Grepolis - The West in Greece, or something

[Xanthippe]

http://en.grepolis.com/

Got an email from these guys today:

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

[schild]

In, chose Southwest.

Saw the combat stuff, exited. I really need to get on making a passive web game.

[Samwise]

I like the West (playing 4 characters atm), but I'm suspicious of anything that smells even a little bit like Travian.

[Nebu]

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. 

[grebo]

I'm in Beta for Southwest as Grebong.  See how this goes.

[LK]

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.

[grebo]

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.

[Samwise]

I'm in as Spamwise, until something bigger and meaner decides to squish me.

[Righ]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[grebo]

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.   

[Righ]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[Righ]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[Righ]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[Righ]

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.

[Azaroth]

I've yet to find the fun.

But I'm playing.


Kinda.

[Righ]

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.

[grebo]

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.

[Azaroth]

Well, it's Ikariam in a worse looking wrapping. Also the fun got lost somewhere.

[Righ]

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.

[Righ]

Seems slingers are better offensive units, archers are better defensive units. Archers can carry more loot from villages...

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.

[Aez]

I'm a paying customer of The West.  I'll pass this one, it looks like a standard tribal clone.

[Righ]

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.

[Samwise]

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).

[grebo]

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...

[grebo]

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.

[Azaroth]

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.

[Samwise]

Awesome, I'm in the top 100.  For the moment.     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.

[Draegan]

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. 

[Righ]

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).

[Samwise]

Researching archers right now.     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.

[Righ]

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.