Rebalancing

In this first blog post we will talk about the previously announced topic ‘Rebalancing’, which is a big thing that kept us thinking and experimenting for weeks now.In the past we increasingly observed that certain units have been overly popular while others have been built rarely. That’s not how it should be! Every unit should have its benefits and flaws, so that they open up individual strategical momentum. Some units may be too expensive, consume too much population, or are simply too weak in combat compared to other units. Due to that circumstance we’ve begun to evaluate the whole rebalancing topic weeks ago. This doesn’t go only for land, sea, and mythical units, but for technologies and special buildings as well.

Units

To work with exact values, we made an analysis worldwide. We summarized the amounts of units that were being built in your cities.

Here are some of the results: We noticed that chariots and slingers get built twice as often as horsemen. By looking closer we realized that horsemen are too weak in the offense. Slingers are just more effective and cheaper. Therefore, we want to add another 5 points of damage to the horsemen, making it a total of 60 damage. We hope that you will start recruiting some more horsemen as they will be more balanced.

Catapults were pretty unpopular. This might be due to the high consumption of population, that’s why we plan to reduce the required population value from 15 to 10.

Unit swordsman slinger archer hoplite horseman chariot catapult
Amount of units 56329468 54858402 44517472 50245584 9898240 15014218 444714
Population consumption 56329468 54858402 44517472 50245584 29694720 60056872 6670710
consumption of available population 7,8% 7,6% 6,2% 7,0% 4,1% 8,4% 0,9%
Researched in cities N/A 76% 70% 82% 66% 58% 27%

We have also seen that mythical units get built too rarely and that we should make adjustments there, too. In that regard we significantly lowered the favor costs while increasing the resource costs. Most of the offensive mythical units will be buffed as we also want to shift the Grepolis gameplay slightly towards a more aggressive playstyle. Mythical units will keep their disadvantage of only being able to support cities of the same God, but in return they will be more efficient in combat than usual units.

Looking at the naval forces, we have noticed that especially triremes and demolition ships nearly never get used. Instead, people rely on light ships and biremes. We will make enormous changes to this situation to open up new strategical possibilities. We propose changing the speed of the trireme from 9 to 24 and increase the damage from 180 to 250. This way, the trireme will keep being slightly worse than the light ship and bireme in their special positions, but it will be much faster. By this you will have more time to react on certain combat situations. The trireme will become an attractive hybrid unit in the end!

The demolition ship is some sort of kamikaze unit that will destroy itself after combat while destroying an enemy ship as well. But they don’t fight against transport and colony ships. We would like to ask you – independently of our own ideas – about your proposals on how to change the demolition ship. Maybe you’d rather want to replace it with a completely new type of ship? We are looking forward to your ideas!

Researches

The plow is the most favored research in the game, closely pursued by ceramic. Both researches are done in nearly all cities. On the other hand, diplomacy, espionage, cryptography, meteorology and breakthrough get researched seldom. To change this, we’ve planned several adjustments; to name a few:

  • Diplomacy will in future decrease the chance of a (farm village) revolt by only 10%, but in return the technology will increase the amount of resources you get from demanding and looting by 10%. You will also get to trade with a farm village up to a mood of 60%.
  • The espionage technology will increase the amount of silver coins of your spy by 10% when sending him away for an espionage.
  • Cryptography is good to counter an espionage. If you research this technology and an enemy spy infiltrates your city, you will loose 10% less silver coins from your cave.
  • The research of breakthrough had a too low impact when attacking other cities and trying get your transport ships through. We will decrease the overall chance for a transport ship to breakthrough by 30% if you do not have the research. In return, the research will increase the chance for a transport ship to arrive by an additional 10% compared to the way it works now.
  • The research meteorology increases the speed of land units, but the opportunity to research it comes too late in the game. That’s why we think about putting this research into the first column, so that you can start researching meteorology with the very first academy level.
Special Buildings

The evaluation of the special buildings conveyed that there were 2 favorites, the thermal baths and the tower. We don’t want to make these buildings less efficient, but instead buff and change the effects of the other buildings. It’s our goal to enhance the variety within the game by adding more viable options. There shouldn’t be THE perfect building.

Building
Amount
Ratio
Theatre 152313 1,7
Thermal bath 2540027 28,8
Library 88309 1,0
Lighthouse 145276 1,6
Tower 2032082 22,0
Divine statue 424195 4,6
Oracle 92312 1,0
Trade Office 206630 2,2

Here are some of our thoughts:

  • The theater play will become cheaper so that you can use it at the same time as the city festival. The new costs would be 10000 wood, 7000 stone and 10000 silver coins. Additionally we want to reduce the time it takes from 5 days to 1 day (speed 1), so that it has the same time as the city festival and the Olympic Games.
  • The lighthouse will increase the speed of your ships by 20% instead of 10%.
  • The oracle will be replaced by the “war council“. The war council will increase the offensive values of your land and sea units by 10%.
  • The biggest change will go to the trade office:
    • You will have the possibility to instantly trade resources between 2 cities.
    • A city with the trade office will allow you to declare a target city, if you wish to do so. If a resource storage is full, the production won’t stop, but 50% of the exceeding resources will automatically be delivered to your determined target city. So you can have cities that are not part of your front line and use them to feed your front line cities. A city can only take resources from one city at a time through this mechanic.

Sometime soon you will get the chance to discuss our intentions on the forums and share your opinion with us.

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Posted in Game Design
126 comments on “Rebalancing
  1. the-cartman says:

    Why you guys try to make shitty researches more popular? kick them and create better ones…

    Meteorology for example… what matter 1 or 2 mins more or less time by attack some farmer villages ? thats just stupid

    • Devon Rai says:

      I agree with this guy. Also take away the demolition ship. Though keeping breakthrough would be a good idea

      • Pizzaiolosteve says:

        My idea is this. People want a way to attack around birm wall. How about a colonization option where instead of colonizing a city you build a mustering point on an open city slot for an island. This would be an option for colony ships like breakthrough attack. What it builds is city with a fixed amount if farm space into which troops can be sent. That “empty city” produces no units or resources but can accumulate men sent up to its Max and attack on that island. This would greatly increase strategic possibilities, while also rewarding regular colonization and offering a way to use men from maxed cities (store them at an attack point). Perhaps these harbors can build a wall and also can be destroyed by cats( further increasing their use and need)

  2. Ianisdead says:

    Here’s what I think.
    Horsemen are too expensive and now are definitely useless, as we have the very much cheaper messengers.
    Regarding Catapults could be usefull to make them destroy buildings too, and not only the walls.
    In my experience, the only mythical units actually usefull are: Manticores (a little bit too expensive), Pegasus, Harpies and messengers. The others are almost useless, in the face of human units.
    I agree with Your opinions about ships, buildings and researches.

    • ODOUSEIOUS says:

      Horsemen are great for farming, but not for a frontal attack. I don’t mind them.
      Actually, the reason why many things are ubderused is due to misunderstanding of capabilities.
      There are a lot of useless mythical units, especially envoys, but players recruit hoards of these so they can get the legendary army award!
      Fireships are crap, but why not allow them to accompany attacks? Triemes are not used by many because anyone who reads the guides thinks that they are rubbish, however they are ideal for conquest fleets.
      Also there are crap research items, but working this out sorts the men and women from the boys and girls. No hoodies no rainbows no shaking hands you idiots!

      Here is a suggestion. If you defeat troops as part of a naval attack or defence you get to keep their transport ships!

    • Devon Rai says:

      In the Hero worlds the Catapults destroy buildings once you research that…That would be a good idea to add into the normal worlds

  3. Simon says:

    GOOD JOB!

    The ideas on the special buildings are really GREAT! Reducing the population consumption for some units, especially catapults, is also an awesome thing.

    How about using culture points to have extra points for research?

  4. devachris says:

    I agree on different facts:
    catapults are too expensive and do not have much uses
    horsemen are too weak and defense and chariots are way better
    Triremes are too expensive also and we all use biremes
    Demolition ships should be usable on attack as well and should be cheap
    Meteorology has no real use and should bring something more to troups…
    Very good idea for trade office which is not very useful currently.
    Good idea also that war council.

    • Yury says:

      Catapults are effective in attacks but it should be not more then 10% of attacking forces.
      Now statistics show nearly the same percentage – no needs to change!

    • KvB says:

      I think that Oracle was one of the best, because if you had an attacking city and you built the oracle you never worried about spies. So I think that Library should be deleted. Library is completely useless. It shoul be replaced by the War Council.
      I need the Oracle.

    • cl5ud7u says:

      that’s true ,horseman are very week , 1 in defense … they needs 20 at least …

  5. jim says:

    everything looks good ,, I really like the war council ,,, I think the fire ship should be replaced with something new,, maybe

    -hijack boat (replaces itself with an attacking players ship)

    -raiding boat(a boat that is capable of looting large amounts of resources with out land units) with low offensive/defensive value

    -fishing boat (very expensive with long building time,,increases population in your city, with a cap on the amount you can have ) no attack/defence value

    dont know if any of these would work butits something to think about

    • Your idea of fishing bot is realy good !
      I love it !

    • KvB says:

      Hijack boats would be useful, but I think they should only hijack transport ships or there should be more types of them (due to the population cost this would cause a bug that would allow players to have huuuge convoys (and they wouldn’t be used if they cost a lot of population). So there should be a “hijack ship for trapsport ships” that would cost 8 population and a “war ship hijack” that would steal biremes/triremes/fire ships. Or, an even simpler idea, this should be added as a new attacking “style”, like “normal” and “breakthrough”. This way transport ships would be used, and they would be replaced by biremes/triremes by a cap of the total attacking ship”s pop. cost (if you attack with 10 transport ships you will get 10 biremes/8 fire ships, but attacking with 11 would give you 8 fire ships only and one TS would come back).
      Raiding boat is good, it should replace the demo ship.
      Fishing boats are a good idea, however, they shouldn’t be available in the early academy levels (like this one should be added into the 28th level).
      And another ship type: I would like to see heavy transport ships. If we have light TS that are faster than the normal, then the Heavy ships would carry 30 soldiers but would cost 10 population and would be almost as slow as that one which can make new cities and concuer the enemies’s ones (I don’t know how does is called).

  6. Joe P, aka (Thetan Wolf) says:

    I like the proposals to reshape some aspects of Grepolis,

    I have a few suggestions that seem to be major points that many long timers like myself think need improved or tweaked, ive been playing grepo since world I joined world Theta, almost 4 years ago.

    Firstly, the attack planner, I remember some fan had created their own attack planner that was free for anyone on his website and hosted on his own site, Grepolis closed him down, however his attack planner was by far superior to Grepolis premium featured one,

    The issue with the attack planner is a very simple fix,

    Instead of having to input a Launch time for all attacks from your citys, you could easily make it so there is simply one Launch time or CS landing time needed input, for all citys, and it would then automatically list your citys in their runtime orders from closest to furthest away, or vice versa,

    the way the current attack planner is, you have to constantly enter the same single landing time for EACH city, which is fine if you only have 10 or 20, but when you start getting to 80+ citys and trying to time support or attack clearings it becomes a horrible and very time consuming chore, plz address this when you overhaul improvements for future updates. almost all expereinced players actively prefer to NOT use your attack planner because its so cumbersome and overly tedious to use.

    Next major improvemt you need to sort is the fact this game so heavily and very biased favors DEFENSE players, the amount of players now playing Grepolis WAR game, and do nothing in the game except build landlocked defense in each of their citys, and hope they get attacked is making the worlds die much faster than the older .1 version war worlds, and to read comments saying that Grepolis are considering removing Catapult units from the game is scandelous, do you realise if you take away catapults then players will NEVER be able to conquer a rivals city, and all your doing is pandering to the players who just want to play SIM CITY and build and colonize……these players should be in Hyperborea NOT warrior worlds thats meant for fighting battles, DEFENSE players always build nothing but maximum population defense sometimes even landlocked in a city or island, and then just colonize all around their first city,……if you take catapults out the game I promise you, youl be killing Grepolis, it is already so biased towards defenders that attacking players have to spend 4 citys worth of troops and ls just to clear 1 single city to get a revolt,………IF you cant demolish a citys walls, then how can anybody conquer a city with a level 25 wall and tower, and that then has 20’000 defense troops inside that city ?

    You have to change this as Grepolis IS a WAR game, if you keep penalizing and punishing ATACKING players when they attack, then you might aswell change the game to sim city where people just build happy little boring citys and try and build more than your rivals, because i Guatrentee you you will lose about 50% of your fan base who play this game if you dont stop making the game more focussed towards boring players who play this game and dont want to get attacked, even though they are choosing to play a WAR game thats all about attacking and defending.

    Another MAJOR point you must address is the New world First city placements,

    what I mean by that is, when you join a new world, you are asked what world map location to choose from, ie, North-East, South-East, South-West, North-West & Random, for start points when you join any new world,

    Now if I remember correctly in the older 1.1 version worlds before World wonders came in, anybody choosing these 4 different compass points, would land exactly in one of these 4 corners of the world map……..HOWEVER, the way it currently works, is EVERYBODY is starting in the same Centre of the world map regardless which location you choose on the map compass points, it is centred in the middle of the world map for each server,……..the FLAW in this, is one alliance always grows so faster than everybody else who joins the same world, and then 9x our of 10 that alliance who gets the largest head start usually the premium spending team, will go on to totaly dominate the world in a very one sided way, and anybody joining the world late has very little chance to grow or make an impact without being bullied by the larger alliance thats rank1 in the server,

    to combat this you could position players in each corner of the compass on the actual world map, NorthEast, NorthWest, South East South West, so that instead of everybody in the centre of the world map spreading out, you would have at least 4 seperate continents where 1 large super alliance can grow and have their own battles in each of the 4 seperate corners of the world map…….the bonus of that placement would create more battles in the world, and keep the world more interesting with 4 large alliances in each of their own world locations growing at the same sizes, until they eventually clash,

    but the way players are placed in new worlds in the middle of the world map regardless what compass location you choose, only results in one large alliance getting such a head start and dominating everybody else, then the worlds get boring very fast for players trying to catch up, or who cant compete against the already established dominating alliance who gets the best start,

    at least if you do it the way im suggesting, you would have more than 1 dominant alliance growing in each parts of the world map, then when they start to reach each others oceans the battles would be on a much more even standing, and it will create much more active external forums too, like the old 1.1 worlds used to, when trying to decide which wars were the most interesting,

    sadly the way all the worlds are just now the same scenario happens, 1 alliance grows fastest and dominates everybody else from the start and nobody can compete because that same alliance always bullys everything else smaller than it due to even new alliances being positioned right in their ocean where they are heavily outnumbered or cant compete witht he size disadvantages of established alliances,

    Then the fighting becomes split, 1 rank1 alliance against every other smaller alliance trying to work as a coalition against the Bully alliance, this same scenario happens in every single world, and after the first 3 or 5 months the world is starting to die, because the smaller newer players decide to just join the next new world that opens, and those who do stay behind to try and fight, end up in constant stalemates where nobody can conquer each others citys.

    There is a lot of researches in the academy that experienced players never research either as their totaly worthless researches and dont add anything to the ability’s of a city, however i dont think the research system needs much changed to it.

    What I would like to see introduced to this game, is a land crossing CS that can conquer citys bypassing huge bireme defense counts, I think introducing something like that or last years April fools Trojan horse, would be a very good idea,

    worlds becoming locked in stalemates when players can stack 15’000 biremes in a city that their enemys cant clear, if you have a CS that can cross land and conquer an empty city, it would create a whole new dimension to the defending in the game, as it is now too many BIG alliances just have thousands of biremes and their smaller rivals cant get through huge bireme counts, due to the size disadvantage, so at aleast a new land crossing CS would help balance the game a little more instead of the largest alliance always being able to keep bullying the smaller alliances.

    I hope some of these ideas and input from a long time player might be useful, to help making Grepolis an even better game, and keep it great as the best on line game of its kind.

    • Baxtarius says:

      Very well put. I agree with everything here.

      I have never played in the early worlds that you are talking about, as I am a newish player. But I would really like the world start to change into the four corner thing. All alliances fighting toward the middle of the map. Another thing to go along with that, would be to have WW islands only in the middle oceans. Some WW islands could be better than others, and those would be placed in the very middle of the map. I think that would be nice.

    • crisiusxiii says:

      Hello,

      I am new at grepolis and i am surprised there is No possibility to build a RESERVE unit. the army building a 1 for 1 que which is not realistic at all. Even the smallest guerilla groups will train more than 1 unit at a time.
      My question is to provide intructors on a trainingfield.
      With the possibility to have (some) more instructors per level.
      Thus it will be possible to build an attacking army instead off being forced to “duck and hide” against the (mega)allianties
      of course at a cost since that is what war brings …

      A possible way to maintain a reserve could be a max amount of fighting Force which is allowed to protect the cave. But since they reside in the cave the units need extra people to bring food
      etc. into the cave

      both suggestions should lead to more attaking possibilities.

    • haiko74 says:

      I couldn’t agree with you more! This is a statement I fully subscribe. This is a war game in which the attacker is the loser… Where the game is losing its goal!

  7. Francisco says:

    Hi, first thanks for this awesome game, really. I should say the game is prety well balanced but the main diference is betwen the premium and non premium members. There is to much advantage for the premium members specially when they join in a same alliance. That mater aside i think the Oracle could be more efective if you make it at least for one period at day (like for 3 hours) to show every attack you are receiving as if was the Wisdom spell from Athena. Keep the great work, and thanks again!

  8. tomkat5683 says:

    I like the proposed changes, would like to see a new unit in place for demo ship. not sure what yet, will update after giving it more thought. My biggest concern is the luck system in grepolis. I don’t understand why when I send a LS nuke, it gets like -20% but send a small attack and luck is +5, -5 much more reasonable number. That is the issue that has myself and a lot of my friends more upset with the battle system on the game.

  9. kingpaul22 says:

    i like the changes as far as i can see, just kinda skimmed through but seems like all plausible theories. the demolition ship seems nice but in personal opinion i dont think anyone would use them if they basically destroy themselves along with enemy ships. people want something they will most likely get to keep if it wins. on that note they might use it if it had an extremely high attack value or possibly a very low resource cost. hope that helps

  10. Hellbaron says:

    Most of us have no more free research points. Now changing our troops from biremes to triremes its impossible without reset and so lost culture point. My suggestion: 14 days no research points for triremes.
    The problem with mythical units are not the resources. The problems are the population costs and the spell power costs (480 for 1 Erinys ). This is not a ratio to their power. Also all mythical units should have population based x boat or FTS so that you can send only mythical units without free space in the ships.
    Theater is complete useless. You lost population that needs for units. You need basic resources to make it. With enough resources
    i can make 2 festivals in 1 day. Kick it out and make the statue there.

  11. pttepic says:

    Cryptography and meteorology will still be useless. Troop speed across land is seldom important in late game as most attacks are sea borne. Most people who play seriously have their cave so stacked that the change in cryptography isn’t worth using up the point. Also Diplomacy is still useless. I like the change to catapult, but make them faster too – as it is no one sends catapults overland. I am surprised that Phalanx is not researched more. I don’t always research ceramic, but I always research phalanx.
    I never ever researched chariots, relying on Zeus to provide them for me. Always like horsemen, so I like that change.
    If you want to make a real change, increase the number of farm spaces, have bunks give a bigger bonus especially to fast transports, and increase rate of favor accumulation.

  12. Nice ideas. BTW do you planning to add an official stats service to the game? That would be nice ’cause not many people know about GrepoStats or just don’t use ’cause it’s buggy.

  13. vignesh says:

    hi,
    say more about the ratio,
    i cant figure it

  14. skifiend says:

    All your proposed changes look good.
    The only thing I would suggest you change is to double the speed of the Fire Ship/Demolition Ship.

  15. Flipschko says:

    Thats a great idea !!!

  16. fernandocolunga says:

    The rebalancing of triremes is ok, but at the Theatre I think
    The new costs would be 10000 wood, 7500 stone and 10000 silver coins.

  17. Xenagos says:

    I wish players could transfer or mercenary out troops or ships. Mercenary work in ancient Greece was very popular.

    Historically, Hoplites ruled the battlefield although forces evolved over time Hoplites still ruled. This should be factored in some way.

    Also, Light Ships were the exception and biremes & triremes ruled the waves. I think research for Fireships should be placed where triremes are and the expense should be more in line with the other two items in that column.

    A fireship was merely a merchant ships set ablaze. It should not be researched and should be priced as the merchant. This would give players an initial ‘warship’ to att/def with.

    Overall horses were scarce to most Greeks, I think the game limits them well in that regard.

    Back to slingers/archers/hoplite dilemna … Archers were highly trained and often mercenary so more expensive. The game has a good fit for them. Slingers/javelin throwers were ‘slaves’ (ie camp attendents of the hoplites, or rowers of landed ships.) They should be limited in some way. Perhaps only allowing a 1:1 ratio to hoplites, so the price and combat values stay the same, but you can’t have more slings than hoplites in your army.

    Swords should become spearmen. A lesser armed version of the hoplite.

    Just some thoughts to bring history more into the game.

    -al

    • JOEP 1234 says:

      I like your idea. At the moment you can have the army/navy of 5 cities defending 1 as one force, while the attacker must send a number of indipent forces with as much forces as cities he/she owns. If you can lend/hire troops from other cities than you could have the forces of a number of cities oparating as 1 force, thus no longer favoring defense.

      Also, I’ve got an other idea. It would be nice if there is a unit (an engineer) who searches for weak spots in the city wal, thus lowering the level of the wall for that specificied attack with a number of, lets say, 5. Or if you could send a spy with your attack, who opens a gate in the wall, thus making the effective level of the city only 5.

      And 1 have yet another idea. At the moment the wall is on a cliff behind the harbour. But if I would attack a city with only a wall there, I would just land about 5 kilometers of the city, and then attack the city from behind where there is no wall. And if I would attack via the harbour, I would take al the silver from the cave. I say, ether way replace the wall, or make it al around al buildings.

  18. Xenagos says:

    Reading some comments about stacking up the defense led me to thinking about putting a limit of total ships a harbor can SUPPORT per level. For example a level 1 harbor could only support 10 ships, i.e. only 10 ships allowed in the city! This would force players to build up harbor levels using up population, limiting the amount of defenders, etc.

    Historically, defenders were limited in the number of ships or people that could fit inside the defensive perimeter. Attackers could mass more, but had to be careful about supplies and both sides had to worry about disease/plague.

    Perhaps some thoughts along these lines would breadk the gridlock of 10k biremes defense.

    -al

    • dicephalon says:

      i think this idea would limit gameplay, supposing the person wants to make a land nuke a focuses less on the naval side, then it severely limits effective strategy….navy should be determined by the player, support should be welcomed as it is…….beating that is the icing on the ckae

    • Adrian Y (Amethia) says:

      That will give small players a disadvantage due to small harbour size, that would limit gameplay greatly.

  19. beor says:

    I personally think you should boot the fire ship/demolition ship it is pretty useless and it takes up farm space that could be used to make other units that would perform better. Try replacing it with another one we want something new!

  20. MCFischMC says:

    Whoever says, that catapultes are useless hasn`t ever played this game for real.
    I like your proposals so far (especially the ideas for the Trireme and my beloved catapultes) but have also no idea for the demolition ships. I think thats a blind alley.

    But here`s a proposal for combining the catapults and additional ships problem: How about a “catapult ship” with moderate deff power but the same effect on walls as the catapults now?
    Or even better: The possability to down other buildings like the catapults in “the tribes”, which would surely give you some new tactical options.

  21. qazew says:

    I think research “breakthrough” is useless because players usually attack with both transport ships and battle ships. And the ratio in the market and Phoecian trader is a bit too high. BTW, slinger is just fit, only swordman is a little unbalance (they only cost wood and silver), my suggestion is cut off the amount of wood and replace them by stone.

    • Leonidas Agiad says:

      Breakthrough doesn’t usually help much, people normally use it against large bireme fleets which tend to sink most of your transports anyway. So doubling how many get through is still useless (who cares if 2 out of 100 transports get through instead of one, its still a disaster !).

      Why not change Breakthrough so it guarantees 1 transport will get through per escorting Lightship. eg. if you send 10 LS with breakthrough, then at least 10 transports will get through.

  22. StefKram says:

    The demolition ship would be used more often, if the enemy attacks often with triremes, because one demolition ship is 8 farmspace, but always destroyes a trireme which is 16 farmspace. Making the triremes more attraktiv for player in the offensive (more speed, attack value, as already planed!), is a good way to make demolition ship more attractiv to use defensive against triremes!

    Also as an kamikaze unit it should actively enter the defensive battle as first unit, not last. Now it is like a useless laying mine in the harbor, nothing like a kamikaze unit at all.

  23. Bondholder says:

    Grepolis is a good game – but there is a bias to defense versus attacking and a very large bias against raiding for resources.

    I would suggest 2 fixes:
    1) Specialist building (Archimedes Workshop) allows you to target different buildings with your catapults such as all specialist buildings, walls, barracks, harbour and temple

    2) Replace fire ship with a Pirate Ship: some offense capability versus ships (say half of LS), some def capability (say half of bireme), attack capability versus land units and massive loot capacity say 1,000 of each resource.

    These two mods would materially move the needle in favour of attacking and make raiding a viable resource generation strategy

    Otherwise pretty happy with the mods proposed but don’t make trireme research free if you create a fast pirate ship as well. The two would work great together and be worth the research investment.

    B

  24. allee says:

    I think it is a good idea to review the fighting on grepolis.
    Personally, I never play with many midges unit is too expensive! Too expensive for the report were: the idea of โ€‹โ€‹increasing their speed is good, but the players when they see ums in a city instead of sending biremes …
    The jumpers are often used as units of looting, not too much to make war because of their price and their cost popuation.
    The idea of โ€‹โ€‹change on the trireme is fine too!
    Mythical units are, for me, the basis of the same games as grepolis is a war game with the gods, that they should have more power in the game .. I do not know what to cons
    Excuse me for the mistakes of English, Google translation does not always work very well.
    Excuse me for posting several messages, I did not understand how it worked.
    This is the true message.
    If you could remove the first 2 …

  25. Tina says:

    -what abt making possibility to gift gold and divine spells from own acct to friends acct.
    -removal of oracle will be very missed as used it as must in all front line cities
    – how abt employing independent mods who do their job and do support own alliances when dealing with claims

  26. Paul Winter says:

    i am not big on words i suggest making it possible to share research with each city, change up the battle so u can move troops your self when there in battle strategies

  27. Celte says:

    I like most of the changes like the war council, but some are not going far enough. Face it, due to the values and building times, the wall and the Tower is the land defense still the most effective and easy way to play. It is here where the rebalancing has to start like the war council but also to have a more efective catapult.

    Same on the sea side, an fire ship/ kamikaze ship that can also attack would make offensive play attractive.

    The myths will always be the excepion to build, they are too expensive and slow to build and their only advantdge is their speed and that they dont have to go through the habour. So unless you want to have a mytical unit that can compete with the chariot or so in cost abd build times and still fly you will not see big numbers here.

    I do not like the idea to improve the theater values. It is a war game and we should fight and ‘knok our heads in’. By making it easyer to grow faster with recources you encouraging those sim city players to stick to defending play and just use the recourses for theater play. That would go the against your goal i think.

    Cryptography and meteorology will still be useless with your improvements. Due to the game mechanics that you still have to go through the habour with a CS you will hardly benefit from faster land units (they are to 99% still on ships) and cryptography will only help the lazy player that forgot to put his silver into the cave:)

  28. Yury says:

    Developers have not time to play games ๐Ÿ™‚
    Sharp changes the balance threaten to destroy it!!!
    Start with small changes and check how it works.

    1. Naval units.
    “demolition ship” or Fireship (FS).
    Let them to defend first, _before_ birems and it will be extra popular insteed of birems.
    Increase speed (nearly the same as LS – Lights Ship) and allow attack other FS and most of naval offensive fleet will consist of mix LS and demolition ships. LS and FS now good fit to each other with resources!
    All 3 naval units will create cycle.
    FS in defense will effective against LS ana 1:1 against other FS but not acts against transport and CS.
    FS in attack will 1:1 against FS and redice lost of LS but destroed by birems.
    Birems and LS as main units for deffs and offs.
    No needs to increase speed of Trirems.
    Trirems are nearly useless for worlds with Revolt and perfect for world with Colonisation as good addition for CS. Just make in less chipper for Farm Space. 12 FS will be balanced with respect to LS.

    2. Land troops.
    Nothing strange in statistic.
    For example, you lost all OLU. So you need to build LS + Fast transports + some kind of offensive troops. Surely, you have a lot of stone and build many slingers. Less active players run festivals and have free wood and silver – it’s natural to build Horseman. but less active players also less attacks and less lost troops.
    The same valid for DLU – chariots + bowman are perfectly fit by resources and provide balanced defense.
    Hoplites requires a lot of silver and not compactly fit with other units.
    So statistic for land units just mirrirs of resource balance.

  29. Dales says:

    the demolition ship would be more useful if it was faster, and would attack all incoming ships. it makes no sense that your sailors would just let attacking transports past without attacking, ‘because they are the wrong type of murderous enemy attacking our homes and families’

  30. der-888 says:

    Thanks for open this space, it’s a good idea.
    Propossed changes sounds good, there are units almost useless like trirremes, because his cost mainly in population.

    I think that what we really need is a better Android application. The actual mobile version has limited functionality. Ex:
    – No way to attack a city in other island than mine.
    – The market doesn’t work.
    – It’s difficult to select units in barracks when you have more than 100. When you press the button, telephone calls a number…

    In web application, I propose optional buttons to move around the ocean, because in tablets or Android telephones the scroll when drag doesn’t work.

    • Hidde says:

      You can atach a city on an other island. Search for the play, select the city, choose to attach, choose the city you want to attach from, select your army, attach!

      It took me quite a while to figure this out. So it doesn’t come natuarally.

  31. Hellbaron says:

    I not like the idea with harbor limit. It destroy some game strategies and the fun. As example : You can only make 1 eriny/day
    and if you make a nuke from them so you only need a small harbor because in the time to the next unit you can make ships in a small harbor and without “call of ocean”.
    Make the fireships faster and let them attack too.
    Make the pulling return system better. I.e. you haven send as support 2 FTS and 32 units. Then was killed there 12 units. Its impossible to pull now 1 FTS and 4 units return.

  32. Gustav1982 says:

    “The research meteorology increases the speed of land units, but the opportunity to research it comes too late in the game. Thatโ€™s why we think about putting this research into the first column, so that you can start researching meteorology with the very first academy level.”

    Even if you make this research available sooner it still will be useless. Instead make this research have something like the following. ‘Units will do 5% more damage if researched’ and if you want to have a drawback to the research as well ‘Units will be 5% less effective in defence’ That in my opinion woud be worth researching.

  33. jarno Visscher says:

    I’m from holland and my English is not so verry good.
    So forgive me, if i write it wrong.

    Mythical units: the problem i have is the time it cost to make an effective groupe of mythical units.
    The time of making mythical units is depending on the cost it takes to make a unit. This in ratio of de “favor of the god’s”.
    For example:
    Manticore: 4400 wood, 3000 stone, 3400 zilver + 405 god’s favor.
    The wood, stone and zilver is no problem.
    But the favor of the god’s is.
    It’s to slow. in proportion of making “normal” units.
    So les actractive.

    Of the buildings, i never build the: * Theater, *Oracle and * Library because the other buildings are more usefull.
    Depending on the area you are.
    For example: if i build a city in a hostile area, i build a Tower for defense. In a friendly area i build a statue for the god’s or a trade office for the WW..
    And i always build Thermal bath. for extra units.
    The rest is not importend fo me.

    The last thing i want to say is that i thin its to expensive to reset a research in the “Academy”. It cost 1 CP to reset 1 research. That’s a lot for my tast.

    For the rest: my compliments for al the effort for making this game happen.

  34. george says:

    i believe that is important to have a bigger population
    so increase the farm level

  35. RoyalReinier says:

    There is so much to say on this topic. I propose to make each change a different topic so we can react on each proposed change.

    Quick reaction on the trireme: I would never build it because if I have 75 LS and 75 BIR I can do 2 actions. The hybrids just don’t work in my opinion.

    Quick reaction on the horsemen: I tend to build 40 of them in each city but I hate it that they take 3 population. 2 would have been enough.

    Quick reaction on the catapult: Useless in my opinion. I have not found a way to use them offensively. I only use them to tear down walls from farms. And they take 8 research points…

    • RemusLupin says:

      Yes, but many people do use catapults because they knock out city wall lvl and in hero worlds a random building… I think a population change from 15 to 10 would be great for them though. 15 people isn’t worth it.

  36. solar218 says:

    Another improvement that would make Trirems much more popular would be the way that “Bres”(dutch) is calculated.
    It seems only logical that a ship with higher overall strength is better in providing a good breakthrough for transporters than a ship that is only good at attacking.
    At the moment the number of ships that get’s through the “Bres” is just depending on the offensive strength of the attacking ships, if this would be changed to total strenght of the ships the Trirem would gain much popularity as part of land attacks.

  37. hardbal says:

    Replace the fire ship, with a pirate ship. Very expensive, and a lot of time to make. But when its made, it is going on sail to hunt other boats. Bringing you food and supply. So you can have more villagers

  38. klokslag12 (clock12) says:

    I would like a possibility to counter an incoming attack at sea.
    You should be able to intercept an incoming attack with ships from another city.

    Furthermore i think most of the ideas are worth trying, but maybe you should let players evaluate them after a certain time. Making it possible to reverse the change of the majority dislikes it.

  39. JustTony says:

    Why not kick the demolition ship and make it a hammer like ship, wich has very low defense but deals heavy damage to other ships wich are with smaller amounts
    It looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_(boarding_device)

  40. KangXi says:

    Interesting ideas. But I don’t thin the triremes (as a remainder of the pre-revolt takeover era) will do much good unless they match their speed to LS. Their price will remain their drawback. On the other hand if fleet interception becomes an option (probably hard to calculate unless head on, but if implemented it should be possible from others then the targeted city) it might change all that given the defensive strength of the trireme.
    My biggest disgust from the horsemen does not come from their insufficient offensive values, but more from their extreme weakness against distance weaponry.
    Improving the lighthouse to gain more speed would definitely increase my number of lighthouses. And decreasing the favour amount for mythicals would also be nice.

  41. M. Schabel says:

    I admit I didn’t use the Fire Ship (demolition ship) often, it becomes completely redundant when you have many Biremes, to fight of Light Ship attacks that way.

    Here some idea to improve it, by removing the major flaws, while keeping it a defensive only unit, which cannot attack or destroy Transports or Koloship.

    It is way to slow. -> Speed 5 should be increased to at least 10. Maybe even more if Triremes get the major boost from 9 to 24.

    It only fight if the battle is already lost, so it lays in the harbor more like a sea mine, not very kamikaze. And most of the time you don’t (wanna) lose a sea battle, because of land-off -> It should attack before or together with the other warships in the harbor the incoming warships.

    As a defensive-only ship, the Fire Ship (demolition ship) should be researchable before the Biremes and Light Ship in the academy.

  42. RemusLupin says:

    Looks like a good improvement to me. I like the landmarks getting A LOT better, especially the merchants shop.

  43. Yury says:

    About special buildings.
    First groupe
    a) Thermal bath – nearly 10% of population
    b) War council – +10% to attack
    c) The Tower – +10% of defense for land and naval unit
    d) Changed Divine statue = +50 to maximal storage of Favor for this God or +10 to maximal storage for all Gods. (Also +10% to Favor storage)

    All of this choices seems are equals for me.

    Second groupe.
    a) Mechant – additional resources + autotrading.
    b) LightHouse – +20% to naval unit speed. Perhaps +10% to trader speed.
    c) Theater – change resources to culture on place
    d) Library – additional research for resources or other things.

    Also seems me the proper choices depends on city position.

    • Yury says:

      I just want to say that simple regrouping of special buildings will make choice of popular building less evident and unipolar.
      Thermal bath, War council and The Tower will provide nearly 10% increasing of war power.
      To create real alternative for this 3 buildings I suggest to change Divine statue. Let Divine statue + The Temple of 25 lvl will increase maximal storage of Favor and this effect will be cumulative. So in each city you can tradeoff an additional units for additional maximal Favor.
      Second effects of this change will be increasing the number of mythical units.

  44. SlaughterZone says:

    i like the idee of adding war council but do you really have to remove the oracle? cant you keep it and strenghten it instead?

    a way to strenghten the oracle could be to make it show a report the same time someone sends a spy against you, telling you when the spy will arrive and the amount of silver spent on it. then it gives you a heads up on that someone is trying to spy on you and how much silver you need in your cave to prevent it from comming through. that gives you time to stack upp with silver from other citys and maybe remove troops from the city that you don’t want your opponent to see. (CS, lightships and stuff like that)

    and to make sure no one abuse it by sending a spy and then cancel it over and over again, you could add a 50% disscharge on canceling the spy on a city with oracle in it.

    also the oracle should be given a chance, say 15-20%, to automatically show you what troops your opponent sends against you when they attack. like the wisdom spell but for free. no matter if they have put a spell on the attack or not.

    maybe make it usefull when spying also, adding a chance to come throug with a spy even though you didn’t spend enough silver.

    like if you send a spy with 80k silver against a city with 100k in it you still have a 80% chance to come through. so 80k vs 200k give you a 40% chance, 5k vs 200k 2.5% chance and so on.

    in the example with 80k vs 100k, the city you spied on will get a report of you spying on him and he will have the 20k still in his cave but you still got the report of what’s in his city

    those changes should make the oracle much more usefull.

    sry for my bad english

  45. Skelly says:

    meteorology should also have a slight effect on ship speed. It had good purpose when you could actually farm after building the villages in the old version of game but now that you have resource building and no troop usage for demanding and looting it has little bearing. If it had a slight impact on ships it would have more value.

    Demolition/fireships can gain popularity if they killed lightships and just turned away transports and colony ships. They basically can block ships from landing by blocking ships from land unless enough lightships or triremes are available to clear the fireships. Second if you had this ability to turn away transports and colony ships then you could counter it by allowing break threw research to allow transports and colony ships threw fireship walls. Which would balance the power of fireships. Of course they choose fireship break threw then some losses and random low odds on cs destroying ability should happen as well. At least some troops should fall victim like any war.

    New possible land units….
    Amphippos (GR): cavalryman with two mounts. “5 pop. Carries less loot but slight advantage offense and defense.”
    Axinรจ (GR): battle-axe, Pelekophoros (GR): axe-man, Pelekys (GR): battle-axe or warhammer. “1 pop. Slow mover carries less but is strong in close quarter fighting.”
    Chiliarchรจs (GR): โ€˜commander of thousandโ€™; officer. “Once the city has a thousand fighting units trained you can train this officer in barracks at the cost of 50 to 100 pop. But offers your forces more organization and moral which gives them slight advantage in offensive and defensive points but only one can be created and used at one defensive location and they have little fighting and defensive ability and is of no advantage unless unit count is above 1000 units.”
    Gastraphetรจs (GR): โ€˜belly bowโ€™; heavy crossbow/light catapult ” 1 pop. But could be a more offensive application cause they can be easy supplied with ammo with shooting rocks as well when arrows run low. They can also he light of foot.”
    Hippotoxotรจs (GR): horse archer. “3 pop. But could also add archer to the offensive strategy because they are mobile and have a long range weapon which makes them less vulnerable because they can avoid close combat were ground archery fears toe to toe fighting.”

  46. qazew says:

    Support more units in the farming village is a good idea, I mean, you just can’t build enough troops with the farming village to defense when other players attack you.
    For examples:
    5 swordmans and archers
    10 slingers and hoplites
    BTW, Zues divine power (the one which give you a chariot) is too costly

  47. ivox says:

    I think i’ll be better to give more realism to the game in the battles. I haven’t any good idea for it but if players will can to participe in the battles, for example having the control of one of the soldiers… it won’t change a lot the battle ressult and it’ll be funnier.

  48. W.A.R. says:

    Just got one thing to say which I already red in the fourth or fifth comment.

    Grepolis = War game.

    all your improvements are being thinked yo improve defense. What about attacking players?

    just read the fourth or fifth comment

    • Yury says:

      Grepolis is strategic game with fixed final goal and war is one of possible way to reach this goal!

  49. imperatorer says:

    Perhaps we could lower the requirements to build the port, since the noobs find it hard to get to build it

  50. indios says:

    I am Spanish and I say this with google translator:

    ami personally like as it is Grepolis, but man some more improvements in the academy or one more soldiers would not be bad …..

    for example in a game I played in that game called ikariam things had got out of the ordinary (missile boats had submarines etc etc) I wish there was ami 1 unit in the barracks that was like a machine that lanze arrows if not I mean I understand the machines used by the ancient Romans for throwing many arrows would not be bad man and then also if colonization craft tardasen least they would be fine.

    Well I have already given my opnion plus I was wishing for that pass this to tell you besides that would be more cool.

    If I can think of more things or I’ll put something else too

    I hope I have helped

    greetings to all

  51. Daniel says:

    The special buildings do not should cost so population. I Mean, Meybe it should cost 20 of population instead 60. Itยดs too high!

  52. Stahu says:

    Replacement for fireship? Good idea; or better yet, add another one.

    Why not some sort of sea based artillery ship, that damages buildings or walls similar to spells from Zeus or Posideon? This ship could have limited if not any defensive capabilities, and strictly used to “prep” a city for invasion.

  53. B1lb0 says:

    I think , it is the moment of change and the proposal are perfect,New possibilities, New strategies,New play, but with the same flavours….
    Thanks

  54. ZORKAL says:

    Dear sirs,
    My ideas:
    Demolition ship: Attack killing one boat, either lightship, birreme, trirreme, transport, colonization…Same as in defense. Less population, as they are supposely empty when sailing. Faster when the objective is closer could be an idea.

    Building: Be careful not to potentiate too much the old ones, it will unbalance to the other buildings.

    Reduce speed of making horsemen also will help.

    Another thing would be to potentiate one units with others. If you attack with 1 horsemen, 3 slinger and 3 hoplite for example, the result will be better than all units the same.

    Thats all.

    For last, I think the best improvement would be in terms of reducing multi-players, it is by far the worst thing of this excellent game. In fact after 3 years playing I am not playing more worlds because of that.
    For that, I would not allow players sharing account to play in the same world. Just like that.
    Also, try to get some tools to detect the use of proxys. Its too technical, I donยดt know, but there must be something.
    Thank you,
    ZORKAL (es12)

  55. Joao Carlos says:

    I have a suggestion for Fire Ship:
    a) The units will remain in the game;
    b) Passarรฃo have speed 9x (it’s currently Trireme, however faster than its currently 5x);
    c) have an intake of 12 people (more than the light ship, unless the trireme … calm, which now has other benefits);
    d) Will consume 500 wood, 350 stone, 150 silver coins (it will be cheaper than the present, especially in the consumption of stone that we both need to Festivals Urban);
    e) may participate in an attack, but always accompanied by transport ships with troops; (of course right? has an advantage has to have a slight disadvantage);
    f) may, on defense, stop Colony Ship!! This is a major flaw of the current fire ship, just stop birremes, triremes and light ship, transport ships do not stop and neither colonizers! I’ve had enemy city in revolt full of fire ship;
    g) In defense remain the last to fight, but an attack will be the first fight (because the next advantage, but it would be too strong);
    h) If an attack on a city, using Fire ship, is demolished all the naval defense of the target city, Fire Ship destroy 3-5 levels of Harbor!! (imagine the consequences of this advantage! Currently the harbor of a city to fall to less than 20, it can not produce Colony Ship!)

  56. Jonbay says:

    Fireships

    I would like the speed increased to probably double. Then the key change would be to reflect how a fireship works in real life.

    In real life (Dutch Spanish wars for example) a fire ship would have an effect on more than one opponents ship. The more ships that a fireship was sent against the more were likely to be destroyed (fire leaping between ships and setting fire to the sails for example), total disruption to the attack causing the breaking up of the line of attack leaving ships vulnerable or grounded.

    So my proposal would be to have the power of the fireship changed to reflect the number of opponents so if a ratio of 10 opposition ships to 1 Fireship (irrespective of any other ships with the Fireship) then the power of the Fireship is doubled (each one can kill two opposition ships)

    If 20 to 1 ratio then can kill 3 opposition ships.

    Lastly with the increased speed 2 perhaps 3 times as fast as current, the Fireship should now be able to be used to attack (as was its most frequent use in RL (e.g. The Battle of the Downs). The same ratio should apply.

  57. roberto says:

    the demolition ship I would replace it with a canon ship, it destroys other ships and wall.

    the catapult should have a very strong defence when militia is activated.

    thank you for your work guys.

  58. Ronceval says:

    Why you don’t change te matter that you can go with your troops from one to another place without any time first to return to your city of starting.
    And why not make the opportunity to send your transport boats to load on another place troops.
    Then you can also plann faster and more realistic

  59. Persilog says:

    Overall, I think it is a good analysis of the game present state, and I mostly agree with the proposed changes. What troubles me most about Grepolis is the battle system though. Those instantaneous results are strange. It leads to timing, and anti-timing, so basically a pure chance and luck, when you’re trying to land or destroy a colony ship.
    I’d love to see battles that take up some time, where reinforcements could arrive, and possibly also where you can recall your troops if things go really bad. Of course this would require some additional thinking, but it could be an “alternative” battle system. Battles could take a reasonable time, from several seconds with small armies to several minutes or even hours in case of larger bodies.
    I’m sure you guys can think of something. That would be a master feature for me, replacing the depressing attempts to hit some specific second. ๐Ÿ™‚

    • Leonidas Agiad says:

      I agree, timing is too important to the game. Maybe the default randomiser should be +/- 60 seconds instead of +/- 10 seconds, but then give players a ‘Leader’ unit, 1 per city, the more actions he’s involved in the smaller his timing randomiser. So a really experienced ‘Leader’ unit might have a randomiser of say +/- 5 seconds. It would be ideal if players could swap their ‘Leader’ units from one city to another, so they can be available in the hot battlezones and not get stranded in previously conquered territories. Perhaps give Leader unit other features as well, eg. a defensive bonus that improves with each successful city defence, or an attack bonus with each attack (perhaps related to Defensive BP’s and Attack BP’s earned).

  60. Paul Johnson says:

    Grepolis is a game set in antiquity as the adverts say but of course it would be impossible to copy how wars were really fought.
    It would be better to enhance catapults even further than is being suggested as historically city vs city battles took long periods of time and required the never ending use of catapults and Ballistae and what about Polybolos which actually existed and were repeating Ballistae that had a wooden magazine to supply the ammunition.
    Maybe the introduction of a spoiling attack would benefit us as it was common practice in the ancient world to try ambushes against bigger forces where the defenders knew they were going to get defeated. these attacks were often done at night and were hit and run raids trying to kill a general or high ranking officers so the attacks were disrupted.

    I agree with the comment that the Hoplites ruled the battle field at this time, and pretty much did until the Roman legions changed the face of warfare.
    Alexander’s army crossed the Hellespont in 334 BC with approximately 32000 infantry (made up of 6 brigades of phalanxes and 3 of shield bearers) soldiers, 4,500 cavalry and a fleet of 120 ships.
    That army eventually reached 100,000 through recruitment in captured cities….Could we do the same by forcing captured cities to replace our destroyed units?

    Just some ideas

  61. elargonauta says:

    I would like can block ports with war ships.

    If you block the port of an enemy’s city, he can’t trade resources or receive reinforcements from allies or his own citys.
    Also your enemy lost the control of his port.

    This feature can be a negociation tool to force to make pacts of peace for example.

    Also I would like to make fish boats. They produce silver for your city.

    That’s is all, thank you very much.

  62. sauron3 says:

    I think that the hydra should be faster, since it is a sea creature. Most marine animals are in fact fast (think of sharks, most fish), make the speed for example 16, so he is well useable for defending cities that are attacked. also, the defense should be better. favour costs should also be lower.

    For example, what (I think) would be good is:

    more wood/stone/silver costs
    something of 250-300 favor costs
    attack 1000 (as strong as fire ship)
    defense 900 (weaker than bireme but still useful)
    speed 16 (hydra is not very useful because it is soooo slow)

    ps: it would be really funny when a unit could travel on the back of the hydra.

    • Yury says:

      Other choice – make Hydra slow as CS and it will be smart emulation for attacks with CS. New tactic element will appear in game – false attack with Hydra insteed of CS.

      • sauron3 says:

        isnt the hydra a gigantic monsterous sea animal that noms on ships, i think that such a monster shouldt be slow. making hydra as slow as CS would only make them useful for fooling people. after time, everyone would know this tactic and just use wisdom to see what it is.

        hydra should be a sea-borne manticore.

        • Yury says:

          1. Everybody know how to propect own troops from Wisdom spell. ๐Ÿ™‚
          2. “9 Hydras + 1 Cs in 10 cities” will be good tactic to divide deffs between cities.

          • sauron3 says:

            you are right about the wisdom,

            but wouldnt it be better to change the demolition ship into a ship that can be used for fooling people.

            (i like hydra waayyy too much to let it become slow, i know hydra sux atm, but i am just a big fan of sea creatures)

  63. Leonidas Agiad says:

    You are right to completely overhaul the naval aspects grepolis, but your proposals dont go far enough. Historically Triremes had a higher rower to weight ratio than biremes so were actually 20% FASTER than biremes ! They were also much more manouverable, which combined with their impact force made them much more deadly in combat (due to the manouverability, speed, and weight).

    For balance, the main drawback of a trireme is crew size (70% higher for triremes vs biremes), construction cost, and training time for the crew (which could be implemented in slow/expensive builds).

    Navies are also too big in grepolis.
    Biremes typically had 100 oarsmen, Triremes 170 oarsmen, so why do they only use 8 and 10 farm population !? They should be much more labour intensive than transports (ie use much more pop), specially compared to transports (I’d double or trebble the transport capacity of transport ships).

    Fireships should travel like transport ships, be usable in attack and defence, should be used FIRST ahead of other ships, but have a random combat effect as they were vulnerable to weather effects, and were not manouverable, specially compared to triremes.

    “Lightships” dont really fit at all, why not rename them “Quadremes” and make them a slower, more expensive, longer to build, premium attacking unit !

    • Leonidas Agiad says:

      oops …
      “why do they only use 8 and 10 farm population !”
      should read…
      “why do they only use 8 and 16 farm population !
      :o)

  64. 3mark3 says:

    I think you are right on point here…………..Just do them tomorrow please!!

  65. Alex Ross says:

    My proposal is to have 2 option about time and resources cost for bulding.

    1.If want build fast the cost increase proportional but if want low cost increase build time.

    2. About land units and sea units, the quantity to build must be more than one by each units. It is too harder to have a regular troops if only can build one by one.

  66. The Rising says:

    The swordsmen are way too strong, you have manny noob players in the beggining of the game that only make swordsmen (mayby it’s only on the Dutch server) but it’s really annoying they just destroy your whole clear of slingers.
    and i’m using the mythical creatures always
    centaurs and pegasus are beast in deffenece and cheap

  67. Grepolislol says:

    Maybe you guys can replace the demolition ship for somithing kind a like a pirate ship. If an enemy attacks you you can take over the attackers ship.
    Or maybe you can make something like a catapult, trebuchette, battering ram or ballista ship.

    I think those last things sounds pretty awesome, I hope you will get some inspiration from it ๐Ÿ˜€

  68. iggy77 says:

    i think the war algorithmus should be more realistic with including a correlation based on the battle unit experience, in this case different strategic unit clusters could be created (off/deff) and the game would get a bit more realistical variations

  69. jonas nilsson says:

    Why not let the demolition ship take the first hit when attacked? then there are a chance of the other ships to take the the tranport or colony ships

  70. sauron3 says:

    why is there so few information about the mythical units in this topic, the disbalance in myths is way greater then the disbalance between chariots and horsemen.

    ps: what will the new attack / def / speed / cost of the mythical units be?

  71. berke says:

    Horsemen are not resource-compatible.

    Here is the case what i face:

    I have 26 cities, 6 of them are only for fire ships and 10 of them are for attack troops. After a great war where i lose nearly all the fire ships and attacking troops, i begin to re-build them. In the process, a lot of wood and silver are consumed, resulting in excess supply of stones. I cannot trade all of them, so i recruit slingers or chariots (hoplites are also manageable with some trade) rather than horsemen, in order to clear excess resources. It is not about the attributes.

    Other than that, i generally agree to the proposed changes, especially the ones regarding mythical units and special buildings.

  72. hgghy says:

    why does everyone thing the game should be “realistic”??? it will never be anywhere close to “realistic”!!!

    this game favors defense way too much.

    most mythical units cost way too much favor.

    the overviews need to be completely redone, they are horrid!

    I hate the fact that I can only store 500 favor from any given god, maybe make the max favor, say, 25 per temple level & 125 for divine statue? the drawback to this is that the first few temple levels will be useless.

    I had something else to type, but I forgot it! #@$%#%&$@&

    • hgghy says:

      I remembered! ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚

      there should be a way to transfer units from 1 city to another, not just support them. you can add a button “gift”(when you click on a city) which will allow you to send the units to that city & instead of them just being stationed there they will actually belong to that city(as if they were recruited there). although it should not work if they exceed the city’s population.
      you could also be able to trade them on the market for other units.

  73. cl5ud7u says:

    “War Oracle ” it’s a awesome idea …
    please implement quick

  74. cl5ud7u says:

    The best thing that you can do is to launch a world demo and wait to see what say the players.

    • Jordan Coutout says:

      That is what we plan to do somewhen soon ๐Ÿ™‚ After reading all your feedback, we will make some adjustments to the concept and then organize an international public beta for real testing.

  75. rakanishu says:

    Some comments about the special buildings:

    – Theater: In order to even consider building a theater instead of the thermal bath, there really needed to be some great advantage over the city festival, not just a slightly reduced resource cost. The duration of five days is just ridiculous. By that time i could probably have made like four city festivals (and probably also had the resources to do so).
    – Lighthouse: This building is simply on the wrong side of the special building tree. If I had the choice to either build the tower, or trading office, or lighthouse, then this would be a more viable option.
    – Library: The only cities where I have ever seen this building is people that messed up their research early on. I guess no serious player would even consider to build this thing.
    – Oracle: What good is this building, if it does not provide at least some sort of protection from espionage? Just knowing that someone has spied on me and got through with it, now how good is that?
    – Trade Office: I agree, that there should be some ‘added value’ to this building, other than just getting better deals.

    When it comes to the researches, some are simply not worth wasting the points for it. For example, why do I have to waste precious research points to get four different time windows when demanding resources, of which only one (eight hours) is of any real use? That research should be totally scrapped, and made available without any research. Other researches provide some benefit only for a limited time, like the reduced building cost and building time. Once the city is built up, there is no use for these any longer. Democracy is another good example of pretty much useless technologies. What does another 10% time buy me? Chances are, by then the city is so fully packed with defense, that I will probably not be able to get it back, if i did not manage to do so in 24 hours before that.
    The cost of one culture point per technology you want to reset is another thing that should be carefully looked at. The worst case scenario is that the previous city owner has researched each and every available ‘low level technology’, which would cost you lots of culture points to even get things halfway right. In my opionion it would be much more fair, if one culture point would ‘buy’ you the ability to reset technologies lets say worth 8 research points.

    • Reinier says:

      How about getting 8 research reset points after conquering a city? Consider it a bonus for conquering.
      These reset points would not affect culture points and still gives you the option to reset some research if another player messed things up. Maybe these reset points should expire after 24 hours.

  76. Xman3 says:

    Ive been playing grepolis since 2009 (in an original world). I hate most of these changes that you guys come up with, such as the wonders- limited the worlds to a certain time, they used to be on going… But some of these are good ideas.

    I really like the war council, but I think the Library should also be replaced.

    I think Myth Units should use more God Power and less resources, as I like to combine them with my regular troops.

    Demo ship should be replaced, I like the previous ideas of a fishing ship or hijack ship. I also think the trieme should either be replaced or improved, as they aren’t very useful in revolt worlds.

    Also, I think that there should be a few more gods. I’d like to see Ares, Aphrodite,Hephastus, and Apollo (IN THE NORMAL WORLDS, NOT HERO WORLDS). For Apollo a good idea would be a sun chariot (flying unit) and for Aphrodite I think that a Nemean Lion would be a cool idea. Another Idea for a myth unit is a Chimera. For Hephastus, obviously an Automaton would be an ideal unit (advanced troop, preferably with better aromor and such to the Divine Envoy), and maybe a Colossus. A Hippocamus could be used as a scout of some sort. PLEASE ADD MORE GODS!

  77. Missant says:

    I like the idea of improving sea battle, especially if it finally leads to more diversity. Now it is in over 95% sea battles Lightships vs. Biremes or if you a lucky catching some offguard Lightships vs. Lightships.

    I like the idea that triremes get better in speed and attack value, because they are really expensive and take long to build.

    The fire ship on the ofter hand is cheap and is good against fireship and triremes, even in small numbers, because they always sink on enemy ship. You can improve the fire ship by adding speed to catch up with incoming fast lightship and (very fast) triremes, if another city is attack. I also like the already mentioned idea that fire ship should move against ships in the defensive first, which make sense because they are supposed to be a cheap kamikaze unit. The precious ships the biremes, triremes (and light ship) should only fight if all fire ship in the harbor are destroyed.

    If a enemy harbor is full of fireship, there is the hydra which cannot be destroyed by fireship. Improving fire ship, so that they will be build more often, will therefore make the hydra more interesting in attacks. I think this is how it was supposed to be in the first place. Rock, paper, scissor.

    • Yury says:

      Agree.
      “Rock, paper, scissor” are the principle of land units war.
      But to make sense for 4 naval unit a new naval battly system are needed.
      For example, let birems and trirems will be main defensive and offensive units (similat to current state of birs and LS).
      Defense of birems should be equal the attack of trirems per unit population. FS (fire ship) will be effective against trirems as chip and fast builded deffs unit. So LS (light ships) should be less effective against birems and effective against FS.
      As example, reduce attack of LS but let them be ably to sink 2 FS.

      In this way the naval battle system will have the following algorithm…
      LS (if any) attacks first and fight against FS + birems in proportional to harbor contents. If 200 FS and 100 birs in harbor then 2/3 of LS (truncated down) fight against FS and sink 2*2/3 of FS. If no FS in harbor (all destroyed) then rest of LS fights againsf birems. Then Trirems attack FS + birems in proportional to harbor contents. Trirems against FS use 1:1 relation. (Birems, if any in attack group, fight last and similar way)
      FS – 8(7 or 6 – reduce if necessory) population
      birems – 8 population and 180 deffs.
      LS – 10 population and 160 attack (not effective against birems)
      Trirem – 12 population and 270 attack (1.5 to both population and deffs parameter of birems. Additional spells will increase attack)
      Hydra as 5-th naval units ignore FS and fights against birems only.

      Additinally posible to implement rule for breakthrough.
      If any FS in harbor then attacker last 30% of land units.
      If attacks with breakthrough (or breakthrough was researched for attack with CS) then only 10% of land units was lost.

  78. piratenhauptstadthot says:

    i found it cool,brilian,only cool

  79. Reinier says:

    On favor: I dislike the idea of being able to store only 500 of it and having no option to increase it. Combine that with Wind costing 250 favor and I can only add 10% more fighting power to 2 fleets when attacking. Bad…
    Powers like Wind should work globally for all attacks. All naval attacks gain 10% power for 12 hours when Wind is enabled. Maybe Wind should cost 350 then instead of 250 but it would be worth it.

    Also, the fact that favor does not increase proportionally is boring. The maximize favor production every god should get an equal share of cities due to the sqrt calculation. I have switched 80 cities to Zeus and I still only get 70 favor per hour with Priestess enabled. Mainticore training is still slow…

  80. doville says:

    your translations, in french for instance, are awful !!!
    about the research “percรฉe” (breakthrough?) for instance, you CANNOT understand the advantage this research gives you, but just the drawbacks !!!
    but I think that most of the changes you’re ready to do are very positive
    please forgive my poor english, it’s rather funny in this case^^
    !!!!!

  81. Terminus Zeta says:

    Fire ships really do need to be one of the first thing attacking. As far as catapults go make the capability for them to attack the transports and cs , this would fill in some of the invencible transport problem. Cross island conquest would make land units work harder and players re think their defense / offense options. The raider ship has promise to it , same with a fishing boat to increase population.But as it has been stated many times cut back on the defense side and up the attackers chances.

  82. garnikos says:

    Hi everyone,

    I agree with the statement that the game should be more offensive. Offensive Units could be stronger and maybe faster too.

    However, as a result of this, a player who hasn’t got 8 hour a day to play, would be impossible to exist in this game.
    Therefor I would replace the Night Bonus with an additional short-term vacation mode. The player could define themselves the time when they need peace.
    For example, pupils wouldn’t have to worry about their city, a dad wouldn’t have to check grepolis while playing with his daughter etc.

    Greets

  83. Alรฉxandros III says:

    “The theater play will become cheaper so that you can use it at the same time as the city festival. The new costs would be 10000 wood, 7000 stone and 10000 silver coins. Additionally we want to reduce the time it takes from 5 days to 1 day (speed 1), so that it has the same time as the city festival and the Olympic Games.”

    Just one day is a tragedy because of players will not attack for culture bacause the theater is better way than attack. The game will become boring, a real disaster.

  84. berhoids says:

    i like the new ideas, quite exciting to read about really ๐Ÿ™‚ i was thinking though how about making the fire ship a touch faster, but also make it capable of attacking incoming waves. I am thinking if it was to be sent out at an incoming wave it could be more effective than the usual 1 for 1 kill. maybe they could take out 2 ships per 1 used if they attacked and incoming wave. i feel this could make them a contendable unit if you can catch out an incoming attack in time, thanks ๐Ÿ™‚

  85. BigJIm35 says:

    Replace the Fire Ship with a pirate vessel that will allow us to steal opponents ships and troops. I think that it would really make the game much more interesting. Make them somewhat expensive to produce both in terms of resources and population requirements so that a player does not end up with an entire fleet of pirate ships. Think in terms of cost of the Colony Ship.

    This is a tactic used by both the Greeks and Romans.

  86. BigJIm35 says:

    Two more comments>

    1. I also suggest that you leave the run time for Theater Plays as is currently. However, switch the costs with the City Festivals, and as a reward give us 3.5 Culture points.

    I think this would encourage more people to build the Theater and also make the game more interesting.

    2. I have suggested this before. I still think that we should get battle points when we attack a village and for killing militia. Even if it were at a reduced rate, say 50% that of player to player attacks. This would at least off set the cost for recruitment of units lost in these types of attacks.

  87. Mike62 says:

    I like some of the ideas on here, especially the changes in Fireships and Horses.
    Personally i would like to see the horses change to a cross between Horse and Mounted archers this would allow them to be used for different strategies.
    The Fire-ships and Triremes at the moment are non starters and they should be changed. The idea of making the Triremes faster is a start but it needs to be looked at more, maybe add some sort of harbour raiders as it to replace them or even replace the fire ships.
    As for changing the defensive side of the game, there is nothing wrong with it people should expect a harbour to be stacked and well defended and be able to work around it when needed.
    Can i suggest that maybe some type of working group of players can look at these ideas as there are soe very experienced players out there that should be listened to.