Defence

[DeletedUser]

So I've advanced a bit more, been looking at all the ...very complex... guides, and I was wondering, so far all of these guides seem to be saying being defensive is much more effective, because if you attack, the enemy has several hours to call support, build up their defences, time to use spells, while your army is forced to continue on, as you wait for the casualties...
But if you're strictly defence/support you'll always have that advantage... right?

So my second question is, I don't understand how these people are saying things like, 2500 Slinger, 5000 Hoplites I currently have 20 SWORDSMEN...and that's from a few days of play, and I have 3 farming villages conquered...but the fourth has 60 SLINGERS .... so yaaa...any help would be greatly appreciated! Btw I'm now the leader of the alliance "Nike" (Greek goddess of victory) 8)

 

[DeletedUser39]

Hello Dockendor, good to see you post once more.

As for your question, it's normal that the players are talking about these numbers. 1 city has, with the right buildings and techonologies, 3500 total farm space. You will use up about 800~1000 of this for population, and another 800~1000 population on transporters and lightship escort. So, this would leave you with about 1700 free population (for land offense cities), to spend on offensive units as slingers, horsemen and catapults. Now, lets say you decided to take 1400 slingers and 20 catapults as offensive army; this is just one city, you can build many more cities like this.

Now look at it from defensive perspective. First off, we don't need 25~50 LS guidance, so we can drop a good ammount of light ships and invest those 250~500 population slots for defensive units. For now, we'll just asume we know our enemy makes use of a majority of slingers; we'll have about 2000 population to build defensive troops with, and looking at the stats, swordsmen would win from the slingers (Slingers have 23 distance offense, swordsmen have 30 distance defence). Because there always is a slight chance of the enemy bringing along a few unexpected units (hoplites or chariots would be a real killer for your swordsmen), you should alter your army slightly, but you will have to find your own preference in this, nobody can tell you what is the best defence, because there's such a large variety of players in Grepolis, there is also a large variety of effective defences.

Now, as we are the deffender, we'll have even more advantages: First off, the wall, obviously. When fully expended, it gives about 137% defensive bonus. In short, you theoretically have your troops multiplied by *2.37, so 1000 swordsmen would fight with the strength of 2370 swordsmen; quite nice, isn't it?

Second off, we can build a tower, which adds another 10% defensive bonus: Neat!

Third; Militia. At the cost of lowering your resource production for 6 hours (Speed worlds: 6/server speed), you will get 10 militia per farm level (15 with city guard researched -> Recommended for all cities). This effect cancles itself after any farm level beyond 25, so your maximum ammount of militia will be 375; They are free, get the bonus from wall/tower and won't give Battle points to the attacker, which is, in later game, one of the most valuable 'resources' you can get when attacking another player.

All in all, it's quite obviouse the deffender has a huge advantage over the attacker, especially because the deffender can also stack all his units in 1 city, creating a massive army, and the attacker must send seperate, smaller attacks. That's why we, as attackers, shouldn't just blindly send our attacks at someone to have them arive at certain death; we must get to know our enemy, learn from his strategy, and use his own technique's against him. It's why Grepolis is a strategy based browsergame, and not SimCity

 

[DeletedUser]

So do defence cities still need huge naval forces as well as land units?

 

[DeletedUser]

So do defence cities still need huge naval forces as well as land units?

Depend of what type of city you making.You can make 3 type of defensive cities.

1.Biremes City which contain only biremes
2.Defensive ground City contain defensive troops with fast TS for fast transport in other cities...
3.Mixed defensive city contain ground defensive units with about 50 bis in there.

 

[DeletedUser]

So if I were to pick #2, how would I defend against enemy LS and Biremes? I thought land troops were bad against them..

 

[DeletedUser]

offansive ships(Light ships)can't harm your ground trops.Can't loot you,can't do anything....

 

[DeletedUser39]

Troops aren't 'bad' against LS or biremes, as land units will never fight with ships. So, lets put it like this: Someone constantly attacks you with lightships, and a lot of them. Building biremes would be a bit useless, as he'll outnumber you with ease. If you, however, build ground troops, it's all nice and well he has those light ships, he won't be able to get into your city because he lacks land offense.

On top of that, a con for biremes is that they don't receive the defensive bonus from your wall, and land units do. So where 1000 population invested in biremes gives you an army worthy of 1000 population, 1000 population invested in ground troops gives you an army worthy of 2370 population (with wall 25).

And, the best defence is offense, so if you start to get the hang of this game, you could start backsniping people, or figuring out when they are and aren't present

 

[DeletedUser]

So I don't have to have any offensive naval forces? Just FT?
PS: Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[DeletedUser]

YOu always have need offensive naval forces to conquer enemy cities, or found a new city!

 

[DeletedUser]

So I don't have to have any offensive naval forces? Just FT?
PS: Thanks for all the help guys!

first city you will make mix of defense and offense,when you start to conquer cities you will make them in off or def style depend what you like better colect BP through defense or attacking people..my point is when you grow up(multiple number of cities) you will make specified cities from which you gonna only attack or only send defend....

 

[DeletedUser13]

Yeah.....U make first city off then one def and next one LS or Bireme-Depends on situation!

 

[DeletedUser]

That was a pretty nice post Acupuncture. Definitely gonna urge our newer members to take a look at this.

 

[DeletedUser]

Very good thread!!
Every new player should mess with the simulator found in the Agora to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each unit.

Adding to defense: a defender it is often better to deter an attack than destroy it. By this I mean killing the attacking troops might not be the best thing to do. Attackers want only a few things: resources, BP, your city. Acupuncture already mentioned that militia don't give the attacker BP so sending your troops (land and sea) to support a nearby city and activating your militia is how you make the attack useless to an attacker seeking BP. To keep the attacker from stealing resources all you have to do is use them. Build whatever you want, or another way to protect them is to send them to another city or put them on the market. If you do these things you won't be repeatedly attacked by the same player.

Finally, if an attacker wants to conquer your city then you NEED to defend. There are a million strategies to defending from conquest but most importantly-destroy that colony ship! Won't go into the strategies for that.... Good luck and welcome

 

[DeletedUser39]

What Skyflight stated is a common strategy - it's called 'dodging' the attacks, so that the attacker won't catch your troops. In early game, this is quite effective; you make sure there are no resources, no troops, and the maximum possible ammount of militia, to still put a hurting to him/her.

There is, however, a flaw in this tactic. Lets say we happily dodge all our attacks, and don't really care what comes along. Now, if you have a level 25 wall, that would give you quite some defence for your army. But when you decide to dodge, this becomes vulnerable; the attacker only needs a small ammount of catapults to tear down your wall to a level that it's near useless, so always be cautious with dodging - it might have a higher price you'll have to pay in the long run. 20 levels of city wall is more expensive than rebuilding 100 swordsmen/archers you otherwise would've lost whilst normally defending the city

 

[DeletedUser]

since this is a thread with questions on it already how do i take the 3rd farm village and my attack/deffence strategy is to pile every city with the best attack troops hit ppl your size and smaller then when you can move on to the larger ppl.

 

[DeletedUser39]

since this is a thread with questions on it already how do i take the 3rd farm village and my attack/deffence strategy is to pile every city with the best attack troops hit ppl your size and smaller then when you can move on to the larger ppl.

This is the wrong thread for this question, as this thread is specifically about defence, not farming villages.

Anyhow, you should conquer your 3rd farming village with slingers. You will need 10 FS (Farm Space) to conquer it, so that would be 10 slingers. If I'm correct, you'll lose about 3 when attempting this.

And 'the best attack troops', as you said, they don't exist. You have good attack units, but none of them is 'the best', as it all depends on what your opponent uses as defence; slingers are good against hoplites and archers, but when they face swordsmen or chariots, they're done for. And so goes for all other units; each of them has a weakness.

 

[DeletedUser]

ok thanks and yeah ik that was the wrong one but it was being replied to so figured i would ask and by best i meant learning the combo that gives the best possible results against most types of defence and for defence just putting so many troops there it would stop a modern division generally works well for me.

 

[DeletedUser]

Make a new thread next time, we'll reply to it.
Anyhow, I believe you're referring to "stacking" (was it mentioned earlier?). This is a fairly common tactic, especially later game, and one of the two ways I can currently recall to defend against a CS. It's pretty simple, stick every defensive troop you can in the city. The more you have, the fewer you lose. Works best with allies.

 

[DeletedUser]

There is, however, a flaw in this tactic.

Very good point! It should be noted that this is the case with every strategy. Every move can be countered and every counter can be countered. This is why the most important part of the game is figuring out your enemy. You can deduce the purpose of an attack using past experience or just basic knowledge about the attacker.

In addition, you can sometimes (especially when starting out and surrounded by smaller cities) look at how big the attacking city is to figure out whether they have researched conquest. If they are small then you don't have to worry about a revolt being stirred up, but about being farmed. Also, you won't get BP for destroying a wall, so players generally don't attack with catapults unless they are trying to conquer you or better the ratio of BP they are getting from your defensive troops. If you dodge an attack and the attacker gets nothing from it, I don't see why they'd come back just to destroy your wall (not that it doesn't happen). This of course is assuming the catapults don't come with the first attack, the attacker isn't in a rival alliance, and the attacker isn't planning to conquer you in the near future.