The brave fall of Ceytono, and the challenge of Rorblib

Asjo

Hekatontarch
I write to you extremely weary from battle, having been up through the night to deal with two revolts in Basiletopia and one in a random US world (Pseira) I joined. The revolt in the US world was an extremely scrappy affair - so scrappy that it all came down to timing farming villages to get the maximum amount of archers to deal with medusas and hoplites, changing god multiple times to use tokens for mythicals and trading with farming villages at 1 : 0,2 ratios to get the last bit of silver for the last level of wall. My desperate efforts in the US server went as far as me reaching out to a lot of nearby big players to offer them a CS snipe, only to find out that three alliances in the top 5 were all allied together, and didn't appreciate me telling them to snipe their allies. Meanwhile, in Basiletopia, I was basically dodging attacks, saving and sending resources, coordinating defense, and rebuilding walls.

I frankly joined this world to earn some gold to be able to keep my administrator advisor going in another world (the only gold feature I use). Eventually, though, this became my favoured world to play - especially after I remembered that I far preferred playing revolt worlds over conquest ones. Despite selling off half of all my resources for the entire start of the game, I was able to mount a defensive army early enough to avoid being the target of a starting conquest. I joined a random alliance who were open to anyone joining (they are now ranking third in this world), and since I had joined only a day after the world opened, I was in the midst of some of the most active areas. My alliance had a strategy of colonizing far away to build a world wonder, so my main city, Ceytono, was kind of left behind, with me and the others colonizing far away.

I always know Ceytono would fall, since I ended up being surrounded by cities of the second largest alliance, THE WHIP CONVENT. I just didn't want it to fall cheaply, and I wanted to keep it as long as possible, seeing that it was my only city that could produce colony ship, and my main source of income (I only keep farming villages on one island, as I don't want to spend time on collecting resources on multiple islands). Also, you really hate to lose a city with those permanent max population and defense bonuses. Before I knew of the alliance strategy, I had colonized two cities fairly close by, where I found open spots, as I thought it would strengthen our position in the area. Since I couldn't muster enough defense from my main city alone, the two other cities, Rorblib and Prestonto, stationed all their units in Ceytono, having no defense of their own. However, our enemies in THE WHIP CONVENT were expanding, and after I survived a revolt in Prestonto, I had to permanently keep back all the troops from there.

So, with only one medium-sized city supporting Ceytono, I was hard pressed to hold. A week ago, I was revolted in Ceytono, and I thought I would lose it. I was going on an outing I had arranged with my friends, and only had 1,5 hours in a bus to prepare for the revolt start, waking up five hours before the revolt start. After the bus trip, I would be offline for 6-7 hours. When I got off the bus, my wall was lvl 12, with lvl 17 queued. Luckily, our defensive coordinator was very quick to send resources and I always keep a 50% building speed token for situations like this. However, as our alliance was very geographically dispersed and not the most active, we often could not muster more than 500-2.000 defensive units for a revolt, and I still thought I would lose the city. This time, though, the alliance really came together and surprised me - 5.000 DLU was enough to save my city, as I found out later when I came back.

After having had Ceytono revolted, I started building harbors and defensive land units in my small colonized cities that were 5-6 hours away in large transports. They didn't have many resources, and I wanted to build them up as well, so it was a limited effort. As we knew there was a heightened risk of more revolts coming to Ceytono, our defensive coordinater had put a few units in it to pre-empt this, but since we were pressed on defense, we didn't want to keep more units in it than strictly necessary.

I had a few close shaves like this one, to keep me on my toes.

Kvus1HT.png


To kill off some offensive units that would be used to attack me and use the tokens from the "Wheel of Battle" event and the many island quests, I also raided my neighbours every now and then, even though I knew this would likely provoke an attack sooner than I liked:

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One of the prominent members of THE WHIP CONVENT, The Praetorian, had offered me a NAP with them, so that they would leave my city alone and I wouldn't attack them (one of the main advantages to my city was the fact that I could use it for offensive purposes, but at that time, I mainly wanted it to simply survive). We had to a textual handshake on it, and while I didn't want to let down my guard, I did send some units out of my city to support alliance members, which left me at half or 2/3 population most of the time, not at full strength. It sounded like maybe they wanted to team up against the Stooges, but this was likely not the case, as THE WHIP CONVENT were soon to break this agreement (The Praetorian left the game due to getting a new job, so that might be why).

Then, yesterday, things escalated. A revolt was fired in my unprotected Rorblib:
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When I have exposed cities like this that I'm still building up, I always to to get up senate to lvl 25 (for better building speed of city wall) and academy to lvl 25 (to get phalanx) as the first thing, before they grow big enough to become interesting targets to attack. I had managed senate lvl 25, but sadly was some way away from getting the academy high enough for phalanx.

I knew the main interest of this was likely to draw units from Ceytono, but since it had also become a city of interest, with THE WHIP CONVENT expanding down towards it, I know that some effort would also be put into taking it. So, I had to recall all my units from Rorblib. Soon after this, I found out that an operation was finally taking place against Ceytono. A lot of coordinated attacks were launched, and suddenly I was overwhelmed. I asked the alliance for quick help, giving the attack arrival times, but none came.

Within an hour, 23 attacks landed: View the first wave of attacks against Ceytono

No one in the alliance had enough nearby biremes to snipe anything and the nearest CS was 11 minutes away, so my best hope was to mount a defense with DLU. I knew they would be attacking non-stop, but still hoped I could sneak in a city wall build-up. However, with them being able to attack from the same island with big catapult nukes and never pausing the attack at any time during the revolt, I had to face the fact that the city wouldn't survive, 5-6 hours into the siege. I posted the revolt the same minute that it started in our alliance forums, but few resources and defending units came for me. People likely had bad experiences of defending cities with low city wall (I sent back all the defenders that came when the city walls weren't up, but not all people will), and people were far away.

I had to realize that I must give up Ceytono, and focused my defense on Rorblib. In total, 50 follow-up attacks were launched at Ceytono: View all follow-up attacks against Ceytono

If the old bashing rules of no more six attacks per day against the same player applies, a few players would be getting banned.

I had posted the Rorblib revolt a few hours before, also the same minute it happened, but despite this, the reaction from the alliance was underwhelming. Since no DLU were sent, the first attacker was able to bash me repeatedly with catapults from the same island. I kept desperately trying to rebuild, sending resources from all cities, but he would have enough units to break through whatever limited defense of the wall I could muster. I had some horsemen in the city that I got from some unit tokens and used for same-island raiding of inactives. I was conflicted about whether to use them for defense, but decided that in my dire situation, a hail mary was necessary, so three times I tried to hit his offensive units, while dodging with my own units in the city when he attacked and I didn't have wall up.

Unfortunately, the third time, he had activated his militia, and killed off my horsemen. This cat and mouse game excited my attacker, who sounded a bit cocky about it all:

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Even though the Rorblib effort was more limited on the part of the attackers, more players did join in the fun. As I'm writing this, four revolts are starting in the city. On my seventh rebuild of the wall, it finally stayed up, and a bit of DLU arrived. To my surprise, it was still intact in the morning, as SoupReaper12, the player who had stayed up for it, was out of units.

Here are all the attacks involving Rorblib: View all Rorblib attacks

Rorblib might survive, but it seems very unlikely, given that the attackers have a lot more to fire, while my alliance seems out of defending units. Ironically, Conquistador, whose main city I helped save from THE WHIP CONVENT, after which he joined them, is one of the most active players in trying to take it.

I was kind of hoping that a night like this would push me off wanting to play Grepolis, since I really need to quit this game, but I'm not quite there yet, even though I feel today that I cannot be bothered with farming villages anymore (a step in the right direction?). Either way, it gave me this exciting story to tell.
 
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P3R3PH0N3

Hipparchus
It's nice to see the insignificant alliances duking it out for once rather than creating some sort of silly coalition against the obvious winner ;)
 

Asjo

Hekatontarch
It's nice to see the insignificant alliances duking it out for once rather than creating some sort of silly coalition against the obvious winner ;)
That might happen at some point. However, I don't think anyone is too obvious of a target. Stooges got an early lead, and seemed to have a lot of active players, who, according to my alliance mates, spend a lot of early gold. However, the advantages of gold wane as the game starts to scale (unless you literally are willing to gold everything). Players quit and lose interest, alliances have successful operations against top players and can force them out of the game. I'm not that in tune with how world wonders work, but I believe we have at least 4-5 months before this server finishes.

So, right now, alliances are just trying to establish their territories. Granted, Elite Squad Commander and THE WHIP CONVENT do have a few shared territories next to Stooges, looking at the map generated by GrepoData, but it's quite limited, I believe. Since you have to defend your world wonders, establishing your own territory is the main priority.
 

P3R3PH0N3

Hipparchus
The #2 Alliance has around 1/2 the ABP as Stooges. I'm usually a pretty defensive player and was counting on putting my maxed out Phil & Ody to work soon. Yes, we do have some early game golders, we also have a few that heavily gold the whole game which is how the majority of us got our crowns. I, myself, rarely use gold and if so I generally do it late game to do whatever it takes to get the crown :p hugs n kisses

-The great melon troll of Pylos.
 

Reimu Hakurei

Chiliarch
The #2 Alliance has around 1/2 the ABP as Stooges. I'm usually a pretty defensive player and was counting on putting my maxed out Phil & Ody to work soon. Yes, we do have some early game golders, we also have a few that heavily gold the whole game which is how the majority of us got our crowns. I, myself, rarely use gold and if so I generally do it late game to do whatever it takes to get the crown :p hugs n kisses

-The great melon troll of Pylos.
So anyone that isnt #1 is insignificant, just because they have less BP? Kinda flawed logic not gonna lie there. Also BP is not a good metric, you might see that first hand sooner or later..:)
 
its so boring seeing the same old boring teams and players every world....

Honestly im leagues above all of you :cool:

This is a joke btw!
 
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Asjo

Hekatontarch
If anyone is wondering what happened to Rorblib, it was indeed taken. Not without drama, I'd say. I thought we were out of resources, but it turns out people just hadn't been online or hadn't believed in the defense. After we barely pulled through last night and held on for the start of the day, a few big defenders came online, and sent in some defensive land units that arrived at a good time to hold the city. This bought time for even more reinforcements arrive, and at one point, as I had 1.200 DLU in the city with 20 support fleets incoming, I dared to believe.

However, most of the incoming support fleets turned out to be quite small, and I kept being under great pressure, having to ask people for resources as I rebuilt the city wall 15 times during my defense. What seemed like a nice turning point was when we were down to a few hundred DLU and three biremes managed to snipe a land nuke that would have torn down the city wall.

A few times I cursed as attacks would arrive just before support came in, and we would never reach critical mass. Some people seem to think that defensive units and a city wall will enable you to trade in 1 to 5 ratios. However, that's just not the case, particularly if the attackers get to cast spells to enhance their army, get to hit you with a vulnerable damage type and cast narcissism on your city. If you try to aim for a balanced defense (such as described in my old Grepolis defense guide) that can repel all damage types, a slinger nuke, for instance, will be 51% stronger per population that the defenders (a horseman nuke only 31% stronger), so you're trying to make up for that. In our case, we didn't even have phalanx (fortunately, my commander was still going from the other battle), but at least we kept them from casting narcissism for most of the siege with constant city protection spells. What we didn't manage was to gather enough units that we could fight the big land nukes efficiently. We never got a 5.000+ that could repel a catapult land nuke and only take limited wall damage.

Once again, it was a quite simple defense, since we couldn't make any purposeful snipes, many people sending from 3-5 hours out. Some defenders were sending in small numbers of biremes, hoping for a snipe or simply sending units as soon as they got them, but most of our naval battles were inefficient (we were outnumbered and I didn't have captain or ram). Often I would leave biremes when I didn't know for sure that a LS nuke was on the way. This was one battle that allowed everyone to get rid of fire ships that they got from the "Wheel of Battle" event. Those ships are terribly show, but even oceans across, you can get them into battle when the siege lasts for over 24 hours, such as was the case with the Rorblib siege.

You see, the attackers seemed to half-arse it. At first, it seemed like a project for a few players, but today more joined in, being done with the operation to take Ceytono. At any of the five points where they fully cleared the city, they could have finished it off, but they just kept sending attacks. Yes, some CS attacks did come (four attempts in total), but the first one was from a guy who hadn't even revolted the city, leaving me a bit confused. I suspected that they were prolonging the battle to guarantee some certain battle points, since we were often fighting without a full wall. Many people have probably gotten the "Divine battle strategy" item today, and that makes you just want to attack stuff, since you're on a timer. I got one myself, but sadly I had only taken the time to spin the wheel at the end of the day, and ended up activating it as the battle was basically over.

The efforts of THE WHIP CONVENT increased, and it went from a half-assed effort of a few players, that eventually become more and more scrappy, to the city seeing timed attacks and big LS and land nukes én masse. Still lacked proper follow-up and full coordination between players, but it seemed to be doing the job. I was surprised at the fighting spirit of my alliance - people came out of the woodworks, and were happy sending spells my way, sending resources, and small players from far away also started sending some support. I was updating people on the progress, trying to send back DLU when the wall was too low. We had a thread in our internal forum with 70+ posts. Just as it seemed that the battle would go on forever - eight revolts were going and the battle could stretch into 48 hours - our support waned. People had to go to sleep as well, and after the wall was taken down, I didn't get enough wood after canceling the queue to use up all the stone and silver, which was then promptly stolen by the next incoming attack. With no means to rebuild the wall and little chance of coordinating a night defense, I called off the defense of the city, and sent back any support arriving. Shortly after I did, the city was taken.

The guy who took it was from the little brother alliance of THE WHIP CONVENT called Gentlemen in Paris. He didn't really want the city, having a city on the island already, but in the end someone had to ;) ... I suspect that it will be passed onto a new owner shortly.

Once again, I present to you the battle reports: View all battle reports from the second part of the Rorblib siege

Rorblib, burning with a fiery fire, in its final moments at my hand, taunting me with the irony that I had a island quest that could give me more units, a much needed swordsman reinforcement, if I simply dispatched some units ... that I didn't have:

cKUU1rF.png
 

Asjo

Hekatontarch
By the way, I finally decided to go through my original post and correct textual errors in it. What a mess it was. Sorry for that. With the relief of not having to defend myself for a second, I could finally muster the effort ;)
 
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Your a good player @Asjo if in the end you need to focus on Real life then its for the best to leave the game bro.

Or move away to a Ocean where no one will bother you and form a alliance there with players that want to join you

In any case i wish you all the best!
 
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