Asjo
Hekatontarch
So, it's been a while since I was among the top ranked players in Grepolis, making a lot of guides, playing the game daily and being very invested in it, even making some long-term friends on the other side of the world after leading a few alliances in different worlds, where I was helping smaller and less active players compete against the bigger ones. When I started managing 100+ cities, I finally realized that the game was bad for me and quit. Around two years ago, I came back for a short stint, joining a domination world late. I quickly realized this was a mistake and that I spend way too much time on the game. I tried to provoke my neighbours to put my out of my misery, attacking them with light ships. After a week of constant attacks, they had bled me try of every resource and managed to take my cities, but out of a final act of spite, I colonized far away and built up with all the battle points, looking for revenge. Ended up joining those guys, becoming quite high rank, and become too invested, and was eventually saved by the world ending quite early (not a concept I was used to, but despite me not liking it, it was probably for the best).
Two weeks ago, I accidentally joined the game. Initially, I joined Acherontia just to try whichever new world was there. I figured I would play for long, so I thought that while I was click, I might as well farm some gold for a later playthrough (I'm not used to using gold, but when I played two years ago, I realized the value of at least having administrator, and found out you could sell resources to get gold), so when Basiletopia opened, I joined that one as well. But realizing that these worlds had quite horrible end games, I joined Zaforas, which was normal domination. I thought it might be satisfying to fire off some manticore nukes and bireme snipes, and thought I might as well join a few world while I was clicking farming villages. After, pressing CTRL + 1/2/3/4 in the browser and doing a few clicks for farming villages only took a few seconds, and I would have free administrator at the beginning in all the worlds. Even ended up joining a US world - just because.
Of course, I quickly become a bit invested again. In Zaforas, I wanted to grow and get the chance to build some specialized cities, but I was surrounded by fully built cities in ocean 44. So, what's the most efficient way to farm battle points under such circumstances? Attack with light ships. However, before attacking bigger players with light ships, I wanted to at least get up wall, phalanx, tower and full defense. If I was to lose to city, I wanted to defend efficiently so that the battle points would be worthwhile. However, last evening, I ran out of patience, and also felt it was too much of a risk leaving 45 light ships around. I had gotten Aristotle and had accelerated my production a bit. So, while rushing a build-up of my wall as quickly as possible, I started attacking big players around me. As always, I'm too cheap to scout with silver, so I just wanted to attack people blindly. Most people I attacked were online and reacted with a wisdom spell after a few minutes. I hurriedly recalled my attacks, only one of them getting to cast sea storm on my fleet. Eventually I hit the mark and got a worthwhile exchange of battle points.
After my initial attacks, I immediate had a guy sending several attacks against me. I hadn't even attacked him with the light ships, but I assume I had attacked someone he know. I figured my city might be a goner. I immediately activated the swordman, archer and hoplite tokens I had in my inventory (always saving these up for a revolted city) and hurriedly got my last offensive units killed to make sure that if the attacks were small ones, I could free up enough population that the 800 units I had just started to conjure into existence would all be able to join the city. So, when my light ship attack hit, that was the last of my offensive units dying. Funny enough, I hadn't noticed that the inactive player I had been attacking for BP and resources was no longer the same guy - in my attempt to clear out my offensive units and get resources for my wall, I had actually attacked the guy who was going for me:
He had just taken over that city from the inactive player, and had even colonized on the island next door.
As I was waiting for the attacks to arrive, I realized that even though I didn't have much population left, I didn't have such a big defending army. I hadn't finished building farm yet, and had quite a bit in offensive units, which has mislead me. I figured I could still defend against a single land nuke, but I forgot just how efficient the Ares Bloodlust spell can be and had also forgotten to activate my free three-day Commander. So, that lead to a revolt happening, despite me having activated all the defensive tokens I saved up:
The wall wasn't down too much, so I scrambled to rebuild it. I was planning to put up a defiant defense, but I realized I couldn't do too much. I still had 500 units that were being conjured, and could build at most a few hundred more in my main city and three small colonized cities nearby, before the revolt would start.
One of the guys I had attacked with light ships sent a random message, asking if I lost something. When he did, I had written back that I was trying to lose some light ships. He warned me that this was a dangerous area that was heating up, and I later sent him this revolt battle report to let him know I had spotted this tendency. Little did I know that the attacker was the founder of the leading alliance in this world, and significant rivals of the alliance I was messaging. They decided to send him. Suddenly, I had 20k defensive units in my city. They kept putting city protection on my city, even though I told them that any attack would be very unlikely to attack once they saw such number. With me being too cheap to put silver in a cave or build cave beyond level 5, spying me would be easy (and he had a city on the island for harbor checks). We had placed the defensive units quite early, before I had to go to bed, so I figured nothing more would come of this revolt.
I wake up, with lot of sleep, to a masse of incoming attacks, reports and notifications. I ask for resources to build the city wall, and I decide that I have to use gold to get it from level 20 to 25 city wall. With so many defending units that aren't mine, it wouldn't be fair of me not to do so. I activated free commander and even the free three-day captain. When the original revolt attack occurred, I had quickly switched the hero to Hector, the best defensive hero I had. But in the midst of the chaos, I completely forgot to use the 400 hero coins I had to level him up. I was very busy sorting through a few hundred notifications, finding out which attacks were launched first, while I was offline, and which would be the CS. I gave the timing to my helpers, so that we could try to snipe the CS and some of the land nukes. The instant city protection expired, I renewed it, and the same with my defensive city bonus.
And then came the attacks - many of them timed fairly tightly together: View the battle reports for the final battle
A glorious mass of attacks. We did snipe some of the land nukes, but didn't snipe the CS (my bad for lacking sleep and messing up the order of the attacks from notifications). Luckily, we didn't have to - we had plenty of units to defend, as it showed.
ErikWijmeersch, the attacker, congratulated us on the good defending, and said the good old fashioned defending skills displayed gave him a bit of hope back for this game. He said that the lure of double battle points (everyone seems to have "Divine battle strategy" token - I guess there must've been an event) made him go all in for the attack. In the end, he did get quite a few battle points, and so did I and the other defenders:
So a lot of battle points to grow - we'll see if I live to use them
Either way, if no tales are told, this game seems a lot less meaningful. So, I thought I'd add my little tale, even if it is quite insignificant.
Two weeks ago, I accidentally joined the game. Initially, I joined Acherontia just to try whichever new world was there. I figured I would play for long, so I thought that while I was click, I might as well farm some gold for a later playthrough (I'm not used to using gold, but when I played two years ago, I realized the value of at least having administrator, and found out you could sell resources to get gold), so when Basiletopia opened, I joined that one as well. But realizing that these worlds had quite horrible end games, I joined Zaforas, which was normal domination. I thought it might be satisfying to fire off some manticore nukes and bireme snipes, and thought I might as well join a few world while I was clicking farming villages. After, pressing CTRL + 1/2/3/4 in the browser and doing a few clicks for farming villages only took a few seconds, and I would have free administrator at the beginning in all the worlds. Even ended up joining a US world - just because.
Of course, I quickly become a bit invested again. In Zaforas, I wanted to grow and get the chance to build some specialized cities, but I was surrounded by fully built cities in ocean 44. So, what's the most efficient way to farm battle points under such circumstances? Attack with light ships. However, before attacking bigger players with light ships, I wanted to at least get up wall, phalanx, tower and full defense. If I was to lose to city, I wanted to defend efficiently so that the battle points would be worthwhile. However, last evening, I ran out of patience, and also felt it was too much of a risk leaving 45 light ships around. I had gotten Aristotle and had accelerated my production a bit. So, while rushing a build-up of my wall as quickly as possible, I started attacking big players around me. As always, I'm too cheap to scout with silver, so I just wanted to attack people blindly. Most people I attacked were online and reacted with a wisdom spell after a few minutes. I hurriedly recalled my attacks, only one of them getting to cast sea storm on my fleet. Eventually I hit the mark and got a worthwhile exchange of battle points.
After my initial attacks, I immediate had a guy sending several attacks against me. I hadn't even attacked him with the light ships, but I assume I had attacked someone he know. I figured my city might be a goner. I immediately activated the swordman, archer and hoplite tokens I had in my inventory (always saving these up for a revolted city) and hurriedly got my last offensive units killed to make sure that if the attacks were small ones, I could free up enough population that the 800 units I had just started to conjure into existence would all be able to join the city. So, when my light ship attack hit, that was the last of my offensive units dying. Funny enough, I hadn't noticed that the inactive player I had been attacking for BP and resources was no longer the same guy - in my attempt to clear out my offensive units and get resources for my wall, I had actually attacked the guy who was going for me:
He had just taken over that city from the inactive player, and had even colonized on the island next door.
As I was waiting for the attacks to arrive, I realized that even though I didn't have much population left, I didn't have such a big defending army. I hadn't finished building farm yet, and had quite a bit in offensive units, which has mislead me. I figured I could still defend against a single land nuke, but I forgot just how efficient the Ares Bloodlust spell can be and had also forgotten to activate my free three-day Commander. So, that lead to a revolt happening, despite me having activated all the defensive tokens I saved up:
The wall wasn't down too much, so I scrambled to rebuild it. I was planning to put up a defiant defense, but I realized I couldn't do too much. I still had 500 units that were being conjured, and could build at most a few hundred more in my main city and three small colonized cities nearby, before the revolt would start.
One of the guys I had attacked with light ships sent a random message, asking if I lost something. When he did, I had written back that I was trying to lose some light ships. He warned me that this was a dangerous area that was heating up, and I later sent him this revolt battle report to let him know I had spotted this tendency. Little did I know that the attacker was the founder of the leading alliance in this world, and significant rivals of the alliance I was messaging. They decided to send him. Suddenly, I had 20k defensive units in my city. They kept putting city protection on my city, even though I told them that any attack would be very unlikely to attack once they saw such number. With me being too cheap to put silver in a cave or build cave beyond level 5, spying me would be easy (and he had a city on the island for harbor checks). We had placed the defensive units quite early, before I had to go to bed, so I figured nothing more would come of this revolt.
I wake up, with lot of sleep, to a masse of incoming attacks, reports and notifications. I ask for resources to build the city wall, and I decide that I have to use gold to get it from level 20 to 25 city wall. With so many defending units that aren't mine, it wouldn't be fair of me not to do so. I activated free commander and even the free three-day captain. When the original revolt attack occurred, I had quickly switched the hero to Hector, the best defensive hero I had. But in the midst of the chaos, I completely forgot to use the 400 hero coins I had to level him up. I was very busy sorting through a few hundred notifications, finding out which attacks were launched first, while I was offline, and which would be the CS. I gave the timing to my helpers, so that we could try to snipe the CS and some of the land nukes. The instant city protection expired, I renewed it, and the same with my defensive city bonus.
And then came the attacks - many of them timed fairly tightly together: View the battle reports for the final battle
A glorious mass of attacks. We did snipe some of the land nukes, but didn't snipe the CS (my bad for lacking sleep and messing up the order of the attacks from notifications). Luckily, we didn't have to - we had plenty of units to defend, as it showed.
ErikWijmeersch, the attacker, congratulated us on the good defending, and said the good old fashioned defending skills displayed gave him a bit of hope back for this game. He said that the lure of double battle points (everyone seems to have "Divine battle strategy" token - I guess there must've been an event) made him go all in for the attack. In the end, he did get quite a few battle points, and so did I and the other defenders:
So a lot of battle points to grow - we'll see if I live to use them
Either way, if no tales are told, this game seems a lot less meaningful. So, I thought I'd add my little tale, even if it is quite insignificant.
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