https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sybXh0pmE0&#t=7m13s
The event is also already available on our beta-world for you to play around with it:
http://beta.grepolis.com
But enough with the advertising. 😉 In this blog post, I would like to go into some more detail about the event and provide you with a bit of a background.
As you probably know, the last events revolved around the crafting of rewards. But this time we wanted to stick somewhat closer to the soul of Grepolis: Epic war soaked in blood!
(you can click the image and save the full-sized version in case you want to use it as a desktop wallpaper)
Although we would love to make an event which is about some Player-versus-Player action, this is pretty difficult to do. Events should be available to all our players … so new players would not benefit from a PvP event due to the beginner’s protection (and the inability to produce masses of attacking units in the early stages of the game).
However, we could at least allow for battles against system-controlled enemies (or “NPCs” to use a regular term). The idea for a Player-versus-Environment campaign was born!
We decided to use the Thracian realm for this as a (vague) historical footing. The Thracian people seemed to be quite barbaric compared to the highly cultivated Greeks back in the days. That is why we chose some kind of civil war: Thracian insurgents would terrorize the region, which calls for a heroic ruler to bring peace back to Thrace. And, of course, this is you!
Thrace will be shown as a campaign map stretching across 60 individual battlegrounds! Although there is a certain path which leads from the beginning to the end, the path will occasionally split up or indicate side-paths with a dead end. This will allow you a bit of tactical movement throughout the map.
If you choose to attack an available battleground (marked by two crossed swords), you will see the rebels that are stationed there and which you are supposed to defeat. You then have to choose the troops for your attacking army. The trick here is that the size of your army is limited for each battleground, meaning that you can send only a given number of units into the fray.
So, you carefully have to think about the perfect composition, as each unit has its strengths and weaknesses against specific unit types. A Tribal Axeman for instance will usually have the upper hand against Peltasts, as he can easily hack through their shields, making that poor warrior defenseless. However, since an Axeman lacks real armor, he is pretty vulnerable to the ranged attacks of the Spear Thrower.
These different strengths and weaknesses can easily be seen on the respective units.
But, when you have won the fight and chased away all rebels from a battleground, just don’t think you have won the whole war! After 4 hours, an even higher number of rebels than before will arrive at the battleground. You can beat them again to get the associated reward for that battleground once more. The more often you triumph in the same battleground, the more troops the insurgents will send in, up to a point where you cannot emerge victorious anymore as the maximum size of your army limits you too much.
Tenia, the commander of your Thracian Army, will every now and then tell you something interesting about local events. And sometimes you may even uncover secrets to make your Thracian units more powerful than before. Considering this, it may be wise to look out for these buffs as quickly as possible before repeating favored battlegrounds too often.
Ah, and one more thing before I end this blog post: There will be four new rewards available in the event:
- Bireme reinforcement
- Lightship reinforcement
- Luxury residence (only on world’s where heroes are enabled)
- Travelling mentor (only on world’s where heroes are enabled)
Of course, there are also a few awards which are tied to the event! And now, we hope you all have fun conquering the Thracian realms. 🙂
The event will be available for four weeks.
4 weeks for this Event…:-( and there after to be sent the colony ships in pension..Conquer is not currently yes..rather play mini-games..but lie properly The Envoy..
regards
MDGeist74
Is it possible to conquer all farms atleast once without gold?
“And sometimes you may even uncover secrets to make your Thracian units more powerful than before. Considering this, it may be wise to look out for these buffs as quickly as possible before repeating favored battlegrounds too often.”
How can we uncover secrets?
A very active player will be able to clear all battlegrounds at least once! I have created a simulation program to balance this event and to ensure that players without Gold can enjoy all the content. In my simulations, it took me ~3 to 3,5 weeks to reach the last battleground. 🙂
In order to uncover sectrets, you just have to beat the corresponding battlegrounds. Hint: try to reach the stages that are glowing on the campaign map. 😉
I hope by being very active, we don’t need to be online every 7hrs as well as find all 10 mercenaries every day?
With “very active” I mean checking the event every 7 to 8 hours and gaining all 10 mercs, indeed. But keep in mind that we will increase the chances to gain mercenaries compared to gaining orbs during “Hephaestus’ Forge”
I have yet to be able to play any added featured games such as the Forge and now the Thrace conquest on the iPhone version. Will this ever change?
We are currently focusing on improving the App in general as we think usability is better than access to time limited events. In the future we will implement again events running cross-platform 🙂
Will this event happen again in Grepolis if it becomes quite popular?
It is a possibility yes. But nothing set in stone 🙂
There is no culture level in the whole event? Can you confirm that is the case? The rest of this stuff is trivial in most of the events. I’ll spend enough gold every time to get a culture level up though. I can’t believe there is not one here.
No gold spending on this one if that is the case.
There is no culture level in this event. However we have some cool new rewards such as the traveling mentor, the luxurious residence, the fireship and bireme reinforcement!
i hoped for an olimpyc game as in the last years… where you could choose the gift by yourself… you’re making a slot machine of every event… let people choose how to spend their gold… people is annoyed by spending money without even the possibility to choose what’s better for their own… randomize the prizes by chance is not a good solution, you’d get much more money by giving people the possibility to choose what they want…
There won’t be any Grepolympia this year as the Thracian Conquest is running for 4 weeks in total!
i got it, i’m not stupid… i said i wished for grepolympia, because in that event i could chose which prizes i could buy with my gold… since christmas, every event developed in a slot machine (and i am really not sure you can do something like that), in which players spend their money hoping that the chance give them the prize they want… well, i know that this had a good feedback for your cash flow, but everyone want to spend gold with the possibility to chose what they want and what they don’t… in this event you choose the prizes… wouldn’t it be better to give some “event money” for each battle and spend the money for the prizes in a market (a market, where i choose what to buy, not a slot machine in wich i put money hoping in chance)? i think that with the events, since they are rare and give unique prizes, people should get what they want with their money…