City specialisation in Grepolis - army composition

City specialisation in Grepolis is a must in advanced stage of the game. City specialisation becomes more crucial than ever, and changing your building layout for each of those cities to only the necessities will optimise the farm spaces left to make troops.
There are many reasons for that. First of all as I mentioned many times before, in Grepolis battle mechanics proportions are very important. The bigger attacking wave the more damage it can deal and in the consequence save more of your units, resources and time to rebuild them. Due to population cap per city and inability to merge armies when attacking we are forced to maximise effectiveness of every single army/wave we send. In Grepolis sending one wave made of 1000 slingers is much more effective and efficient than two waves of 500 slingers. There are also other reasons - its simply time and resources saving strategy. 

In this guide I will show you how to make big Slingers or Light Ships nukes and how to construct a good Colony Ship wave. I will also give few tips about organising your cities to be able to defend your little empire.

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Table of Contents:

1. General Information

• 2.0 Notes
• Population Cap (why to specialise)
• Farming Forces
• Army size vs City size
• Resources
• Favour Points (FPs) and temple levels
• City Walls
• How many of each type (specialised cities)

2. Early Stage of the game (first few cities)


3. City Builds

• Land Offensive City
• Navy Offensive City
• Mixed Defensive City
• Navy Defensive City
• Land Defensive City
• Conquest City

General Information

I am going to link each topic that requires more explanations, however you can always visit the Basic Guides and Advanced Game pages to see list of all my guides about Grepolis. Addittionally you might be interested in some nice tools that will help you a lot in your game and planning of your cities.

2.0 Notes

Grepolis 2.0 introduced new farming system and you should invest extra population (which you get by not having "farming forces") into more units - in a naval offensive city into Light Ships, in a naval defensive city into Biremes, in a land nuke city put it in extra 20 LS or just everything into more land units. Of course you will still need to build some troops in each city to be able to conquer farming villages. To be able to conquer 7th village you will need 150 Slingers and to get 8th one you will need to defeat 150 Swordsmen 150 Archers and 75 Hoplites hiding behind lvl 20 walls (extra 103% defense) so that might be the hardest one. Except that basic rules stay the same and this guide is still valid, the only thing that has changed is that now you can make your armies even stronger, so use it for your advantage!

Population cap
To me, a 13K city is a bad city.  Due to population cap per city and inability to merge armies when attacking we are forced to maximise effectiveness of every single army/wave we send to attack (more about land army, types of attack and population cap here). Therefore your army is the first thing on your priorities list, or at least should be. Remember that city must be functional, not pretty. If its an offensive naval city (Light Ships) then destroy barracks, city walls, lower down the senate and anything you don't really need there. Be Spartan about your cities ;)

Also by specialising cities you make your life easier and save some time - you don't have to send 10 waves of support from 10 different cities but for example only from 3. Timing properly 10 waves is much more time consuming than only 3. Also choosing for a city only one role makes things easier and reduce confusion when you have like 20+ of them.

When deciding what type of a city to make, you have to consider your current enemies, future enemies, allied cities, your needs, tactical needs and resources. A lot to think and a lot of things might change, therefore in the first few months of your game play you might want to keep cities half specialised. For example do not destroy totally your city walls in your borderline cities or barracks in a navy city, as you might need them in the future. Also in the beginning there are plenty of players around to farm and you might want to keep a farming party (Horsemen) in your LS city. Once you are sure that nothing is going to change in your close area, then you can specialise fully your cities. More about it later in this guide.

The more cities you conquer the easier it will be to push specialisation of your cities further. Specialising cities is a process. If you manage to specialise your second city (should be land offensive) then kudos for you, or lucky you :) To see how could look a fully specialised nuke city read my guide focusing on nukes.

Farming Forces

If you farm other players from the naval type of cities (those don't have any land units), prepare farming units there. The best suited for that are Horsemen. However soon or later it will happen that there will be no more other players cities to farm on your island and its a waste of Farm Spaces to build transport ships in Light Ship or Bireme city. Therefore when it happens, just get rid of your farming forces in that cities and build more ships instead. Obviously land units cities don't need farming forces. 

Army size vs City size
After explaining the importance of having maximum size army in a single city you might be wondering why I propose in this guide to build up some structures to the maximum level even though they don't make our army stronger and might be seen by some of you as a waste of farm spaces. To understand that you have to take a look out of the box. Yes, the bigger wave the more damage it will do and less units you will lose, however you must also think about what happens between your battles.

You see, if you give your enemy a lot of free time, he will rebuild his forces and you both will come back to square one or he will get an advantage over you in resources. When facing big players you cant win a battle and think its over. You have to keep attacking to hold or increase your advantage. I don't say to keep attacking the same town or a player but in any war you should try to dictate tempo. If your enemy is busy defending, he wont have much time to organise an attack on you (more advanced guide about resources war here)

Therefore, in Grepolis, it is very important how fast you can rebuild your army. The quicker you can hit again, the bigger advantage you will have over your enemies. During war time your queues should be always busy and produce units as fast as possible. More about it in the guide focusing on Resources War.

Once you have big number of cities you will need the Marketplace at least at lvl 20 to be able to move big amount of resources between them. Your Light Ships city will have plenty of spare stone (if you don't use it all to trade with farming villages). This stone can be sent to Slingers nuke city. Your Biremes polis will probably have big amount of silver which you can send to other cities which need it, not always directly for production of units but also to trade it for the type of resources they need. When I had 30 cities I wasn't farming as much as I used to before but was able to always keep my queues busy by exchanging resources between my cities.

High Temple level in the beginning is also a good idea - thanks to that you can gather more Favour Points per day. These points should be used on spells which boost production time (like Population Growth or Call of the ocean) or to boost attack power of your units and in the consequence save more of them.

The main production facilities related to the city specialisation should be maxed to speed up production time. It will be Harbour in naval cities and Barracks in the land cities.

Lastly Resources Camps (Timber Camp. Quarry and Silver Mine) can be maxed in the advanced stage of the game when you don't have that much time to farm. However after 2.0 you can now pay for an adviser and farm them all at once which makes things much easier.

If you think before building anything and plan ahead you will not need Senate at the max level. I've never really had to change Special Buildings, maybe couple of times I switched Divine Statue for the Tower. So once you build your special buildings you can lower the Senate level. Some people might ask "but what if my special building is destroyed by a lighting bolt?!". Seriously, how often does it happen? Never happened to me.

Same with the City Walls, sometimes you just don't need them. When I had more cities, my enemies were never going after these which I kept at the back or even in the middle of my empire. They were always attacking front line cities. Therefore I demolished walls in cities located far from my enemies for extra farm spaces.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't force yourself to save farm spaces on everything. If you cant log in often to farm then Resources Camps should be maxed. If your city is often under attack or near your enemy then keep your walls. However always try to look for things that you don't need. Reevaluate your cities often and adapt to changing condition.

Resources

Regarding resources, on each island you will have 1 type of resource on "+" and 1 "-". Also farming villages trade differently on each island. When deciding what kind of city I'm going to make on a new island I take into consideration which type of resources I can get the most. Sometimes wood is "-" and stone is "+" but there are plenty of villages trading wood for stone so anyway I will have plenty of wood for my navy.

Basically resources wise there are few options:

When a city has lots of wood and normal income of silver its perfect for Light Ships production.

When wood and stone are dominant then its a great place for Biremes city.

Mix of wood, silver and stone is good for mixed defensive polis or conquest city.

Lots of stone is usually for land attack city.

To summarise you should have ( / type of resources on the island after taking into account what farming villages trade the most)

• land attack cities  / + stone
• naval attack cities / + wood
• naval defence/land defence / mixed
• naval defence / + wood and stone
• conquest cities / + silver but mixed will do as well

Production camps (Timber Camp etc) are a matter of personal preference but let me just tell you that they are second the most effective way of gathering resources (1st is farming other players). I think that while you get more cities it makes sense to max them as you will not have time to farm for each of your cities. They can also be staggered at different levels based on the type of city and what resources are needed the most.

Also mind that in the beginning when you don't have many cities its easier to farm more often and therefore production camps might seem to not be that important. However soon or later they will become your no.1 source of materials (more about it in my guide about Resources). Why is it good to have Quarry at lvl 40 in a Light Ships city? Because you might need to trade extra stone for more wood/silver or just send it to Slingers nuke city. When I was rebuilding my army after battles I would normally trade/send resources from all my cities. When you have 20+ cities its much easier to just collect resources to full warehouse and then send them to the city which is in need.

Favor Points (FPs) and temple levels
They make a big difference, therefore its best to have high production of Favor Points. Although it doesn't mean you have to max all your temples. You will see the biggest boost in Favour Points production with your first temple and then it will start to slow down. Therefore the situation with temples is opposite to the one with production camps. While acquiring new cities you will be less and less interested in upgrading them to high levels.


The formula to count Favour Points production is: Game speed x (square root of (building levels + divine statues). So it doesn't make any difference if you have 3 temples, all lvl 10 or only 2 temples lvl 25 and lvl 5 or even 6 temples, all lvl 5. All temple levels (per god) are added and treated as 1 big temple.

The only thing to remember here is that for every additional level of your temple you are rewarded with less and less Favour Points/Farm Space in comparison to the previous upgrade. It is something that we can call diminishing returns.

Here is the graph to help you to visualize it. The horizontal axis shows the sum of all temple levels, while the Vertical one, Favour Points you get with each extra level. Mind that this is not a sum of all FPs. The graph only shows efficiency of adding extra levels (without Divine Statue).

Look how many more FPs you get for each extra level. You receive a lot of extra FPs till lvl 5, then it slows down.

By looking at the graph and analysing my example, its easy to understand that it makes sense to build temples fast up in the beginning (for the same god of course) but after you get less and less for your invested resources and population. Everything adds up and helps in production of Favour Points but not that much to really worry about it. If you have only one city then build up your temple as high as possible but it will be probably faster and cheaper to conquer another city and upgrade a temple over there to a reasonable high level.

• If you have 3 cities worshiping the same god, you can easily have lvl 20-25 temple in each of them, but as soon as you get more cities and make them to worship that god, you can stop upgrading temples (or at least move it down on your priority list).
• You can also hold on with upgrading your temples to lvl 25 and instead save your population, make bigger army and conquer quicker other cities. First 10-15 levels are cheap and can be build fast.
• If you have like 15+ cities and each 3 of them worship the same god, then in your new conquered cities, don't really bother with temples.
• If you have way more than 15 cities then you can actually demolish them down to get back some Farm Spaces.

I don't say to stop your temples development, but once you get around level ~50, don't force yourself to upgrade temples to high levels, which are very expensive and take up population. These extra 5 levels from 20 to 25 will not change that much.

Walls

In the advanced stage of my game I was destroying walls in some cities which I knew that will not be attacked. You ask why? Because we pushed our enemy to defense and were never under heavy attack and even if, then few dodges and LS nuke to snipe enemy CS was enough to defend us (in a conquest world). Sometimes you might get such a strong position and have a great team that you will not need walls in most of your cities. Don't get me wrong - if you need them (and you are being attacked) then keep your walls at maximum level. Grepolis favours defenders and walls provide huge advantage but only in the situation when you have to defend, otherwise they are useless. Evaluate your situation and try to think if you really need walls in some cities. If you don't, then take them down and you will free up lot of population. More about City Walls here.

How many of each type?
I cant really advice you exactly how many of each type of cities you need. It depends on your geographical location, your enemies position, your alliance tactics and enemy tactics and few more...

If your defending tactic is to dodge all incoming waves and hit an enemy CS (Colony Ship) when its already in your harbour then obviously you will need many Light Ships or many Biremes if its your enemy favourite tactic and you are the attacking side. However if players you attack stack defensive units and try to kill as many of yours then of course you will need many more LS (Light Ships) and land offensive cities. Maybe your alliance likes to give each player a different role and you will be asked what type of units you must focus on (more about different conquest tactics in the guide about Organising Waves and Large scale operations).

During my game in Grepolis I was changing cities specialisation many times as I was growing, alliances were changing and with them location of my enemies/threat.  Some alliances forced me to build more Biremes as they were not defending at all and were sinking my CS after it landed using Light Ships. Other alliances were more turtle minded and wanted to drain my resources (not a bad idea) by stacking defensive units and killing all my clearing waves - then I didn't need that many Biremes.

As a general advice I can tell you that its a good idea to keep in the center of your empire defensive city/cities. Place them between all others to have minimal time travel to surrounding cities. That way you will be able to react much faster and send your def units on time when being attacked. In the beginning I liked to have many (30) Pegasus in a city which was closest to all others. When the attack was really serious (many waves and a CS) I was switching god to Athena in the attacked city and sending there all my Pegasus which were smashing all attacking units. However it happened only twice, so my Pegasus city was more like a resources factory for most of the time.

You cant really chose type of resources you get on each island but if its possible its better to keep defensive cities and a CS city closer to the enemy (to reduce travel time of your CS) while offensive naval and land cities keep behind the lines so you don't lose your offensive units in a surprise attack made by your enemy. If an enemy needs more time to reach your offensive cites, then you have more time to react and avoid his attacks (losing fleet of Light Ships when being attacked sucks a lot). Of course the disadvantage of this tactic is that you will also need more time to reach your enemy. Therefore if you are a really active player, then you can risk to have offensive cities located close to your enemy.

Early Stage of the Game (first few cities)

Over specialise and you breed in weakness - Motoko Kusanagi

What I try to say is that in the beginning you cannot and should not specialise to much, unless you are sure that all your neighbours are weak or inactive. I don't want to say to not specialise at all but with some limits. You must use common sense.

At the beginning instead of building your production camps up to maximum level (build them up to ~lvl 15), you should make sure to get your farming villages as soon as possible. Getting first 4 farming villages on your island is very easy and remember to always capture the farming villages with the highest levels first. Keep/make some Hoplites (at least 35) for taking the 4th village. The most effective way of gathering resources is to farm other players and then through production camps. More about resources here.

I will not tell you when you should start to make pure class cities, because I cant. Everything depends on your particular situation. Remember only that you will need to stay offensive to grow but for that you don't need a Navy Offensive city (producing only Light Ships) in your early days - that sort of a city is for advanced game when players can gather big numbers of Biremes. Focus on land offensive cities first.

In the most cases all your neighbours will be at the similar level of development as you are. Therefore use this opportunity to grow fast, attack/farm other players cities and conquer fast farming villages. Every defensive city (the one building only defensive units) will slow your growth down. So if you don't have to, then don't specialise any of your early cities into a defensive one. The best option would be to make your 2nd city a land offensive polis. My first specialised city was city no3 which I turned into a Slingers nuke polis. All players around didn't have at that time strong navies and so the only thing that was stopping me from conquering them were their land defense forces and CPs (Culture Points) which I could gather by killing their defensive troops).

If you read my guides about attacking other players in Grepolis you will know how to win battles with minimal loses. By doing that you will get more Culture Points from your invested resources than from organising festivals and be able to conquer your first city fast. You will need strong offensive forces and this is why I propose to start specialising your cities into offensive ones first and only then focus on defensive type of polis. Also nobody will want to attack/start with one of the biggest players in the neighborhood ;)

Naturally your first polis must be a universal one and will be the biggest for a while - it has to attack, defend, conquer etc. Later on when you conquer new cites it will be still kind of a hybrid city but gradually it will change. During first stages of the game your local alliances will not be huge and you will have to worry more about your closest neighbours rather than far enemies. You will not have a lot of time to react. This is why when you have like 1-5 cities (don't take it literally, basically when you are not that big ;) and don't have time to log in all day long, I suggest that your every polis has a basic number of defensive units (swords/arch/hops), unless you are a very active player (in that case specialising one city for defense should be good enough). I think that this basic defense could be made of 180 swords/60 archers/150 hoplites. During the process of conquering more cities and securing your closest area slowly get rid of these units and start making purely specialised polis. I didn't add the basic defense to the proposed models as they focus only on their specialisations and I didn't want to confuse people.

Because in Grepolis you can stack defensive units you should be ok with this strategy. If one of your polis  becomes an enemy target you will just reinforce it with all defensive units from other cites that you have. Also all of your first cities will be probably very close to each other so supporting shouldn't be a problem. On the other hand, because you limited your defense in each city to such a small number, you are able now to produce big offensive waves (maybe not as big as in a pure specialised polis but still strong) and not waste any of your early cities on defensive specialisation. If, by any chance your enemy is quick enough to park a CS in your harbour, you should have plenty of offensive units to sink it.
That way you can keep your aggressive expansion and still have enough defensive forces to push back any potential enemies.

City Builds - advanced stage of the game

Basically there are 5 types of cities:

1. Land Offesnive City
2. Navy Offensive City
3. Mixed Defensive City
4. Navy Defensive City
5. Land Defensive City
6. Conquest City

Please mind that all numbers have been rounded up. Each of my cities is slightly different however I still can describe a model for each type that I have. For example in some cities I will have 1100 slingers and 30 catapults but in other I will have only slingers without any catapults. Please take these numbers as rough guides and feel free to tweak them a bit to suit you the best.

Land Offensive City

Here you can produce 3 types of units: Blunt attack (Horsemen), Sharp attack (Hoplite) or Range attack (Slingers). Most of the time it will be more efficient to build Slinger nukes, however once you get to the stage where you have many land offensive cites then why not to have some blunt and sharp nukes just in case. Only if a defender decides to focus most of his defensive units on Range defense (swordsmen or cerberi) then it is not the best idea to send Slingers.

In general it is always better to exploit defenders weak point and pure nukes are the best option here. Unfortunately very often we attack blind - even if we have spy report things can change. More support might come in and change everything. Therefore to make things easier I was mostly building slingers nukes which were quick to build. Resources at that point were not as important as ability to build nukes fast.

If you want to understand battle mechanics I propose to look into my guide about attacking.

70-80 LS will protect you against 300 BMs instead of 200.

Squad (with 70 LS escort, if you prefer different size of escort then adjust these numbers):
Land assault army:
Slingers 1050-1200 and 20-30 catapults
or
1500 Slingers or 500 Horsemen or 1500 Hoplites

Fast transport ships: ~ 93
Escort: light ships 50-80

You have also an option of a slow nuke - instead of using fast transport boats you can use standard ones and get few extra units but paying for it in really slow speed of your attack.

Technologies:  
breakthrough, phalanx, trainer, conscription, shipwright, catapults, light transport boat, plow, bunks, battering ram
 
I will repeat it - no point of sending land troops only if they are all going to be sunk by enemy Biremes (Big fails and what can we learn from them). They must be escorted by Light Ships. In conquest worlds use breakthrough at all times when sending land nukes (in the revolt ones, you cant always do that for obvious reasons). Please read my guide about breakthrough to understand why I propose 50-80 LS as an escort.

Buildings:
Try to not waste to much population on your buildings - your city must serve you well not look pretty.

(type/lvl)
Maxed
Barracks 30 
Quarry 40
Farm 40 always (no population cost)
Warehouse 30 always (no population cost)
Cave 10 always (no population cost)
Academy 30

City wall 25 unless its really in a safe zone then 0

Limited
Senate 15
Timber camp 20-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much - max them)
Silver mine 20-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much - max them)
Harbour 15 (for LS escort)
Temple 15-25 (depends on how many cities worship the chosen god)
Marketplace  20-25 (depends on your situation, how often you send resources from that city)

Special 
Thermal Baths - always in every city
Nothing for bigger nukes, Divine Statue if you have only few cities (once you get more cities and temples, get rid of them), Tower (if the city is constantly attacked)

Navy Offensive City - LS nuke

Squad:
Navy assault army: Light Ships 220-260

Farming forces: Horses 130 (only for as long as you have someone to farm on your island)

Technologies:  
battering ram, shipwright, mathematics, plow, cartography 

Buildings:

Try to not waste to much population on your buildings - your city must serve you well not look pretty.

(type/lvl)
Maxed
Timber camp 40
Harbour 30
Farm 40 always (no population cost)
Warehouse 30 always (no population cost)
Cave 10 always (no population cost)
Academy 30

City wall 25 unless its really in a safe zone then 0

Limited 
Senate 15
Barracks 0-10 (get rid of them when destroying your farming forces)
Quarry 20-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Silver mine 20-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Temple 15-25 (depends on how many cities worship the chosen god)
Marketplace  20-25 (depends on your situation, how often you send resources from that city)

Special 
Thermal Baths - always in every city
Nothing for bigger nukes, Divine Statue if you have only few cities (once you get more cities and temples, get rid of them), Tower (if the city is constantly attacked

Mixed Defensive City

Locate it in the center (between all other cities with the shortest distance to them). Land and Naval defenses can be stacked in together. Biremes are very important for defending not only your cities but also your Colony Ships in a conquest world (usually successful CS raid attracts lots of enemy LS attacks).

As I played in a conquest world I had some cities making only BMs and some making BMs and land defensive units at the same time. When defending a siege, you should focus on protecting the CS and you shouldn't need much land defense, except when you are being attacked by a city located on the same island or by very rare mythical nukes. I say that land defensive units are less important but it doesn't mean you can neglect them totally. There is always a possibility that enemy will break through with few transports or send at you Manticores/Harpies for example.

I was also very offensively minded player and didn't have to defend my cities to much. I didn't really  lose anything combining naval and land defenses in a single build because of the defenses ability to stack. That way, if I had only one city in the range to support, I could use both types of defense instead of just one. That kind of a city should make land defensive units, Biremes and fast transports to be able to support quickly all of your other cities. It must be closest to all of them (center located).

However the most effective way to defend your city is to use land units behind max level wall. Therefore if you are a player who has to defend your own cities often or if you play in a revolt world, where defending CS is not necessary, then the mixed defensive city is not for you. You will get better results by making two separate kinds of defensive cities: Naval and Land. This one is the most suitable for very offensively playing people who always put enough pressure on their enemies to not have to worry to much about defending cities (only sieges).



Squad:
Navy defense army: Biremes 210
Land defense army: 360 Swordsmen + 120 Archers + 300 Hoplites 
Fast transport ships: 48

Technologies: 
battering ram, shipwright, mathematics, plow, cartography, phalanx, trainer, conscription, light transport boat, bunks

Buildings:
Try to not waste to much population on your buildings - your city must serve you well not look pretty.

(type/lvl) 
Maxed
Farm 40 always (no population cost)
Warehouse 30 always (no population cost)
Cave 10 always (no population cost)
Academy 30

City wall 25 unless its really in a safe zone then 0

Limited
Senate 15
Timber camp 25-40
Quarry 25-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Silver mine 20-40  (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Harbour 20 (Biremes are more important than land troops)
Barracks 15
Temple 15-25 (depends on how many cities worship the chosen god)
Marketplace  20-25 (depends on your situation, how often you send resources from that city)

Special 
Thermal Baths - always in every city
Nothing for bigger nukes, Divine Statue if you have only few cities (once you get more cities and temples, get rid of them), Tower (if the city is constantly attacked)

Navy Defensive City

Basically similar to naval offensive city but making only Biremes. Read more about Biremes vs Fire Ships.

Squad:
Navy defense army: Biremes 330
Farming forces: Horses 130 (only for as long as you have someone to farm on your island)

Technologies: 
battering ram, shipwright, mathematics, plow, cartography,

Buildings:
Try to not waste to much population on your buildings - your city must serve you well not look pretty.

(type/lvl)
Maxed
Farm 40 always (no population cost)
Timber camp 40
Quarry 40
Harbour 30
Warehouse 30 always (no population cost)
Cave 10 always (no population cost)
Academy 30

City wall 25 unless its really in a safe zone then 0

Limited 
Senate 15
Silver mine 20-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Barracks 0-10 (get rid of them when destroying your farming forces)
Temple 15-25 (depends on how many cities worship the chosen god)
Marketplace  20-25 (depends on your situation, how often you send resources from that city)

Special 
Thermal Baths - always in every city
Nothing for bigger nukes, Divine Statue if you have only few cities (once you get more cities and temples, get rid of them), Tower (if the city is constantly attacked)

Land Defensive City

Land defense gives you the biggest advantage, especially if you can hide your units behind lvl 25 walls. A defense prepared equally per farm space against all 3 types of attack should be made of 6 Swordsmen + 2 Archers + 5 Hoplites. However if you are being attacked more often by a specific type of attack (usually it is range attack - slingers) then adjust these numbers (vs range make more Swordsmen, vs blunt make more Hoplites).

Squad:
Land defense army: 945 Swordsmen +315 Archers +788 Hoplites (2047 pop total) 
Fast transport ships: ~ 128

I would strongly discourage to build standard (slow) Transport Boats - you have to be able to support with your units fast!

Technologies:  
phalanx, trainer, conscription, shipwright, light transport boat, plow, bunk, cartography, 

Buildings:

Try to not waste to much population on your buildings - your city must serve you well not look pretty.

(type/lvl)
Maxed
Barracks 30
Farm 40 always (no population cost)
Timber camp 20-40 (depends on how often you have to rebuild your units)
Silver mine 20-40 (depends on how often you have to rebuild your units)
Warehouse 30 always (no population cost)
Cave 10 always (no population cost)
Academy 30

City wall 25 unless its really in a safe zone then 0

Limited
Senate 15
Quarry 20-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Harbour 5-10 (you shouldn't need to rebuild transport ships often)
Temple 15-25 (depends on how many cities worship the chosen god)
Marketplace 20-25 (depends on your situation, how often you send resources from that city)

Special 
Thermal Baths - always in every city
Nothing for bigger nukes, Divine Statue if you have only few cities (once you get more cities and temples, get rid of them), Tower (if the city is constantly attacked)

Conquest City

This is the most difficult city to organise. You need good amount of land troops (chariots+hoplites), LS to escort during the attack and Biremes to defend or better Triremes instead. Very useful are mythical units in this type of cities however to keep things simple I took them out from this example. Basically treat Cyclops as much better chariots and Hydras as much better Triremes (more about mythical units here).

Once you conquer more cities, try to demolish as many buildings here as possible - lower temple level if you don't build Hydras here, walls can be demolished as well (if youre not attacked there), barracks can be minimal and definitely don't build any other special building except Thermal Baths.

Basically if you ever prepare a conquest city, then you will not need to use it as often as offensive cities. Therefore more often than not, you will not have to rebuild much in here. All resources can and should be sent on regular bases to other cities, so keep your marketplace lvl rather high.

Varguar commented:

Grom, I would like to point out something that I have noticed that you have not covered. When you take over a new city if you have sent no myth units with the CS then the temple is not worshiping any god, but when you send over myth units the city will be worshiping the god that the myth units are from. So if your colony city is worshiping Poseidon then the new city will be worshiping that same god when conquest is over.

Squad:
Land attack/defense army:  400 hops + 150 chariots
Slow transports: 38

Navy forces:
Trireme: 75

Colony Ship 

Technologies: battering ram, shipwright, mathematics, plow, cartography, hoplites, phalanx, trainer, conscription, bunks, chariot, triremes (and of course Conquest and Colony Ship but they dont cost any points)

Buildings:
Try to not waste to much population on your buildings - your city must serve you well not look pretty.

(type/lvl)
Maxed
Farm 40 always (no population cost)
Warehouse 30 always (no population cost)
Cave 10 always (no population cost)
Academy 30

City wall 25 unless its really in a safe zone then 0

Limited 
Senate 15
Timber camp 30-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Quarry 30-40
Silver mine 30-40 (depends on how much time you have to farm, if not much max them)
Barracks 15
Harbour 20
Temple 1-22 (you will need high level in your first city and if you produce hydras, otherwise get rid if it)
Marketplace 20

Special 
Thermal Baths - always in every city
Nothing

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

cheers :)