Guide Building a City

DeletedUser

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City-building guide

This guide will try to give you a sense of what's important when building up a city. I will start by explaining why to prioritize some buildings and then I will explain how priorities might very in different situations.

Farming villages

When you start a new city, you should make sure to get your farming villages as soon as possible. If you're a very active player (who makes 5-minute demands for at least three hours every day), they will be your main source of income. Getting six of the eight farming villages on your island is quite easy. They get harder to take every time your capture a new one (see details in the Grepolis farming guide, so don't conquer your seventh farming village before you have a big city. To take the first four farming villages, simply get some slingers. They will easily defeat what is defending the farming villages. There will be 60 swordsmen defending the fifth farming village, so build some hoplites to defeat the fifth farming village as well. The sixth farming village can be defeated with 60 slingers (although, if you have them, using horsemen is optimal, and you need as few as 15), but you will need at least 150 slingers to defeat the seventh farming village. Always capture the farming villages with the highest levels first. Other players on your island have separate farming villages (meaning they can own all eight farming villages even though you do the same), so when you do with the farming villages has no effect on other players on your island, except if you expand them (then others on the island will benefit, since the levels are same for all players).

While you are online, you demand resources from your farming villages. Initially, you will have the choice of four different demands, and when you research booty, you will have eight different choices:

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The example here comes from a farming village that is level 5. Every time you have some excess resources, it would be wise to use them to expand your farming villages since this will gain you more resources in the long run. If you demand 36 of each resource, you have to wait five minutes before you can demand from that village again, but if you demand 555 of each resources, you will have to wait 480 minutes (eight hours). One very important thing to note is the lower option you choose, the more resources per minute you will get. This makes a huge difference. Here, if I choose to get 36 of each resource, I will get 7,2 of each resources per minute. Meanwhile if I choose, I will only get 1,15 of each resources per minute. So, this system greatly favours people who spend a lot of time on demanding resources from the farming villages. If you are able to stay online for a while and demand resources every five minutes, this will earn you much more resources than if you only demand every eight hours. But when you go to sleep, of course, the best option is the eight hours, since you will not be demanding resources while you sleep (hopefully :D).

Here is an illustration of the difference in resources if you were to use the different demand-options for a full 24 hours (with level 5 farming village used as an example):

Demand every 5 minutes: 10.368 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 10 minutes: 8.640 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 20 minutes: 5.616 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 40 minutes: 4.716 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 90 minutes: 2.720 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 180 minutes: 2.264 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 240 minutes: 1.998 of each resource per farming village
Demand every 480 minutes: 1.665 of each resource per farming village

Keep in mind that you can also select the loot-option for double the resources and a decrease in the mood of your farming village. Just be careful; once the mood of your farming village drops below 80% (or 64% if you have researched diplomacy), your farming village will revolt if you loot. So, you will lose it and have to capture it back. However, if I'm going to sleep and I loot the farming village causing the mood to decrease by 96%, this does not mean that I lose the farming village. It simply means that the mood will be at 4%, and I should not loot the farming villages before the mood goes to a safe level again (but demanding resources is still fine). Generally I don't loot the farming village to a mood below 80% as this will make me unable to trade with them. If you loot, you should use the 20-minute option where possible as it has the higher ratio of resources per mood percentage. This means that if you don't have too much time to loot, you might as well use the 20-minute option. Otherwise, using the 5-minute option brings you slightly less resources per mood, but will allow you to loot quicker, meaning you can make demands to the farming village afterwards.

A good reason to get market level five early on is that you can trade with farming villages at a really good ratio. The max you can trade with any farming village at a time is 2.000 resources. However, the starting ratio is always 1:1.25, which means that for your 2.000 resources, you get 2.500 back. Once you've traded with a farm, the ratio gets worse, so you have to wait a while until you can trade at the best ratio again. Each farming village can only make a specific trade - wood for stone, for instance. However, if you can manage to plan ahead and balance your resources, trading with farming villages is an easy way to get resources. If you have six farming villages, you just need to trade once with them all to earn 3.000 resources.

Building levels

If you max out all your buildings, they will take up 1132 of your maximum 3500 population. The less free population, the small your offensive or defensive army will have to be. And since this game always favours advantage in numbers, it's a good idea to not waste any population that you don't need, allowing you get to your armies as big as possible. If you stick to the most useful levels of your buildings, they will only take up around 900 population. There are certain buildings that you might not want to max out:

Barracks

Maximum level: 30
Recommended level: 10 (defensive cities: 5)
Reason: People who attack really often might want barracks level 30, but otherwise it really isn't necessary. The difference between level 1 and level 30 is no more than a 30% increase in production speed. Barracks level 15 is required for chariots, level 10 for hosemen, but defensive cities won't need either, and can stick with level 5.

Harbor

Maximum level: 30
Recommended level 5 (conquest cities: 20)
Reason: If you have naval cities, it might be worthwhile to build harbor up to level 30 for quick rebuilding if you have several matured cities and never run out of resources to build. But otherwise, it's not really necessary to build harbor past level 5, the level which is required to be able to build Therman baths. However, you need level 20 harbor to be able to build colony ships. Some will want to be able to do so in all their cities, while others settle for a few cities in strategic positions.

Temple

Maximum level: 25
Recommended level: 15
Reason: At level 15, temple gives you 7.8 favor per hour. If you get to level 25, you can get 10 favor per hour. This difference does not really justfiy using 50 more population, especially once you have more cities, where favor production is not as effective when more cities worship the same god.

Market place

Maximum level: 30
Recommended level: 10
Reason: You only need market place level 10 to be albe to trade with other islands. Having market place level 30 gives you more flexibility when you have many cities running full with resources, but generally isn't necessary. Often you will be able to do with level 10 just fine.
 
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DeletedUser

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Building a city: Important buildings

Important buildings

Harbor

As soon as you build harbor, you get the advantage of having the Phenocian merchant visit your city. He will visit a city 24 hours after he finished his last (make sure to dismiss him as soon as you have used his offers), but bear in mind that if you have more than one city it's hardly any advantage to get the Phoenician merchant to visit the new city, since he alternates between cities. The reason that Phoenician merchant provides a decent benefit is that he trades resources to you in a 1:1.50 ratio, which means that apart from the flexibility that trading resoruces can give you, you earn 50% on top of the resources that you trade. Every time the merchant comes, he demands a different resource. How much you can trade depends on your level of harbor. See a few examples:

Harbor level 1: Trade 800 resources
Harbor level 5: Trade 1334 resources
Harbor level 10: Trade 2000 resources
Harbor level 20: Trade 3334 resources

So, even if you just get level 1 harbor, which is quite cheap, you can trade resources. An added advantage is that the Phoenician merchans offers units. These units cost 50% more than they would in your barracks, and they can only be bought with silver. The advantage is that you can get units you might now have the research to build yet and you get them instantly. So, if you want some units for a quick attack or need some catapults without wanting the research, you can get them this way. For defending, it also comes in handy to instantly summon units.

Another reason that it's important to get the harbor early is the flexibility it gives you to be able to build ships. With just a level one harbor, you can build any ships except colony ships. And without research, you can build transport ships to send units to attack or defend somewhere that your allies might need.

Market place

The reason that it's important to get market place early is because of the additional income it can provide. Farming villages that you capture will trade with you at a 1:1.25 ratio, meaning that you get earn 25% of what you trade each time. A faming village can at most trade you for 2000 of your resources at one time, and once you trade, it will take around 24 hours for the farming villages to be willing to trade at the best ratio again, with the ratio going to 1:0.50 after the trade and slowly increasing. If you have captured all eight farming villages on an island, you can earn 4000 resources every day through trading. Furthermore, traading with farming villages is a great way to balance your resources if you have an excess or shortage of certain resources. If the farming villages cannot help you here, you also have the option of trading with other players from within the market place.

Temple

Even if you are at your first city and don't find any specific use for a god yet, you should still get temple as early as possible. They first few levels of temple are very cheap in terms of providing a lot of favor at a small cost. At later levels, the benefit compared to the cost will be much lower. While you might not find use for spells against enemies if your city only has 1.500 points and no one is attacking you, some of spells can benefit your resource income. If you build temple level 5, it will gain you 106 favor per day. If you choose Poseidon as your god, you can cast Kingly Gift (800 wood for 25 favor) four times a day, which earn you an added income of 3.200 wood. If you choose Hera, you can cast Happiness on your city almost once a day. If you level were at maximum, the spell would be worth around 8.500 resources, but even if all your mines are level 15, it will still earn you 1.908 resources.

Resource producing buildings

Some people might underestimate the importance of a high level of resource producing buildings (Timber camp, Quarry, Silver mine). But at maximum levels, they will produce 50.400 resources a day. Even if you use demands quite actively from your farming villages, these buildings will likely provide half of your income. That said, if you're an very active player, you might want to stop upgrading these buildings once they reach level 15 and instead get the benefits of academy and temple as early as possible. Later on, once other important buildings are built, you can upgrade the resource producing buildings.

Academy

Many get started on academy right away because they want to be able to conquer others as soon as possible. However, another reason why it's essential to research early are the many accumulative benefits you can get from research. Apart from the acumulative benefits, some research also provides great benefit in short time and at low cost.

Techs with accumulative benefits: Architecture (level 13), Conscription (level 16), Phalanx (level 25), Mathematics (level 25), Battering Ram (level 28)
Cheap techs with great benefit: City guard (level 4), Booty (level 7), Ceramics (level 7), Plow (level 22)

There are certain things you should not waste your research point on, while there are others that depend on what the purpose of your city is. See the following example, for instance:

x5xes0.jpg


This is a defensive naval city, with on the research necesarry for biremes. Phalanx is researched as well, since land troops sent to defend the city will benefit from that research. If the purpose of the city was different, for instance a multi-purpose city, it would need, at the very least, to research other things as well. You will want fast tranport ships and bunks for attacking, and since slingers and horsemen are the units most commonly used for attacks, you will want them both researched. People rarely use chariots (unless for defense), and you can skip that research and use hoplites as a cheaper replacement. Chariots can be a useful alternative if you often end up with unbalanced resources from just building hoplites, though. If your city is an offensive land troop city, you will likely want to research Trainer, since you will have to rebuild your troops several times.

af7ryf.jpg


The above is a normal multi-purpose city, which has everything it needs.

There are various things you should never or very rarely research, and I have explained in these below:

Diplomacy: Researching diplomacy does not really help you, unless you log in less that once a day. By lowering the mood at which a farming village with revolt if you loot it from 80% to 64%, the research enables you to loot more. So, if you are not online for a full day, you can loot the farming village with the most effective 5-minute option, get it below 64% and still not waste any mood by having the mood reach 100% (where it cannot grow). However, normally it's very useful to keep the mood above 80% since this will allow you to trade with farming villages, something that can help you balance your researches and provide extra income.

Espionage: Having your spies be 10% quicker is not really enough to make a significant difference. If you need to spy a target before attacking it (usually when you haven't spied on this target recently), then it will save you a bit of time and allow you to start your attack quicker, but 10% still isn't enough to warrant this research.

Bireme: I will not build biremes in cities where I intend to attack. Normally, the attacker will make sure to have enough light ships to kill your biremes, and if he doesn't, he's likely not big enough to attack you anyway. I would rather have one of my cities where I only build biremes, meaning I can send them somewhere to defend and have enough biremes to kill off the entire attacking fleet and the transport ships as well. When you don't have any birimes, you won't have any ships to defend your light ships when they are in your city, so be careful not to leave them in your city when you are offline (at least if people have attacked you with light ships before).

Shipwright: Unless your city is a pure naval city, you will often have the ship that you need and will not need to reproduce them quickly. If your city is one where you make big attacks with offensive land troops, you will likely lose a lot of land trops if you lose all your escorting light ships, so the light ships will reubild more quickly than the land troops anyway.

Democracy: This research will mean that it takes another player 10% longer to capture your city. So, instead of it taking 12 hours, it will take 13,2 hours. Not much of a different, and I do not intend of letting others capture my cities in the first place. Probably the most useless research.

Fire ship: Researching this is pretty useless. Yes, fire ships are fairly cost effective, always killing one ship per fire ship, so you can ignore any bonuses an opponent might get from research and premium-features. But it's normally something you only want to use if you are always outnumbered and on the defensive. Fire ships are slow and cannot attack. They cannot kill transport ship or colony ships, so it someone conquers your city, he will simply get the fire ships. Fire ships will only enter battle once your other ships are killed, so the only thing their numbers will serve to do is to kill enemy light ships that otherwise would have done you no harm.

Cryptography: All this research really will do is to save you some silver from time to time. If you have 1000 silver in your cave, people who spy onm your city will need 1.201 silver to get their spy through. Really not very worthwhile, especially since people will often use a bit more silver than they have to.

(continued in next post due to character limit)
 
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DeletedUser

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Building a city: Special buildings and matching your style

Breakthrough: This can be really useful against a player who has a naval sea defense as it means many more of your transport ships will get through. However, situation where this pays off will be rare, not to mention that you will lose many more of your light ships in the attack. So, generally, it's not worthwhile to research this, even though it can be under certain circumstances (if you often have massive land armies that outnumber your opponents but only few light ships to accompany, or if an alliance you are at war against have loads of biremes). Keep in mind, though, that even though your land troops kill all enemy land troops, you still cannot capture a city if it still has ships left defending it, so breakthrough is mostly useful to break a siege on your own city (if you play in conquest world), since you can get through the biremes that are sent in support of the beseiged city and kill the land troops, which will break the siege.

Trireme: A very versatile ship, which can both defend and attack. The advantage of a slightly stronger ship to defend (compared to bireme) is that is some marginal situations, you would not lose a trireme where you would lose a bireme. However, building triremes isn't at all cost effective, since a trireme costs 1,75 times as much as a light ship, but has less attack and costs 2,5 times as much as a bireme, but only has 1,6 times as much defense.

Meteorology: Unless you have a lot of enemies that you attack often on the same island as you city, it's a bit of a waste to research this. It does not affect the speed of units when they are travelling in a ship. I do not know whether this research affects flying units, but I think it does. So, if you have a city where you only build manticores, this would be useful to research.

Crane: Once you max out your buildings, this research is of no use at all. It might be worthwhile to research early to get the benefit, but just remember that it costs one culture point to reset research later. The cost of this culture point might be equalized through the benefit of getting buildings that can gain you resources earlier, but it's certainly not a given choice to get this research.

Special buildings

The special buildings are the ones on the bottom on each side of your building tree. You can only build two in total, one from each side. Therefore, you must choose carefully which special buildings to build.

On the left side, people will almost always build Therman baths. With maximum farm and Plow researched, you maximum population is 3200. With Thermal baths, your maximum population will be 3500, which makes a big difference when you want your attack or defense to be as effective as possible due to size in numbers. The alternatives are not great. Theater can enable to to get culture points a bit cheaper than you can from city festivals through theather plays. However, each theather play takes 2,5 days to complete, while a city festival takes only 12 hours. Of course, if you have way too many resources, constantly having city festivals in all your cities, Theather can provide you an added source of culture points, but its use is reallly quite limited. Library gives you added research points, but this should not really be necessary if you choose your research carefully. Lighthouse makes your ships 15% faster, which definitely is a significant advantage. With this advantage, your enemies will have less tiem to react to your attacks and you will have more time to send support to allies. However, this advantage comes into play too rarely to be worth cutting down your maximum population, and I would only really recommend it in a defensive navfal city (one that only builds biremes).

On the right side, the choice is less obvious. Most peope will build tower, which provides a 10% strength bonus to both defending naval and land units. However, the pitfall of this, in conquest worlds, is that once your city is beseiged, the large number of biremes send to help support the siege will have the benefit that the tower provides. In such a sitiatuion, it will likely end up providing a greater benefit to your enemies than yourself. In all other cases, it provides a decent benefit, though, that can easily end up being worthwhile, especially since you cannot destroy a tower (unlike city walls, for instance). Meanwhile, Divine Statue gives you a decent increase to favor production. Many players will often keep their favor near max, and won't need to reproduce it too quickly, but if you need to cast Sea Storm, a spell that costs 280 favor points, twice in the duration of incoming attacks from an enemy, it is necessary to have quick favour regeeration. Once you have more cities worshipping the same god, though, the boost provided by Divine Statue is not as significant, though, and it loses much of its usefulness. Merchant's Shop is useful as well, since it increases the ratio in farming villages to 1:1.35, meaning that you can suddenly earn 5.600 resources a day per city if you own all eight farming villages on an island instead of 4.000 resources. You also get better rates at the Phoenician merchant, allowing you to earn more resources when he visits. Apart from that, it increase the trading capacity of your market place by 50%, which can be useful to some. Oracle is useless, since anyone who keeps a big city for a few weeks will likely have deposited 50.000-100.000 silver in the cave, meaning that they will likely stop anyone trying to spy on them. This makes Oracle redundant, and most attacks later in the game will likely be blind anyway (without spying first). A viable option is not to build your special building on the right side, since you save 60 population and don't lose any great benefit.

Keep in mind that each special building is worth 500 points, even if they don't cost much. So, don't build them before you need them, as they will make your city a more attractive target.

Matching your playing style

When you understand why the different buildings are important, you really just need to match your playing style while building a city. Never have too low a warehouse, for instance. You cannot have more resources in your city than what you can keep in your warehouse, so if you're an active player who gains a lot of resources through demanding, attacks or trading, these will be lost if you bring in resources once the limit of the warehouse has been reached. Such an active player might want level 10 cave early as well, since its unlimited silver capacity makes sure you always have a useful place to deposit excess silver (if you're in a peaceful period, where you don't rebuild any defense, chances are you will have too much silver, unless you attack more often with horsemen than slingers). Some people will be able to build a city up quickly and just make sure to max out the academy right away so that they can make use of the combat bonuses as they start building up an army. Others will want to research the battle research quickly and need academy for that reason. Other players log in less than once a day, and will likely need to focus on their mines early as they will be the main source of income.
 
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DeletedUser

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Please explain why, and I've be happy to answer in turn, or even adjust :)

My only guess would be that you're confusing this with a beginner's guide where it's mostly a general guide of how an active player can make the most use of his city.
 

DeletedUser

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unfortunately there is actually quite a lot that i would disagree with, but maybe i can point out some of the most important things for me.

The sixth farming village can be defeated with 60 slingers, but you will need 250 hoplites to defeat the seventh farming village
they can probably be defeated with those units, but in a guide i would prefer to see the best way of doing it, which would be with horses and slingers respectively.

I just loot every five minutes until the farm drops to 80%
5-minute looting is not the most efficient resources per unit of mood (which is imo the most important factor when looting) and in a guide i prefer to see the the most effective and efficient methods, which in this case would be 20-min looting.

on the left side you have a tough choice ... Thermal Baths, ... Lighthouse ... Theatre ... and Library
i would probably leave the library out since a lvl30 academy gives you more than enough research points to get what you need. i've never built a theatre, but apparently some people like them so fair enough :p (whereas i don't know any experienced play who would consider a library a good choice)

On the right side, Tower seems a fairly obvious choice, although depending on your strategy, you might go for Oracle
tower is a good choice if you plan on defending in a town (which is not very often for most people i know), and oracle is probably the least useful special building imo. people generally go for either statue or tower (or nothing, i rarely build a right-side special) and apparently in 2.0 merchant might be helpful for world wonders, but i've never tried to build one of those myself, so i don't know.

Keep in mind that the above example is a multi-purpose city, whereas your research will largely vary if you use specialized cities for a multi-city strategy.
basically i think that people need to do the multi-city stuff, a multi-purpose city is like shooting yourself in the foot in grepolis since you will never have strong attacks from those cities and they are not strong enough to defend either unless you stack defence form other cities (in which case, you might as well have been using the multi-city strategy). that said, i still disagree with the researches you've chosen even for a multipurpose city. meteorology and crane and next to useless since building speed is not important other than in the early stages of your first city imo (although you can always unlearn it later along with architecture once your city is fully built) and fast attacks over land mean nothing since 95% of grepolis attacking take place between islands rather than on them. for similar reasons i'd say that mathematics is one of the most important researches (and shipwright is also v nice).


not sure if i got it all, but i think that covers quite a bit...
 

DeletedUser

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5-minute looting is not the most efficient resources per unit of mood (which is imo the most important factor when looting) and in a guide i prefer to see the the most effective and efficient methods, which in this case would be 20-min looting.

actually you are wrong, because in the 40 minutes it would take to get the mood to 80 with 20 minute farming, you can have four 5 minute loots and four 5 minute demands, which in total comes out as more.
 

DeletedUser

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they can probably be defeated with those units, but in a guide i would prefer to see the best way of doing it, which would be with horses and slingers respectively.

I think you are reading too much into this. Yes, obviously horsemen can more easily kill archers than slingers, but that's assuming that people have researched horsemen and actually built them. Slingers is something everyone should have research and built. There is hardly much difference that this stage. Attack with 300 slingers, lose 37, attacking with 100 horsemen, lose 7. But, once again, to satisfy you I will add a parenthesis about the horsemen :p

You're right about the second one, though. Clearly a mistake on my part. Don't think I never too the time to calculate, only thought about the last of sharp defense of horsemen.

5-minute looting is not the most efficient resources per unit of mood (which is imo the most important factor when looting) and in a guide i prefer to see the the most effective and efficient methods, which in this case would be 20-min looting.

I didn't actually realize that the ratio was different higher at 20 minutes. I guess that might be the more comfortable option, although I would probably alternate between the two to get the the right level of mood (using 5-minute option is still better, but requires more time). I have edited this in.

i would probably leave the library out since a lvl30 academy gives you more than enough research points to get what you need. i've never built a theatre, but apparently some people like them so fair enough :p (whereas i don't know any experienced play who would consider a library a good choice)

Yeah, I made this as my first guide about a month ago. I thought I had edited the library out, but I had simply made references to it later. There is no way I would ever go for Library when using a multi-city strategy, which is why I say that you never need Library in my multi-city guide. I have edited this now.

tower is a good choice if you plan on defending in a town (which is not very often for most people i know), and oracle is probably the least useful special building imo. people generally go for either statue or tower (or nothing, i rarely build a right-side special) and apparently in 2.0 merchant might be helpful for world wonders, but i've never tried to build one of those myself, so i don't know.

Somehow I have messed up and typed Oracle instead of Divine statue. Obviously, building Oracle makes no sense. Once you have 100K silver in your cave, you will always know who's spying you. I will edit this part. Thanks.


basically i think that people need to do the multi-city stuff, a multi-purpose city is like shooting yourself in the foot in grepolis since you will never have strong attacks from those cities and they are not strong enough to defend either unless you stack defence form other cities (in which case, you might as well have been using the multi-city strategy). that said, i still disagree with the researches you've chosen even for a multipurpose city. meteorology and crane and next to useless since building speed is not important other than in the early stages of your first city imo (although you can always unlearn it later along with architecture once your city is fully built) and fast attacks over land mean nothing since 95% of grepolis attacking take place between islands rather than on them. for similar reasons i'd say that mathematics is one of the most important researches (and shipwright is also v nice).

I agree completely - I would never research those if I had the choice today, and haven't done so in my five other cities. When I started in Phi, I wasn't playing seriously and didn't really think too much about the research (thinking I would eventually get all I needed). Just look at my comments further down in the post (where describing what researches not to pick). The point of the screenshot was to show that I had avoided certain researches. Afterwards, I point out that there are some which would be desirable for me to have. Shipwright is not one of them, since the only ships I need to build are those that cover my raids.
 
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DeletedUser

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I'd like to see an in depth breakdown of the 2.0 farming system.

(P)rza
 

DeletedUser

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Uzra, I'm not sure what else you would like to know about it. I put it as simple as possible to avoid wasting people's time with trivial and obvious details. If you're simply talking about the numbers and such in regards to the farming system, you can find them in the 2.0 Farming guide..
 

DeletedUser

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actually you are wrong, because in the 40 minutes it would take to get the mood to 80 with 20 minute farming, you can have four 5 minute loots and four 5 minute demands, which in total comes out as more.
yes, the 5 minute looting gives more resources per minute, but that isn't what i was talking about. i'm talking about resources per unit of mood, since mood is a more limiting factor than time imo and i'd rather make the most of the mood.
 

DeletedUser

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yes, the 5 minute looting gives more resources per minute, but that isn't what i was talking about. i'm talking about resources per unit of mood, since mood is a more limiting factor than time imo and i'd rather make the most of the mood.

Pythagorus, now you're just unwilling to admit that your advise only has limited use. If you don't have the time to loot or demand every five minutes, using the 20-minute option is clearly better. If you do, howerver, then using the 5-minute loot options yields better results. That is a factual matter, not a matter of preference in regards to "making the most of the mood".
 

DeletedUser

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Pythagorus, now you're just unwilling to admit that your advise only has limited use. If you don't have the time to loot or demand every five minutes, using the 20-minute option is clearly better. If you do, howerver, then using the 5-minute loot options yields better results. That is a factual matter, not a matter of preference in regards to "making the most of the mood".
i don't think it's a factual matter at all or an 'unwillingness to admit' anything, even if i was on 24hrs a day to do 5min demands i would still loot 20mins because i believe it's the most effective way of farming. if you believe that 5min looting is more effective then it's a view you are welcome to have, but i really don't think you can tell people that 5min looting the best method since there can be (and apparently is) some debate on that. maybe you can mention both 5 and 20 minute methods and let readers make their own decision.

in my opinion mood is a valuable resource since it can be used to get more resources from your farming villages, and thus i like to get the most resources for the mood in my villages, regardless of time.

i'm not sure how to explain it other than to say you get more resource for each unit decrease in mood, so if that is not enough of a reason for you then feel free to use the 5min looting.
 

DeletedUser

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Pythagorus, you're right, apparently it's not unwillingness to admit it - you just simply didn't understand what sploggo said. Let me put it very plainly:

Getting resources from level 5 farming village farming village using 40 minutes of time


Using 5-minute option
Method: Loot 5 minute x 4, demand 5 minute x 4
Resources gained: 432 of each resource
Mood spent: 24

Using 20-minute option
Method: Loot 20 minute x 2
Resources gained: 314 of each resource
Mood spent: 24

See the difference? Now, if at any point during your time with Grepolis, you have around 20 minutes (preferably not more) where you know you won't be using the game, then you should always use the 20-minute looting option. So, your advice is sound, just doesn't apply to being the most effective method.
 
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DeletedUser

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you are right of course, my apologies (bow)

i actually just came onto the forum now to tell you that i had a minute to think about it and i was actually wrong, but it seems you beat me to it ;)
 

DeletedUser6156

Guest
Not sure I agree with the majority of this guide so I thought I could show you where I disagree and see if you can convince me.

Mines

If you are not active enough to build up a useful attack force to capture new cities, you might just want to colonize a new city. This means that you can pick your exact location for the city and put it right next to players from your alliance.
I believe you can pick the location of a city you want to conquest as well ;) if you don't like it don't choose it. Colonising is as much restricted as conquering and advising people to colonise is not something that I feel makes a good guide.

When you start the new city, you will be building up mines at even levels and building up the farm alongside them. How you build your mine levels beyond level 15 fully depends on your desired unit mix. If you're looking for a defensive mix of archers and swordsmen, you will want a higher level timber camp, but if you're looking to build offensive units, you will want higher level quarry. Either way, always have your silver mines at higher levels than your other mines, especially if you build units for attack since you will more often spend resources on rebuilding units you attacked with and lost than on buildings.
If you don't max out your mines, personally I try to, you should be using the island bonuses to give you the spec of a city. You can use these to your advantage by creating cities that use lots of the + resource and less of the -. For example building a Light Ship nuke on +wood/-stone island.

Farming villages

Initially, don't build your mines beyond level 15 (unless you're not very active, in which case, you will need the resources from mine production more). Instead, you should make sure to get your farming villages as soon as possible. If you're a fairly active player, they will be your main source of income. Getting six of the eight farming villages on your island is quite easy. They get harder to take every time your capture a new one (see details in the Grepolis farming guide, so don't conquer your seventh farming village before you have a big city. To take the first four farming villages, simply get some slingers. They will easily defeat what is defending the farming villages. There will be 60 swordsmen defending the fifth farming village, so build some hoplites to defeat the fifth farming village as well. The sixth farming village can be defeated with 60 slingers (although, if you have them, using horsemen is optimal, and you need as few as 15), but you will need at least 150 slingers to defeat the seventh farming village. Always capture the farming villages with the highest levels first. Other players on your island have separate farming villages (meaning they can own all eight farming villages even though you do the same), so when you do with the farming villages has no effect on other players on your island.

Higher mine levels, means more resources, means quicker build times. It makes no sense not to build up your mines past 15. I agree that getting farming villages is a priority but I don't understand why you wouldn't build your mines up at the same time?
On top of that your actions do effect the farms for other players, by expanding the farms (increasing their levels) you do so for every player on the island.


While you are online, you demand resources from your farming villages. Initially, you will have the choice of four different demands, and when you research booty, you will have eight different choices:

to

The only thing to really keep in mind when building up your city is the have a high level warehouse so that you will never end up blocking your increase of resources if you reach your limit. Grepolis is evil, so even if you capture or otherwise gain resources, they will simply vanish into thin air if you don't have space for them in your warehouse. When you warehouse is high enough in level, make sure to get a high level senate as early as possible, since it will decrease building speed of everything else (and later, when your city is big, having a high level senate is needed to build the special buildings such as Thermal Baths and Tower).
I agree with all of this part, nice job.

Of course, when starting up a city, the most important thing is to get up your research. Research such as Architecture, Crane, Conscription and Phalanx will have an accumulative positive effect, so the earlier you get them, the better. Researching Ceramics and Plow are also cheap ways of getting more population and resource storage space. You will need city wall for defense, so get that to at least level 6 relatively early as well.

Another thing to keep in mind is that buildings are really cheap at their first levels. So, make sure to quickly build a few levels of temple. For few resources, you can get started on accumulating favor points and use them to cast spells on your city that will get you more resources (usually, choosing Hera as your god and casting Happiness on your city will earn you the most resources). Build level 1 harbor early as well, since, as soon as you have a harbor, you will be visiting by the Phoenician merchant, who will offer you to trade resources at very favourable rates (meaning that you can earn resources by trading, but also balance any resource deficits). Of course, if you have more than one city, this might not be preferable, since the Phoenician merchant will alternative his visits between your different cities, meaning that he will not visit your more established cities as often (and it seems that the bigger harbor you have, the more resources he will trade with you). He will also offer you units, but they cost more than they normally would in the barracks, so only get them if you really need them (for instance, it's useful to buy catapults if you haven't researched them yet and need to break down some city walls).

I don't use crane as the decrease in time is not worth the cultural point to reset or the 8 research points if I chose not to use it. However I think its been proven that getting Architecture as soon as possible will save you enough resources to get the culture point needed to reset the research and then some.
The Phoenician merchant troops are useful because the units are trained instantly, through the use of premium and a lot of silver you can quickly make a small army that it would have taken hours to build.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I believe you can pick the location of a city you want to conquest as well ;) if you don't like it don't choose it. Colonising is as much restricted as conquering and advising people to colonise is not something that I feel makes a good guide.

You're thinking about completely new worlds, with cities everywhere. In many worlds, there are only few cities, so colonizing can be an effective tool for strategic positioning. Only takes a week or two to get your new city to 4000-5000 points anyway.

If you don't max out your mines, personally I try to, you should be using the island bonuses to give you the spec of a city. You can use these to your advantage by creating cities that use lots of the + resource and less of the -. For example building a Light Ship nuke on +wood/-stone island.

Resources specialization of islands is not important enough to take priority other factors. With market place, you can easily trade between islands. More important than resource specialization is in fact which resources your farming villages are willing to trade with.

Higher mine levels, means more resources, means quicker build times. It makes no sense not to build up your mines past 15. I agree that getting farming villages is a priority but I don't understand why you wouldn't build your mines up at the same time?
On top of that your actions do effect the farms for other players, by expanding the farms (increasing their levels) you do so for every player on the island.

Certainly, even if cities where I carefully try to preserve as much population as possible, I still max out mines. I'm not saying you should build mines past level 15, but as an active player that should come much later. There are much more important things to get done first, such as academy and city wall. Eventually you will build mines bigger. As said, how big mines you build depend on your activity.

Yes, it's true about the join expansion of farms. I know that by now (I assumed it wasn't the case since I had several level 1 farms on an island with several active players), but I guess I never edited that part. Will change that now.

I don't use crane as the decrease in time is not worth the cultural point to reset or the 8 research points if I chose not to use it. However I think its been proven that getting Architecture as soon as possible will save you enough resources to get the culture point needed to reset the research and then some.
The Phoenician merchant troops are useful because the units are trained instantly, through the use of premium and a lot of silver you can quickly make a small army that it would have taken hours to build.

About crane - true, it's debatable whether to research it. I'd say it's a short-term oriented technology, and I wouldn't got for it myself. I have six cities in Phi, and I have decided not to research it in four of my cities. However, I'm sure you will find that in cities of active players it does in fact pay off in the long term even if you have to invest a culture point to choose other technologies (although not by much). The effect of getting all you buildings faster will mean that you get specific things you need earlier, mines can produce earlier, etc. The question is whether that is worth the inconvenience of not having those research points at an early stage. I have added a mention about the considerations about crane to the text now.

As I said about Phoenician merchant, buy the units if you really need them. I'm not going to include premium Phoenician abuse in my guide.
 

DeletedUser6156

Guest
You're thinking about completely new worlds, with cities everywhere. In many worlds, there are only few cities, so colonizing can be an effective tool for strategic positioning. Only takes a week or two to get your new city to 4000-5000 points anyway.
But if I conquer a city at 5k it doesn't take me those 1-2 weeks to build up and therefore I can expand my cities quicker its also very unlikely you will not find targets in a suitable range

Resources specialization of islands is not important enough to take priority other factors. With market place, you can easily trade between islands. More important than resource specialization is in fact which resources your farming villages are willing to trade with.

Why not use what is in the game to your advantage. Market place trading is fine for one or two cities but if your playing the game on limited time, like most people are, then the resource specialization of your island can be beneficial to you if you use it. Building against it is generally not a wise idea, I wouldn't build a light ship nuke on -wood island because it would take me longer than if I built on + or neutral island. Guides should show people how to do things quicker and correctly. For me although your reasoning is sound your not showing people the best way to go quickly.

Certainly, even if cities where I carefully try to preserve as much population as possible, I still max out mines. I'm not saying you should build mines past level 15, but as an active player that should come much later. There are much more important things to get done first, such as academy and city wall. Eventually you will build mines bigger. As said, how big mines you build depend on your activity.
I'm not sure your understanding what I'm getting at. The higher your mines, the more resources you get. An active player with high mines will grow and build quicker then an active player with low mines. Using mines to compensate for a lack of activity is good, but you should building your mines up as quickly as possible anyway to allow you quicker growth and more resources for building whatever you need.

Yes, it's true about the join expansion of farms. I know that by now (I assumed it wasn't the case since I had several level 1 farms on an island with several active players), but I guess I never edited that part. Will change that now.

About crane - true, it's debatable whether to research it. I'd say it's a short-term oriented technology, and I wouldn't got for it myself. I have six cities in Phi, and I have decided not to research it in four of my cities. However, I'm sure you will find that in cities of active players it does in fact pay off in the long term even if you have to invest a culture point to choose other technologies (although not by much). The effect of getting all you buildings faster will mean that you get specific things you need earlier, mines can produce earlier, etc. The question is whether that is worth the inconvenience of not having those research points at an early stage. I have added a mention about the considerations about crane to the text now.
Fair enough :)

As I said about Phoenician merchant, buy the units if you really need them. I'm not going to include premium Phoenician abuse in my guide.

Premium abuse of the merchant is what its all about :p
Maybe just include the fact the units are trained instantly and that is why they cost more? For me your guide makes it seem like the units aren't that useful when in my opinion when used wisely they are.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
But if I conquer a city at 5k it doesn't take me those 1-2 weeks to build up and therefore I can expand my cities quicker its also very unlikely you will not find targets in a suitable range

That doesn't change the fact that you can capture a 12K point city which is more or less useless to you because it's position has no strategical value. Instead, you will get much more value from a city with less points both better strategical position. Therefore, colonizing can still be viable. The point of me talking about the time it would take to build up a city to 5K points is that you have to think long-term.

Why not use what is in the game to your advantage. Market place trading is fine for one or two cities but if your playing the game on limited time, like most people are, then the resource specialization of your island can be beneficial to you if you use it. Building against it is generally not a wise idea, I wouldn't build a light ship nuke on -wood island because it would take me longer than if I built on + or neutral island. Guides should show people how to do things quicker and correctly. For me although your reasoning is sound your not showing people the best way to go quickly.

You will likely need to use trading no matter what as your resources will be unbalanced by the fact that you get an even amount of all resources from farming villages.

Either way, advice such as this would belong in the multi-city strategy guide, not in the "building a city" guide, which isn't specific advice on colonizing/capturing cities.

I'm not sure your understanding what I'm getting at. The higher your mines, the more resources you get. An active player with high mines will grow and build quicker then an active player with low mines. Using mines to compensate for a lack of activity is good, but you should building your mines up as quickly as possible anyway to allow you quicker growth and more resources for building whatever you need.

The point here is to get your important buildings done as soon as possible so that your city can be useful and help the overall growth of your empire. The more time you use building mines, the longer this takes. As an active player, it's not any challenge to keep your construction queue fill at 15 level mines as well as taking the first 6-7 farming villages on the island.

Maybe just include the fact the units are trained instantly and that is why they cost more? For me your guide makes it seem like the units aren't that useful when in my opinion when used wisely they are.

Meh ... okay :D ... I have included a mention of this now :)
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I put it as simple as possible to avoid wasting people's time with trivial and obvious details.

Yeah, I guess you're right. All the needed information is there.
Basically the general consensus I get is from 100%:
loot 5 mins x3, demand 5 mins for the remainder, until your tired of farming. Then set it to demand for desired sleep time.
That keeps your trading in availability and maximizes resources.

-(P)rza
 
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