Beginners basics - easy to follow short guides

These are condensed guides for beginners, rewritten, simplified and telling some basics. I will not go much into details here, I wrote it for those who just want some easy to follow advices and don't look for reasons behind them. If you have time and doubts please read full guides :)

Resources

full detailed article here

Blood of your empire, in the early stage the most important thing to focus on. From early days focus on building your army and forget about buildings - ARMY FIRST. It will save you against any potential attacks and let you to farm as much as possible. Remember to farm farm farm (villages and other players).

Farming grepo-wiki
The most effecitve way of gathering resources is to farm other players, then in order of importance: building production camps (timber camp, quarry, silver mine), looting and demanding from farming villages and trading.

You will be able and should conquer first 3 farming villages as soon as possible just with your swordsmen. Then you will have to make 10 slingers to get the 4th village and finally 30 hoplites to get the 5th one. Therefore you will be forced at the beginning to put some resources into your mines - timber camp, quarry and silver mine. However don't slow down your army development - build your production camps to lvl 10-15, while building senate, warehouse, barracks and academy to get slingers. Once you get slingers you can easily start farming smaller players around you. Most of them will have 175-250 points - these are easy targets. Clear them and start farming on daily bases. One city like this can provide you with minimum 600 resources a day which is a lot if you compare it to what farming villages can provide.
Also don't neglect your warehouse, you don't want to waste your resources. To summarize in the beginning focus on production camps (till lvl 10-15), senate, barracks, academy and warehouse. Start attacking as fast as you can with slingers. You can farm (not attack) less active (inactive) players by sending archers with your slingers (they can carry lot of loot). If a player is defending with militia, then don't send archers.

Attacking

 full article here

Farm weak and slow growing players around you. Make pacts with fast growing players, contact them, be polite and respectful and divide your territory if there is a conflict of interests. Your neighbours can help you only if they play often, so don't count on somebody who is like a Sunday's driver. Don't make a mistake thinking about peaceful expanding and growing - it is a war game where only aggressive players get into the advanced stage (which is more fun).

Don't waste your time building a new city from scratches, conquer the biggest one you are able to take (can clear by your army and belonging to a weak alliance, or alliance less).

Attack with slingers, unless a player has only swordsmen in his city, in that case use hoplites.

Never send your land attacks without Light Ships escort (unless its really early phase of the game and you are sure that enemy doesn't have even 1 Bireme)

If you can, build catapults to destroy enemy cities walls - its very important to get rid of them. Lvl 20 walls add extra 100% to the defenses so if there are 100 swords behind lvl 20 walls, you will actually fight 200 swords.
 

Use any boosts you can have - Divine powers or premium account generals. If you buy gold, switch on commander, he will aid greatly. Also use Athena's Heroic Power to boost your land troops. You should also research Phalanx to add an extra damage.

Remember to start attacking early, your units are not meant to sit in your city and get fat. Keep sending them to farm or to kill enemy players units, however use common sense. When attacking gather intelligence (send a spy) and prepare yourself first when attacking active players. When attacking small ones whose points don't move at all or very slow you don't need to be that careful. Build big enough army and hit, rebuild and hit again.

Defending

 full article here

I believe that in the early days its better to focus on resources rather than on defeating enemies. By that I mean that you should focus on making the most out of your resources with the goal of securing yourself first. After that, once you are strong enough and have good alliance standing behind you, then you can start making wars for long term political and expansion reasons. Therefore I advice to dodge most of the incoming attacks to save resources during your first month or two of playing (depends how quickly you grow). Of course in the advanced stage of the game armies and players are so big that dodging is pointless and its only buying some extra time rather than helping but its a different story - lets focus for now on your first weeks in Grepolis.

Dodging means avoiding enemy attacking forces with your troops. So when a player sends an attack at your city, you should send away your troops from the attacked city to avoid the fight and switch on militia to make him pay for his attack and gain nothing in return (not making you weaker as you don't lose anything).

Simply send your troops to atatck inactive player (or NPC village to farm it in worlds before 2.0), or as a support to your other city or to an inactive player city, or even to another players city if he/she is not in the same alliance as the attacker (or doesn't cooperate with him/her). Just make sure your troops will not be in the town when it gets hit by the enemy forces. If you supported an another players polis (you can't support NPC villages) recall your troops in Agora. If you sent them as a regular attack they will come back by themselves (just make sure they don't come back to early). If you see an attack incoming but you need to go offline for longer and you cant support anything around just send them on a long trip wherever, as long as they don't come back before the enemy hits your city.

Quick dodge - recalling

You can also do a quick dodge - send your troops away shortly before the enemy hits you and recall them so they come back just after. You have 10 minutes to recall your troops, if you miss that time window then it will not be possible to do that at all and they will have to make the full trip to the destination and back. If you feel comfortable enough you can send your troops 10 seconds before the enemy hit and cancel the trip few seconds later. The skill will come with practise. There are many ways of doing that. You can send your troops 4 minutes before the hit and recall them after 2.5 minutes so they will be back a minute after the hit (2 min 30sec to get to the point where you recall them back and ~2min30sec to come back- travel time = ~5 min), or you can do it seconds before (send them away 20 secs before the hit and recall after 11 secs so they come back 2 secs after the hit), its all up to you as long as you manage to recall them back. However the second method is more risky because of the anti-timing rule.

"Such precision is not possible in this game in any case, owing to time randomization factor that is built in to any troop movement. This can add or subtract up to 30 seconds at the time you click the attack button."
In worlds before 2.0:
"Farming villages are exempted from the antitiming rule when outbound. That is the strengthening waves will land before the looting attack. They don't always return in the same order. With a farming village they arrive at the appointed time but lose a few seconds or gain a few on their way back, the real anti-timing rule takes over when you use it against a player."

The best way to know how it works is to practise - go and send your troops to attack something and recall them but check times when you do that. If you sent them at 20:00:00 and recall them after 20s then they should come back at 20:00:40 if anti-time mechanism doesnt add anything. If toops come back at 20:00:50, it means thet 10 seconds were added. Test it.

Other things to do:

- Switch on your militia but remember it will switch off automatically after 3 hours. So you must do it at least 2 hrs 59 min before the hit. You switch them on in your Farm by clicking on Enlist button.

- Hide your resources - spend all your resources or just make an offer on the market with 3:1 ratio and short distance so nobody buy it. So offer 2000 stone for 6000 wood and in distance of 15 minutes from you :) After the attack you can cancel the offer. Also alternatively you can trade with a NPC village or send them to your other town. In the early stage of the game players usually attack other players for resources so this is why I mention that strategies.

Army

full article here

Defensive troops are swordsman, archer, hoplite/chariot  - NEVER send archers or swordsmen to attack another player (unless its an inactive player who you just farm for resources).

Offensive troops are slingers, horsemen, hoplites and chariots. Use slingers to attack other players and avoid using horsemen at this stage, they are just to expensive and take to much time to be built (they are good for farming though). Use hoplites/chariots only if the enemy has no archers in his/hers city. Hoplites and chariots are good for Colony Ship escort.

When you can afford a bigger army, and its time for big battles against strong players, make 500-1000 slingers and send them with 20 catapults, remember to  ALWAYS escort your transport ships with Light Ships (50-70 will do as long as you have breakthrough researched).

Navy:

Light Ships are for attacking - NEVER defend your city with them (if youre attacked by a CS and have some LS in that city send them away and recall so they come back after CS parks in your harbour. Then they will use their offensive abilities and might sink it.

Biremes are for defending - NEVER send them to attack another player (unless you dont have Triremes and you really need some defensive ships to send with your CS).

Fire Ships are ok for the early stage of the game as your protection but once you are a part of a bigger alliance and have more cities don't bother with them, make biremes instead.

Triremes are like hoplites and chariots - should be sent with your CS.

Gods and mythical units 

full article here

In order of importance

1. Your first god should be Hera as she gives economic boosts called Happiness, great cast called Population Growth to boost your production speed and thanks to her you can also cast Desire on enemy incoming attacks to make them weaker (one of the best casts in the game, almost the main reason to pick her). Worshipping Hera gives you access to Harpies which are great help in the beginning to farm other players. Just clear main enemy forces and then instead of sending horses in ships, send harpies. They are fast, can carry quiet a lot of loot and don't need ships so you don't waste much population on them.

2.  Now depending on your circumstances you can pick Athena or Hades.
Athena is more of a defensive god  - her mythical units are great for defending your cities but she also can boost your attacks with cast called Heroic Power. It is one of the best offensive casts in the game!
If you are being spied on often and are under slingers attacks then Hades is for you. Hades is also a defensive god in the way that he can provide you the best defending unit in the game - cerberus. However remember that you cant support non-Hades cities with it and its production is limited to Favour Points availability. He also helps with silver. Remember that cerberi are mainly suited vs range (slingers) and blunt (horsemen) attackers. His spell Return from the Underworld can sometimes help you more than Athenas Heroic Power but not always. Sometimes by having extra 20% of attack power you can save many units and win a battle.

3. Poseidon helps in development of your navy (extra wood cast and navy production speed boost). Poseidon mythical units (Hydras and Cyclops) are purely meant to be used for conquering enemy cities, so they escort Colony Ships. Navy development and conquests are not that important in the beginning of the game so this is why choose Poseidon after Hera and Athena. This is an expansion god if we can call him like that, mainly for advanced wars. Earthquakes are good to get rid of enemy walls without loosing units.

5. Last one is Zeus, which is pretty disappointing. He can boost your naval attacks strength and gives manticores which might be effective but it takes ages to make them and  they are very expensive (in favour points), especially for someone who doesn't have 10+ cities. Zeus is/was very popular among new players but its a mistake to pick him first. Lighting Bolts will not win war for you, nor save you, same with extra few chariots. Only Zeus Rage is worth something but again, there are better casts in the game.

Alliances

When choosing an alliance check few things. 

Location/core - First of all and the most important how many of its member are located in your closest area and surrounding oceans. Strong alliances make sure to have a strong core which is basically making sure that most of the members are packed together to be able to support each other effectively and make enemies life a nightmare. Good organised alliance first secure their core (by conquers/recruitment) and then expand outward. If it is an alliance spread all over 10 different oceans just forget it, they wont help you, unless there is a strong organised group of members close by but still that kind of recruitment shows that leadership has no clue about this game.

Members - Don't check only how many points in total has an alliance, check its members size. Better to be in 50 members alliance made of strong, communicative, active players rather than be a part of a huge MRA  (Massive Recruitment Alliance) made of 500 random people. Second type of alliance invites everyone and doesn't care about quality of the members, not mentioning the whole structure and it will soon or later put you into big troubles.

Leadership - contact recruitment person and check if its an active player with common sense. You would be surprised how many kids send invites all over the server and have no clue about this game. They will usually speak to you about their numbers, and points etc... Good recruiter will first send you a mail before sending an invitation and will want to talk to you first about strategy, skills, what kind of people they are looking for etc. If its somethings like "yo bro, get on board, we are brothers, drink together, sleep together die together - strength and honor, you attack we kill you" just ignore it and don't waste your time, you will be better alone.

The strong alliance is the one which is made of active players willing to expand and fight. Aggressive alliances most of the time are the winners. Their members are communicative (check the forum, post over there, answer to mails), active, have aggressive style of playing (attack other players often, farm everything around for more resources), are team-oriented (when someone needs support they send it).  Team which is united, enjoys the game, reacts quickly and fights a lot (is the most experienced in fighting) is the one you should  be looking for. Forget about numbers - total points don't matter, in the beginning only BPs (Battle Points) are good indicator of a players/alliance quality.

Enjoy the fight and remember its only a game, so play as you like it :)

If you have any question or would like to add anything, please leave your comment

cheers :)