Intro to War Tactics - Three stages of the game

Wars (mass scale conflict between at least two groups of players) happen in Grepolis at different stages of game-life and require different tactics in order to be successful. I will present now three main stages of the game. As you progress in your game you will have to change your tactics a bit and add new ones in order to win. In my next guides I will focus precisely on timing waves, organising conquest operations, on effectiveness and efficiency of your actions, when to attack and when not to, how to win "resources war", PnP (Politic and Propaganda), demoralising enemy, politics, diplomacy and so on - all of these are required to win a war especially in the advanced stage of the game. This "guide" here is just a general introduction.

Beginners

At the very beginning of your Grepolis adventure, its simply all about taking enemy's city. You can do it by killing their army and parking your CS in. At this stage you need to know how to time your attacks and supporting waves properly. Also you need to know basics about units parameters,  battle mechanics, how to prepare a proper offensive forces, how to enhance your army with different spells, technology upgrades (research) and even paid boosts. That sort of information you can find on this page by reading my guides from the Basic Guides tab.

Having only one or couple of cities leaves no space for errors. You need to be accurate, spy before acting and prepare yourself. For that you can use my Ultimate Unit Calculator. Every good player at this level master its knowledge about battle mechanics (Battle anatomy - attacking) but also about economy. Every single ship counts. Losing CS hurts and slows down a lot. Therefore everyone should not only focus on effectiveness of all units but also on their efficiency. Being able to rebuild army quicker is the key here for success. Its not only about knowing how to farm NPC villages fast but how to gather more resources (farming other players, trading), how to use gods spells to speed up production, make your army stronger, to know how to organise it and pick battles to lose little while destroying a lot (good knowledge of battle mechanics and army units come handy here). More about Farming and resources (click the link). Additionally guides about units are: Land Army and Units parameters comparison rankings.

Intermediate

Next stage is about eliminating few key players by taking their cities. Players have around 5-15 cities each. Usually few active and well organised players will pull the whole alliance and even leaders with them. Because they have bigger armies its harder to conquer a city and on that level it is more about draining enemies resources and then taking out a weaker player. However it is still possible though to put your enemies on knees by taking their cities and quick conquers can be done.

On that stage you should make the best use of your knowledge about timing attacks and about efficiency (how to get the best results with lowest cost possible). Now team coordination starts to be a crucial factor. Organised operations in which participate a good coordinated group of players will be devastating to the enemy alliance. So be sure to master operations planning and execution. Leaders should be aware of things that I discuss in my guides about: Recruiting and Activity Monitoring, Structure, Communication and Procedures.

To find out more about timing your waves and organising them (including my famous manoeuvre) follow War Tactics series and for your operations use Traveltime Calculator. Make your armies and attacks more effective and deadly (City specialisation, Fast Transport Ships, Breakthrough)

Take their strongest fighters out, then leaders and mob will run away. Demoralising enemy is pretty easy at this stage.

 Advanced

The last stage of the game is much more demanding and if you face an average organised alliance with many strong players it can take even months to win that war. As players conquer more and more cities above strategies start to be not sufficient. Polis is not anymore such a highly perceived value and quick conquers will not win war for you.

At the end of my game I was fighting against players who had 20-50 cities each. My old teammates now have 150 cities! Once, we took 8 cities from a very active player in one week and it didn't crush him. There were so many other cities around that he just took all of them back - some were 8k ghost towns that nobody wanted or some belonged to his inactive teammates. His alliance had so many people going inactive that it was problematic for them to keep up with internal conquests, to hold these cities under their flag in order to look strong. If somebody would notice big drop of points on grepostats it could create a panic in their ranks.

They had more than enough of cities to give to people who lost them to us. It created a problem - we had against us alliance made of 200-300 players and thousands of cities. We couldn't take them all. Also Grepolis favours defending and it is much easier to defend than to attack - you can stack units, build walls and as defender you choose your battlefield by dodging or stacking units in one place. Additionally units parameters favours defending (Farm Space wise). Add to this 1-2 day long travel times and you get the picture - its nearly impossible to chase runners through oceans unless you have really a lot of time to do that.

Therefore we had to win our war by killing their alliance spirit, forcing their leaders, key and regular members to give up or leave the game. For that we needed more ways/tactics than just successful conquests.

Draining resources (read: Total War - Resources) through successful chain of battles was helping but it was still a slow process. It did the job though - some enemy players were tired of moving around, having to constantly take new cities, rebuild them, gather resources and rebuild their army. So yes, being consequent in taking enemy cities, winning battles and draining their resources can slowly make you a winner. By winning battles I mean a situation when the enemy lose more resources in them than you, not when all you can say is: "yeah! we took 1 of his 30 cities, destroying 2000 BMs and losing 5000 LS". Of course bad things can happen but you can be ahead of your enemy by simply being more active, gathering more and quicker resources and rebuilding your army faster.

Therefore winning battles and taking cities is still important but it should be supported with other activities, like creating PnP (Politic and Propaganda) threads, emailing enemy players, making political pacts to support your war etc. PnP activity can actually be the deciding factor in your war like it was in case of big conflicts that I won. Yes we did great, took many cities, even oceans but it wasn't enough to break our enemies.

Summary

As long as you master basics you can easily win wars in the beginning of the game, however as players gather more and more cities and alliances grow in numbers it will get harder. Grepolis favours defending and with possibility of gathering many players together and conquering hundreds of cities, wars can look like waste of time, fruitless activity. Some players will learn how to dodge and avoid conquest attempts which can be even more demoralising.

However it wouldn't be fun if it was easy right? I can tell you now that everything is possible, you just need to find a way. I have some experience and will share it with you more in next guides. Right now I want you to understand few important things:

• Defending is easier than attacking - offensive play style demands higher activity, dedication and smarter planning. Offensive pressure is necessary for a win but be smart about it and don't let your enemy to drain your resources for no good reason.
• In the early days all you need to know to win is to understand basics of the game, battle mechanics, effectiveness and efficiency of all units (and boosts), resources and speed of productions importance.
• To be successful in the next stage you will have to do all above and learn how to coordinate actions with players in your team/alliance - well planned and executed team operations are devastating.
• In the most advanced game all above factors are important but you need to add to this long term strategies focusing on resources, enemy team set-up (leaders/key players), focus more on PnP and politics. Taking cities is not the end goal and might be not sufficient to win.

There are some tactics, tricks and tips that can help you to win more battles or take more cities. There are some general strategies to make your enemy weaker. However there is no one ultimate secret super duper uber tactic that is gonna win every war for you. Its all about executing good tactics, being organised, consequent and planning all actions that will make you a winner. 

Keep that in mind when reading next guides focused more on details and don't expect totally new and enlightening war tactics that will change you into a super hero. I will say what works and what to focus on when trying to defeat a strong enemy.

Introduction to my guides about conquering a city - who are these guides for

Next series of guides will be for advanced players - for basic information about conquering cities check this Conquering Guide. Once you know basics you can check Battle strategy guide from grepo forum - its actually a very decent guide and some information there will be mentioned by me here as well. 

You might be wondering whats the difference between the last one and my guides on this page. My guides focus more on things that I find the most important and there are some related to them problems for which I found solutions, tactics and tricks. So I will not discuss here exactly every single step how to conquer a city. I will not speak about the importance of clearing waves, support and little things to remember like recalling your offensive forces once you park your Colony Ship (I personally never had to as my CS waves were made of hoplites and chariots). 

If you played Grepolis long enough you will probably not need step-by-step guide about conquering a city but rather more precise advices regarding some common problems. I will get straight to the point in these guides giving as many advices as I can. However if you have any questions please post them in the comment boxes under each part.

As I have already mentioned before defenders have easier life in Grepolis than attackers. There are plenty of guides out there how to avoid clearing waves and dodge everything except CS or how to snipe it.  As an attacker you have to deal mainly with dodging, defenders ability to stack units, city walls and protecting your Colony Ships after it lands. First lets discuss single player war (1 vs 1) ignoring at the moment your teammates, enemy team, large scale operations etc.

Next > Conqering Cities Part 1 - Timing waves