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.
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:
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:
.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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:
.
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:
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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