitely want archers, since they're the best anti-sharp defense by a long shot, but after that I don't know what's worth spending points on. I guess there's always the respec option. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Draegan on January 27, 2010, 06:39:05 AM I started this yesterday. I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm building stuff and sending my 6 army guys out to raid. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 27, 2010, 10:25:10 AM I read this too late for it to be of much use, but this explains how to get going:
http://wiki.en.grepolis.com/wiki/Beginners_guide_2 Basically, your army is the most important thing at the start - you increase your farm early to allow you more troops. I went for too much infrastructure too early, so I had no resource gathering strength by the time I hit archers. I rose in the ranking fast then plummeted down as everybody with bigger armies passed me. I'm active enough (a few times a day) that I'll rise back up slowly, but right now I'm playing catch-up but with superior troops (>30 archers, started hoplite production now). Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 27, 2010, 10:36:38 AM Researching archers right now. :drill: I've got 40 sword already; figure once I've got archers I'll start using the sword to strengthen and the archers to collect.
Once I get hoplites I'll go stomp the inactive player villages near me and add them to my farming rotation. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 27, 2010, 10:40:50 AM The limited research points thing is freaking me out a little. I know I definitely want archers, since they're the best anti-sharp defense by a long shot, but after that I don't know what's worth spending points on. I guess there's always the respec option. It's actually what isn't worth spending points on that you need to focus on. There's a total of 195 research points, and you get 120 plus 12 more for your library. Ultimately, each village cannot have 63 points of research. So I'm thinking that for my home, I can live without: Slingers (4) City guard (3) Ceramics (4) Crane (4) Architecture (6) Meteorology (4) Breakthrough (6) For 31 points, and then once I know a bit more about the naval strategy and my position with respect to assaults, I can figure to where the other 32 points comes from. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 27, 2010, 01:27:57 PM Awesome, I'm in the top 100. For the moment. :awesome_for_real: Building an academy and a cave right in a row bumped my points up really quick. I'll probably be back down to the 300s by morning. The limited research points thing is freaking me out a little. I know I definitely want archers, since they're the best anti-sharp defense by a long shot, but after that I don't know what's worth spending points on. I guess there's always the respec option. I've become intensely curious at this comment. If you're top 100, how much have you paid into the game? If any? If none, does that mean that the amount of people paying is ridiculously low? Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 27, 2010, 03:25:01 PM I would never pay into a game like this. Especially for a "beta". You insult me, sir.
Getting a high rank at this point is just a matter of keeping all your guys busy. Once people have teched up to the offensive units it will start swinging around in favor of the more competitive catasses in uberguilds. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 27, 2010, 04:10:39 PM Yeah, but wouldn't the fact that you can pay $2.99 for 30% more resources and extra building queue slots and so on mean that, with a top 100 spot, you are a prime example of how little money they're making?
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 27, 2010, 04:18:58 PM Or just that most of the players are dolts. Judging by the number of people in the giant alliance I joined that are using premium points, Sam is clearly just pursuing a better strategy or paying more attention to the game. Most people in my alliance seem to be doing stuff like signing up to Netflix trials via GratisPay to get points.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 27, 2010, 04:44:16 PM Or just that most of the players are dolts. Judging by the number of people in the giant alliance I joined that are using premium points, Sam is clearly just pursuing a better strategy or paying more attention to the game. This. People are retarded. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 27, 2010, 07:49:30 PM Well, I started late so I couldn't really tell. I'm gaining ground, but I just assumed that people in the 2/3/4000s were stupid. Once you got to 500 or so, I would expect them to be a bit more clued in. That and I'd assume a high dropout rate in the bracket I'm in.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 28, 2010, 11:25:54 AM Some dude is attacking me in 45 minutes.... guessing it's a probe so will send most of army out and I think I can spend all my resources.
Def going with Athena for a god, being able to tell what is incoming would be huge. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 28, 2010, 11:49:20 AM If he's sending anything lower tech than hoplites, your swordmen will absolutely murder them.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 28, 2010, 12:29:16 PM Was just 3 archers, as expected. They died.
My alliance mate sent an attack of 4 swords to see what he had... but apparently it doesn't tell you what the enemy has if you lose. Interesting. I guess it makes the cave useful.... expensive as fuck, but useful. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: RUiN 427 on January 28, 2010, 01:51:19 PM should we form an alliance?
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 28, 2010, 02:00:52 PM should we form an alliance? Seems to me that any alliance with only one guy on an island is going to have a tough time. probably better off joining an alliance with a decent presence on your island. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on January 28, 2010, 02:44:14 PM I need to start testing the local players - I've burned down every farm on the island to a mood of 50% or under towards me. Doesn't take long with over 60 archers. I'll send a dozen hoplites to a couple of the small ones that haven't expanded.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 28, 2010, 07:55:30 PM Well, attacking the 200 point guys is pointless. The 200 of each resource you can loot barely pays for the guy you lose in the attack. Can't these inactives upgrade their warehouse before they quit?
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 28, 2010, 11:19:00 PM Once you've killed off their dudes, you can continue to milk them for a good long while, I'd imagine. Seems totally worth it to me to have another income stream.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 29, 2010, 07:37:35 AM My point being that it seems like you will always lose a guy or two when attacking even an undefended city (I lost a swordsman and an archer). No argument that it's worth it if you can find an inactive with a somewhat improved warehouse. With level 1 warehouse you can only steal up to 200 of each resource. I'd look for an inactive with at least 300 points.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 29, 2010, 09:01:50 AM My point being that it seems like you will always lose a guy or two when attacking even an undefended city (I lost a swordsman and an archer). Orly? Didn't know that. Wonder if it gets better when you use guys with higher offense (slingers, hoplites, etc). (edit) Confirmed in the agora -- 2 hoplites or slingers attacking an empty city will not take any casualties. Same for 1 horseman. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on January 29, 2010, 09:06:24 AM Does the city have a wall?
That might be what's killing your dudes. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 29, 2010, 09:13:29 AM A 200-point city isn't going to have a wall. It seems like cities have some amount of innate defense that'll kill small numbers of weak attackers. Using stronger attacking units overcomes that effect, though.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on January 29, 2010, 09:38:42 AM Good to know. Seems like you cannot lose any Hoplite even with the worst possible luck score (Edit: If you send at least 17.. for whatever reason). Wish they could carry more... and were faster...
Hmm, this may be a good job for Myth units. Fast ones anyway. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on January 29, 2010, 09:39:24 PM In case anyone was wondering, you can have equal defense against all three attack types if you build an army with 1:1:2 ratios of sword:archer:hoplite.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 01, 2010, 11:53:36 AM Got all the buildings built, which catapulted me into the top 50.
Market is pretty good at getting resources... trade with one NPC village at a 1.25% return, then trade back with another... then send the troops to loot them! Now I just need a level 12 temple to get my flying horsie! and a level 22! academy to go make another city. That's going to take a while. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: LK on February 01, 2010, 12:20:32 PM It's Travian all over again. I thought people had learned.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 01, 2010, 01:38:02 PM Nobody's assraping me right out of the gate, so it's unlike Travian in that respect. :awesome_for_real:
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 01, 2010, 01:45:16 PM This game is noob friendly because it makes defense easy. Noob units have high defense values. Anyone attacking an active player would have a hard time making a profit at it. We'll see what changes when people start getting to the point of being able to take over cities but that's a ways away.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Aez on February 02, 2010, 09:44:33 AM Nobody's assraping me right out of the gate, so it's unlike Travian in that respect. :awesome_for_real: Might only be server maturity. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 02, 2010, 09:56:39 AM It's also that the military has diminishing economic returns. I've hit the point of saturation on resource farming -- my soldiers spend more time strengthening than looting now because I can't keep moods up otherwise. I've hit all the non-allied player villages on my island with my hoplites, and I steamroll their defenses easily but there's never any profit in it. This is very different from Travian where you had giant armies that were supported only by the food they could loot from their neighbors.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: LK on February 03, 2010, 12:08:25 PM OK, there may be some merit here.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: CmdrSlack on February 03, 2010, 04:28:22 PM It's also that the military has diminishing economic returns. I've hit the point of saturation on resource farming -- my soldiers spend more time strengthening than looting now because I can't keep moods up otherwise. I've hit all the non-allied player villages on my island with my hoplites, and I steamroll their defenses easily but there's never any profit in it. This is very different from Travian where you had giant armies that were supported only by the food they could loot from their neighbors. This is very true. There is an inactive town next to mine. I hit it twice daily with my hoplites, because that's about the number of times I can get a full load of loot. It is still easier to send troops all the way across the island to the untouched farm town because it takes the same amount of time and I get about twice as many resources. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 08, 2010, 09:09:15 PM You can rape an island clean with a big group of horsemen *really fast*.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 09, 2010, 12:11:23 AM I'm going to work on getting harpies soon so I can start raping neighboring islands. :why_so_serious:
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 09, 2010, 06:16:07 AM One more temple level and I get flying horsies. Temple levels are damn expensive and take forever. Level 12 is over 11 hours I believe.
After that it's the big push towards conquest. Is it just me or is there little to no point in making a city on an empty island? Resource production seems like it would be nonexistent without the farm towns. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 09, 2010, 07:53:56 AM Yeah, I'm not sure why you'd go colonize an empty island unless you were trying to flee from meanies on your starting island. I'm contemplating starting my second city on my starting island just to make it easier to reinforce it, but the downside would be not having a fresh pool of farming towns to plunder.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Draegan on February 09, 2010, 12:44:58 PM I'm starting to fill up my town, but still have 40 footman, 40 archers and 15 or so hepolites. Not sure where to go with this one.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Slyfeind on February 11, 2010, 04:49:25 PM Which server are people on? I see Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 11, 2010, 05:22:02 PM I think we're mostly on Beta.
I now has a flying horse. Whee. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 11, 2010, 06:01:13 PM I have a harpy. It's pretty awesome. I've also got more than 300 defensive infantry, so I should be all set to hold Thermopylae.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: CmdrSlack on February 11, 2010, 06:36:23 PM I didn't have a pre-planned upgrade path, but I'm pretty happy with my city so far. I don't have a market, but have all of the other basic improvements built.
Given that I have about 70 hoplites and 110 swords/archers (combined total of both), I think I may just move my production to troops and academy upgrades. I'd like to get to horsemen and am almost there. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Von Douchemore on February 12, 2010, 05:20:12 AM I've got about 400 infantry (following Samwise's advice of 1:1:2 S/A/H ratio) and a CENTAUR :drill:
I'm also missing the marketplace here, too lazy to build 4 cave upgrades for that shit. I rather keep researching for Pegasi and Chariots. :uhrr: Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 12, 2010, 01:20:40 PM You guys are still playing this thing?
How's this game better/worse than any of the 5 million other pbbg we've tried? Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 12, 2010, 02:44:56 PM It's hard to say why I'm still playing this, it really doesn't offer much beyond the standard pbbg city building experience.
I think the main difference is just that newbie units are such good defenders. Other than that it's lots of upgrading buildings and training giant piles of guys while waiting for something to happen. Speaking of that, one of my alliance mates attacked someone, got wiped out and became a farm. Now we all get to run to his rescue. Finally, something to do! Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 12, 2010, 04:08:06 PM Those of you without marketplaces are missing out. You can generate a good amount of free resources just by trading back and forth with the farming villages, almost as much as you get by just farming them (and you can do both at once).
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 12, 2010, 04:23:34 PM Also you can sell your silver for wood/stone at a 1:1.5 ratio fairly quickly, as people are always hungry for silver. Coupled with the trading villages, this can be pretty profitable.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 12, 2010, 04:25:26 PM Also you can sell your silver for wood/stone at a 1:1.5 ratio fairly quickly, as people are always hungry for silver. Coupled with the trading villages, this can be pretty profitable. Wait, what? Do people not know about the trading villages or do they need such massive quantities of silver that the villages can't keep up? Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 12, 2010, 05:13:12 PM I find myself mostly stone starved. I was buying silver when I was building my caves though, and I can see doing so again when I start building mythical units.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 12, 2010, 05:52:57 PM Also you can sell your silver for wood/stone at a 1:1.5 ratio fairly quickly, as people are always hungry for silver. Coupled with the trading villages, this can be pretty profitable. Wait, what? Do people not know about the trading villages or do they need such massive quantities of silver that the villages can't keep up? I figure most people are impatient and keep the village mood at around 20%, unable to resist the attack button when it creeps up to 60. They never get the chance to trade and consequently have no way to get silver when they run out except by buying it on the market. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: CmdrSlack on February 14, 2010, 01:06:16 PM The suck thing is that having a marketplace requires me to level up my cave -- which appears to require an assload of silver. It's next on my list now that I have horsemen researched, tho.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 14, 2010, 01:41:05 PM I'm almost ready to build my merchant. :drill: Luckily the market upgrades are pretty cheap.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 15, 2010, 11:33:22 AM Just about to have a Minotaur. Sweet! :grin:
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 15, 2010, 12:30:51 PM I just started a Gamma city (SE section)... faster, newer, yada yada
(sigh) Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on February 15, 2010, 12:38:37 PM I have around 300 troops, a dozen of which are chariots.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 15, 2010, 02:16:07 PM How much faster is Gamma? When did it start?
I don't know if I could start again. Game is an exact copy of Ikariam, just not as good. But I AM just about to start raping my island with Minotaurs... which is kind of entertaining. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 15, 2010, 02:55:28 PM How much faster is Gamma? When did it start? I don't know if I could start again. Game is an exact copy of Ikariam, just not as good. But I AM just about to start raping my island with Minotaurs... which is kind of entertaining. Started 4th of Feb. and World Speed is 2 instead of 1. Unit speed is the same though. Are you relegated to only playing on 1 server? Doesnt seem like it. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 16, 2010, 07:55:01 AM Ah. Well, starting three or four days behind everyone else is one thing. Nearly two weeks is another. You can't really do that in these games.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 16, 2010, 10:10:13 AM Ah. Well, starting three or four days behind everyone else is one thing. Nearly two weeks is another. You can't really do that in these games. These people are lambs. I lead them to slaughter (if the game doesnt bore me too quickly). in other news: the game does indeed have an interesting "feel." I guess it's Ikariam meets The West. Definitely on the casual side, less intimidating. The majority of the gameplay seems to be meta on the boards and in recruitment. Early game diplomacy is pretty rampant on my island as all the main Alliances vye for the better players' attention. It's amazing what a simple thing like being close to other people on an island does to the psychology of a game. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on February 18, 2010, 01:06:33 AM Ah. Well, starting three or four days behind everyone else is one thing. Nearly two weeks is another. You can't really do that in these games. Actually, that isn't true - no matter when you start, you will start on an island with people who started at roughly the same time as you. You get several days of protection from attacks. It takes considerably more than two weeks for even the most catassy players to build all the shit they need to start conquering towns on other islands, and when they do, they're not going to go after the newbie islands because there's no gain. The ones who start significantly ahead of you will be fighting each other when that time comes. The first attacks will come from people on your own island once people start using the quantity of resources daily that the island NPC farms alone can't provide. If you want to play less aggressively at the start you can almost entirely eliminate the threat of local attack by aligning with the players on your island with the largest armies and fastest city growth, worshipping Athena and building a tower. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 18, 2010, 08:52:55 AM Yeah, but with Zeus I get Minotaurs, dude. Minotaurs.
I'm finally building my statue. For more Minotaurs. Why does it take 30 humans to create a Minotaur? Are they morphed into one somehow? Are they fed to it? Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 18, 2010, 02:08:32 PM Also you can sell your silver for wood/stone at a 1:1.5 ratio fairly quickly, as people are always hungry for silver. Coupled with the trading villages, this can be pretty profitable. Wait, what? Do people not know about the trading villages or do they need such massive quantities of silver that the villages can't keep up? I've been regularly selling my silver coins for stone/wood at a 1.8 ratio and I'm still the cheapest on my market. I'm considering going up to 2.0 but that just seems criminal. Lots rarely take longer than an hour to sell. Truly the hunger for silver coins has no end. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on February 18, 2010, 02:18:11 PM That'll be people building horseman armies.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 18, 2010, 03:12:51 PM I'm not even researching horsemen. Going to turtle up on my island full of allies with hoplites as my main offense and defense. Harpies fill the raiding gap nicely, and once I start tapping out the local inactive villages I can send them overseas without having to rely on those slow-ass transports.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 19, 2010, 05:29:28 AM Got into the top 250.
But hey... don't build the statue. My divine favor points went from 3.5/hour to 4.1/hour. :oh_i_see: Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Draegan on February 19, 2010, 01:10:55 PM I stopped playing after 15 horsemen killed 30+ footmen, 30+ archers and 30+ hepolites attacking my city.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 19, 2010, 01:25:57 PM I stopped playing after 15 horsemen killed 30+ footmen, 30+ archers and 30+ hepolites attacking my city. Are you serious? See... this is why I liked games like Napwar (even though I stopped playing). Sure, it's more grognard and not as casual fun as Grepolis, but at least it's fuckin sensible. It's almost like you have to look beyond the logic of the unit names and just concentrate on stats. Horsemen might as well be Sherman tanks and Footmen might as well be desk jockies. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 19, 2010, 01:39:17 PM See, if he'd been following my 1:1:2 ratio the extra hoplites would have raped those horsemen. :pedobear:
It is kinda lame how there isn't a dedicated defensive counter to blunt damage. Hoplites and chariots have the best blunt defense, and they're by no means specialized defenders. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 19, 2010, 01:52:14 PM If they started getting into dedi. counters and such the game would get too bloated for the innogames audience. My only gripe thus far is even on a speed 2 server the beginning game is wicked slow unless you go premium. Also, if you dont preplan you can seriously gimp your research points (I like the academy mechanic a lot, as well as the temple). I put in about 30 seconds 3 times a day and that's it. Does it get more involved later on?
btw, if anyone is on Gamma (which, I dunno why you wouldn't be) I'm in a pretty good alliance called "Condemned." Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 19, 2010, 02:06:02 PM If you aren't sending raids off every hour or so in the early game, you're probably falling far behind everyone else who is. Later on it actually seems to be less of an issue since raiding becomes a smaller part of your income (unless you have a really big but poorly defended player near you that you can farm) and your raids tend to be larger and less frequent.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 19, 2010, 02:17:33 PM Anyone done the math on sending off multiple raids to different places rather than sending big ones to one place?
I assume there's diminishing returns going the all-in route. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 19, 2010, 02:39:34 PM There's a limit to the size of the haul you can pull back in one raid, based on the strength of the village.
The mood of the village will also decrease the more you take from it; once the mood is sufficiently low they'll start fighting back (making raiding them more costly) and they will no longer trade with you (which is annoying). My strategy has been to send a squad of 25-30 archers each time I see a village above 90% mood. A squad that size drops them down by about 9%, keeping them just happy enough to keep trading with me. For player villages (even ones that have gone grey) it's different; no mood, but they have a set amount of resources in their warehouse that are up for grabs, so sometimes you might hit a village and find that it's empty because you or someone else has just tapped it out. You also can't use purely defensive units like archers to raid them, since even an undefended player village has a bit of innate defense that'll kill offensively weak units. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 19, 2010, 06:04:11 PM Also spying is expensive.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 21, 2010, 07:57:49 AM Manticore army begins.
Also... why am I playing this? Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 22, 2010, 05:37:26 AM See, if he'd been following my 1:1:2 ratio the extra hoplites would have raped those horsemen. :pedobear: It is kinda lame how there isn't a dedicated defensive counter to blunt damage. Hoplites and chariots have the best blunt defense, and they're by no means specialized defenders. Pegasus! I fear not the horsemen. Just so everyone knows, if you support a player with troops and he gets attacked, guess who gets the battle points for what your dudes kill? Ya, the guy you're helping. Lame. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on February 22, 2010, 10:21:11 AM Also... why am I playing this? No idea. Is anybody close to being able to attack towns on other islands yet? Because I'm about ready to pack it in and will donate a lovely town to be farmed on Beta. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Ghambit on February 22, 2010, 10:27:32 AM Come to Gamma
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on February 22, 2010, 10:37:56 AM But it's just the same, but faster. Anyhow, last I checked it was full and not taking new characters.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on February 22, 2010, 12:20:27 PM I'm desperately holding out till I can conquer someone...getting close... and if that doesn't significantly liven it up I'll be gone.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 27, 2010, 02:46:03 PM Being farmed by a 10k point player.
Decided to moan about it to a guy on my island that invited me to his alliance. Turns out that was a bad idea. Being farmed by two players. 4k point town down the damn drain. I hate these games. >< Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on February 28, 2010, 09:53:18 AM Yeah, saying you're a farm is not a good way to get into an alliance in these games. :oh_i_see:
Build a colony ship, get your ass to an island full of newbies, and ship yourself all the resources your starting city generates so you can out-tech your new neighbors and crush them. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Aez on February 28, 2010, 01:24:02 PM Yeah, saying you're a farm is not a good way to get into an alliance in these games. :oh_i_see: Build a colony ship, get your ass to an island full of newbies, and ship yourself all the resources your starting city generates so you can out-tech your new neighbors and crush them. Getting farmed by big alliances and out leveling newbies with an old account. Fucking sad game. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Azaroth on February 28, 2010, 06:48:56 PM Yeah, I agree. Which is why I quit.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Righ on March 02, 2010, 06:52:18 PM I attacked and crushed a few of the larger towns on my island but it still didn't get any more fun, so I quit.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on March 06, 2010, 06:26:15 AM Finally conquering somebody. Found a guy on a quiet island who was in his own alliance all by himself. He saw my attack incoming and built a ton of slingers for defense. It went pretty well.
Sam, did you build your Merchant Shop? What does it do? Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on March 06, 2010, 09:32:06 AM The merchant shop isn't as cool as I thought it would be -- I confused it with the "merchant" RMT perk. All the shop does is boost the trade ratio of farm villages to 1.35. Kinda nice to get a little extra each time you trade with them, but I don't think it was worth the cost of the building. :-P
I'm pretty close to being able to conquer the one hostile on my island. Just need to get my harbor up to level 20 and he's a dead man. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on March 06, 2010, 09:53:50 AM Wow, that fairly sucks. Guess it's the oracle for me!
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on March 06, 2010, 10:41:45 AM Yeah, once I have resources to burn I'm going to level the merchant and build something else, probably the tower. If I could I'd build the theater in one spot and the baths in the other, since they seem like the two really useful buildings.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: CmdrSlack on March 06, 2010, 01:45:29 PM I'm still playing, but farmable inactives are few and far between (lots of sub200 pts towns, not much in the higher brackets). This has led to a bit of a resource bottleneck. I did manage to build one whole centaur so far tho, so that's cool, I guess.
I am hopeful that once I get my resource gathering bits up past 20, things will go a bit faster. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on March 06, 2010, 04:44:20 PM Actually the NPC farm towns are far and away superior to the resource creation buildings. Just farming them all once per day will net you 14k of each resource, while resource creation buildings will maybe get you 5-6k even at the higher levels. You can also trade with the NPC towns to convert wood/stone into silver and sell it on the market for mucho profits. Take 2k wood, trade it to NPC town for 2.5k silver. Sell the silver on the market for 4.5k wood.
Also, Pegasus. Get 5-6 or 20 of those and you can farm the inactives on other islands at a good rate. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on March 08, 2010, 06:03:12 PM Woo, conquering someone. It's his only polis so it's essentially a permakill. :awesome_for_real: I think I'm doing him a favor.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on March 10, 2010, 07:13:37 AM You know, if you grab a city on another island, you get another set of trading villages to persecute.
Not a bad city though, sure beats all them fools building cities on the empty islands. Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: Samwise on March 10, 2010, 07:53:47 AM I figure having my cities on one island will be a pretty huge defensive advantage, and my overall strategy is to try to make myself invulnerable to attack.
Title: Re: Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something Post by: grebo on March 18, 2010, 04:43:38 PM Having more than one city makes this game more interesting. Worshiping more than one god definitely has it's perks.
Also, being in an alliance where the main philosophy is "kill and farm thy neighbor" helps to liven things up too. About ready to grab my third city! |