DOTW #1- Is Premium the key to being a top player on Phi?

DeletedUser

Guest
dotw.png
So, I'm going to introduce something new to the forum in an attempt to make it more active now and in the future. The idea derived from the DnD forum and should get people to express more views. All the topics will be about Grepolis and more importantly, Phi world.

Every week, a question will be asked, which you can answer with your opinion below. There will be a couple rules in place to make sure this doesn't get out of hand as well as the normal forum rules.

Rules:
Respect is key. Respect everyones opinion, even if you don't agree with it yourself.
Keep on the discussion topic, don't stray.
No egotistical nonsense of any kind, everyone is equal, no matter of in game rank or so.

I will also be requiring some new topics to discuss weekly, so if you have any suggestions, just push them over to me and I'll pick a popular topic to discuss. Oh, and if you plan to use this on another world, please credit.

So, this weeks question:

#1: Is Premium the key to being a top player on Phi?
It has been a long week of BP and its almost over. However, the topic of premium has arisen a number of times in this forum and it is about time it should be discussed. Is it giving players too much of a disadvantage at the top? Or are people mistaking premium for an automatic top rank. Discuss below.
 
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DeletedUser16696

Guest
No premium isn't the key,

I never used premium, only used once or twice to cut a building down, Stay on top of BP and keep cities full of resources is the key.

The more you Kill and conquer a city the easier you be Number one. With no premium used.


In Xi im ranked 66 and never used premium, i know members in my alliance that use it and I'm higher in points and BP, so if that statement is true that player should SUPPOSEDLY be in front of me. The way you play the game is the key
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I think it isn't something that will get you straight to number 1, but there's no denying that it helps alot.

For example, Player 2 was a better player than player 1, but player 1 had premium so he was number 1 because he could put more orders in the construction queue. I think that's unfair, but it's how the game works.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I think it isn't something that will get you straight to number 1, but there's no denying that it helps alot.

For example, Player 2 was a better player than player 1, but player 1 had premium so he was number 1 because he could put more orders in the construction queue. I think that's unfair, but it's how the game works.

I could agree with that aspect, but sometimes I do feel that Premium is overrated in terms of that. Sometimes I think people can mistake that premium=resources... And that people with premium will still need to get the resources to put those buildings on the queue in the first place.

Theres plenty of things a non-premium player could do whilst his/her build queue is full though, like build troops and sometimes premium can be discouraging towards troops.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I could agree with that aspect, but sometimes I do feel that Premium is overrated in terms of that. Sometimes I think people can mistake that premium=resources... And that people with premium will still need to get the resources to put those buildings on the queue in the first place.

Theres plenty of things a non-premium player could do whilst his/her build queue is full though, like build troops and sometimes premium can be discouraging towards troops.


Yeah, I can imagine that mistake. I've had premium once on the beta test server, I was given like 1200 and it did make me grow quicker but I made the mistake of imagining it would give me more resources.

I'd imagine it would help more on slower worlds, because I might have to wait 30 mins for my timber camp and then another 2 hrs for my senate, but a premium player could carry on building.
 

DeletedUser17045

Guest
I am sitting on the fence with this one.

Just like the rest of my followers....

imgres
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Yeah, I can imagine that mistake. I've had premium once on the beta test server, I was given like 1200 and it did make me grow quicker but I made the mistake of imagining it would give me more resources.

I'd imagine it would help more on slower worlds, because I might have to wait 30 mins for my timber camp and then another 2 hrs for my senate, but a premium player could carry on building.

True, I guess. I think premium also gives the ability to make a more strategical plan of building. I know you can work out how much resources you get in 5 minutes then half your building time so that you always have something building but never queued back that far, but does that mean admin is not required?

I somewhat think premium bonuses should be given throughout the game, not only for encouragement but to make it slightly fairer. Eg. 100 gold for reaching 500 points? Could be anything though we all know premium can be gotten for free.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Well, my opinion is that it gives you an edge early on... Other players can keep up without premium but they'd have to be VERY active.

The merchant does give you a definite advantage, but only early on. After a few weeks it stops having such a large effect.


Just a few things to think about...
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Well, my opinion is that it gives you an edge early on... Other players can keep up without premium but they'd have to be VERY active.

The merchant does give you a definite advantage, but only early on. After a few weeks it stops having such a large effect.


Just a few things to think about...

With merchant though, you'll need a higher warehouse level... Is that not a negative balance for merchant. I don't think so, though it may be a downside as those resources may be required elsewhere.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I like the idea of bonuses. On Gamma I see far too many players starting and then just immediately giving up. It'd be good to encourage them.

Isn't there also some kind of fancy command screen for attacks with admin? I think I've seen one before and it would help alot with timing.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I like the idea of bonuses. On Gamma I see far too many players starting and then just immediately giving up. It'd be good to encourage them.

Isn't there also some kind of fancy command screen for attacks with admin? I think I've seen one before and it would help alot with timing.

The attack planner?
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Yeah, that might be it. It shows all the attacks on one city.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Oh no, its one of the admin overviews by the sounds of it. I don't think it helps with timing as so much, though I might be wrong. However, the attack planner does help with planning attacks.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Like, you send some LS from one city and then some attacking units to land just before the CS and it shows you all of them on one screen.

btw I'm talking about 1.26
 

DeletedUser

Guest
You reference previous discussions about being rank one, in which case I have to distinguish between between the ranking in the short-term or long term.

Short-Term

When the server first starts there is little variation in who is ranked one, it will be of a pool of players who :

A. Started within the first 24 hours

B. Are active, and didn't 'waste' building time during the first 24 hours

C. Used a good 'build order'

A build order being the order in which you build your buildings, the amount of resources you spend on troops and how you interact with your farms.

Now the difference between a Premium and a Standard user in regards to these three things are as follows (Assuming both the premium user and standard user use exactly the same farming routine).

A. Premium doesn't give early access.

B. Administrator gives you greater flexibility in your building time management, you can sleep more or be away from the computer at longer periods of time. But, even if I can queue up 2 hours of building I will lose a considerable amount of resources by using the 120 minute demand.

So, compared to two people who can't spend all their time on the game and comparing people who need to sleep uninterrupted for the first few days of the server. A premium player can build more buildings, meaning he advances faster - This is not a big deal.

C. Build Order, you have longer queues and more resources compared to your Standard counterpart this can allow you to do build orders that would otherwise be unavailable to you (You also need to keep your warehouse slightly higher if you sleep 8+ hours uninterrupted).

Premium gives you greater flexibility no doubt and a considerable advantage. But, not ever player in the top 100 is a premium player - Every player in the top 100 is considerably active.

I'm at my computer 18/7 (study leave) and I still use 20 minute demands (five would be tedium) so the person using 5 minute demands on the regular gets twice as many resources as me, even more if I decide I want to go see a movie. And a whole lot more if I decide to go binge drinking..

You don't need premium to be top 10, chances are that a player committed enough to be top 10 is committed enough to chip in 30 bucks.

Lots of top players are premium, cause and effect? Probably not.

Top players are committed.

Committed players don't mind buying gold.

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Somewhere between short and long-term rankings they'll be a shift depending on who rushes conquest fastest and who got lucky taking a high point city.

Past that the top players are those committed, active and in a good alliance to support them.

J-J.

Edit : For a short answer - Premium is not key it isn't even necessary to be a top player.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
I'd agree with almost all of the points there, but surely as the premium player can progress faster, would there not be an disadvantage there?

Also, seeing as BP is coming to an end, would commander or captain form a disadvantage (even though people with those perks seem to have lower luck)? Or even Merchant?
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
I'd agree with almost all of the points there, but surely as the premium player can progress faster, would there not be an disadvantage there?

Also, seeing as BP is coming to an end, would commander or captain form a disadvantage (even though people with those perks seem to have lower luck)?

I think that it's telling, in all my servers there have been front runners in the first two weeks. But, it is rare that I see a person in the top 100 in the first two weeks stay in the top 200 when things get real there are exceptions of course, but the amount of top players in the early game that stay top players in the late game is a small proportion.

Anecdotal, but a player I consider to be slightly above ability to me will over take me after the first month despite the fact that I held a lead over him since the beginning of the server without fail.

I think the same can be said for the number of threads regarding the topic - It's rare that I see anyone complaining about the unfair disadvantage of premium when players start getting dozens of cities. The top players are top players because of their commitment any disadvantage to non-premium players that seems great in the first two weeks is without fail overcome in the first two months by those who are more committed.

Captain and Commander is an interesting one while I was in Alpha and Delta I didn't think about it much, I had assumed that players as good or better than me we had premium. Myself and voidwolf were some of the best players on Iota and probably the best if you excluded NoE players and void was slightly better than me and when he told me he didn't have premium I was shocked.

But, then I started to think about all the conquests I supported of players who didn't have premium and how the Captain and Commander bonuses became irrelevant when it came to supporting other people the opposite could be argued though, that if you do have these bonuses all of your alliances troops benefit in a defense.

But, obviously Captain is better than Commander.

Commander

Defense - When you take into account the modifier a 25 wall gives, I have to question how relevant Commander is I personally stop paying for Commander after the first month. And I've never paid for it for defensive reasons..

Offense - In 1.0 this was important, good players rushed horses and constantly farmed their neighbors. And losing your troops was huge, it crippled the amount of resources you can get and this was the main reason I got commander. Now in 2.0 killing troops can stifle you (You might be stuck on 5 or 6 farms for a while) but you still get a healthy income and with the importance of killing troops reduced your ability to kill them (and the bonus from Commander becomes less relevant).

It still has it's use though (from my view) not losing as many units in your first few conquers is worthwhile.

Both bonuses become less and less important as the game goes on, I'll probably spend 100 gold in total on Commander for Phi.

Captain


Attacking - Light Ships take a long time to build and a lot of resources if you're going to use hundreds of them trying to break some bireme stacking you want them to be as efficient as possible. Ideally, a lot of people are attacking a conquest your own bonuses become less and less important as more and more people are sending LS..

Defense - As mentioned earlier you're often supporting other people.. (I'm bored of writing.)

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TL;DR

Commander - Not really worth it, almost irrelevant after a couple months (Sieges are broken by LS, troops rarely land) defense is more affected by City Walls.

Captain - Worth it for a long time, less and less important. Probably won't make a difference in a large attack/defense.

Again I would say that top players will still be active players, your LS might fight 10% strongly. But, if my resource/farm management(/favor) allows me to build 30-70% more LS than you your attack modifier isn't going to matter.

I think premium is designed very well and that it is fairly balanced, it is more useful when starting a server and encourages people to spend more when a new server is started. But, tends not to make much of a difference later down the line.
 

DeletedUser14226

Guest
Personally I think, Premium was made for a reason, to give the players who have it something called an advantage. At this early stage of the game, People usually use Admin and Merchant.

But between Admin and sleeplessness, I rated sleeplessness higher. If you use admin, you will choose the last option in demanding before you sleep, which gives you less resources than demanding every 5 minutes.

But since not everyone can never sleep like OKC :D Admin has become an alternative to help bring you to the top.

Merchant gives you 30% more resources. Not much but will grant you some more, and therefore, save you some time.

About the Captain and Commander, well, you have increased power. And 20% is much to me. It is very worthy to use ( I used it once in Gamma when I alone defend against a 3M alliance. One city loss on purpose only ). I havent used it in early games, but if you can afford it and if you are bigger than most of your island fellas, then 200 gold for 2 weeks is OK.

Conclusion: Premium is considered to be a disadvantage for the people who dont use it. Well I dont think it is much imbalance, since:

1. This iz a morale world. Bigger isnt better, but troop counts does. Cpt and Cmdr only balance it for the big guy. But honestly it gives those who are Premium-less a challenge.

2. Tbh I have 400 Gold from inviting my friends in Gamma. I've only used it once, when I feel I need it. So, the point is, dont invest into a world that you dont have a plan to play it seriously ( like me ), or you want something called a challenge before coming back to your home world.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
This is amusing. I think it is obvious that if you want to be a top player you must use Premium features. Like crack2live was saying, the reason premium exists is to give players who have it an advantage. The advantage will not compensate one on being stupid. If you don't know what you are doing and you use Premium then I doubt you will be heading the top of the leader board. However, between players that are extremely active, and know what they are doing, then premium is a definite advantage and I am beginning to see, as a necessity to be in the top 100. No doubt about it.

This game is very much like a microcosm of capitalism. If you have wealth it's easier to acquire more. By that I mean, if you have a high point city you probably have built up your mines and camps. Thus you can build up armies faster , acquire bp faster and conquer more cities faster. The slightest advantage in early game ripples through the course of event in the entire world.

I have heard the argument made by some that when you get into the top position it can become a spending game rather than a war game. I don't know how accurate this is since I have never been in the top position but I think it is a possibility.

The argument about activity is kinda absurd in my opinion. Unless someone gave their life entirely to grepolis, shunned sleep entirely, etc. they would have no chance of being in the top 100, lets say two weeks after the world started, if they did not use Premium. Even if you shunned sleep and stayed glued to the screen someone using Premium could easily pass you up.
 

DeletedUser65

Guest
Premium definitely gives you an edge, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee you a top place in a world.

For instance, this world I have not used any premium and my information is as follows:
Rank 20 in the world (peaked at rank 9 I think)
I currently control 6 farming villages (4x level 3, 2x level 4)

The key to success isn't using premium, it is keeping your construction and your recruitment queues ticking over and never (or very rarely) empty as well as knowing how you RL day is structured and planning your demanding/looting of farming villages around that in order to maximise your intake.
 
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