Building your First City

Building your first city in a Grepolis world is easy, difficult, straightforward, complicated, logical and baffling all at the same time. The following post therefore contains just a few 'must have' items that you really need. The list of 'would be nice' items is intended to get your brain in gear. There is no set strategy that is best. The only thing that is certain is that the city will be a defensive-offensive hybrid to get you going. And what is said for the first city doesn't necessarily apply to the second.

When starting the city, Grepolis offers you advisers to help you along in your first baby steps in building that city. That is an offer you should accept. The advisers will help you build the city efficiently and teach you the use of all kinds of menus, short-cuts and icons. Following their advice also brings in resources to speed up the building process (a luxury you'll miss out on for later cities).

Your first city starts out with beginner's protection that keeps anyone from attacking you or spying on you. Beginners protection is runs for several days, the number of days depends on the world you drop into. This guaranty that you can't be attacked or spied on while you are a Grepolis toddler does allow you to attack. You can also decide to receive attacks from island quests, they are not stopped by you protection bubble. These protected days should be used to get certain things in place for the day you become part of the food chain; and believe me, you're not at the top of that.

Coming Out of Beginner's Protection: The Things You Need

The main issue is defense. As soon as the bubble bursts, your city is fair game. For defense, you must have the walls at level 10 at the very least. Most players refuse to send in support if they aren't on level 15. Any lower, and your neighbors will just walk all over you. More would be even better, but mostly you will struggle to get it that far in the time allotted to you.

Still thinking defense, let's have a look at the academy. In the academy, you must have researched at least militia and archers. Militia allows you to call in 50% more 'units on time' from the farms in case of an attack than what you would be able to call in without it. Swordsmen and archers build the backbone of your defense. You don't have to research swordsmen, they are part of the starter pack you get when founding you first city. You do need barracks to build them in, though. They can be recruited from level one in the barracks, but more levels reduce the time they take for recruiting.

To get in defensive units, you need population. One swordsman uses up one population; the same goes for an archer. You should have at least a couple hundred defensive units when you come out of beginner's protection. Swordsmen and archers are for defense only, don't waste them in attacks. To get population, you have to build farms.

Getting in Resources

Building your city and recruiting units on land, ships, and mythical units  costs resources and for the last one divine favor. Your aim has to be to get resources and favor in sufficient amounts to do so. There are several ways to get resources and divine favor into your city:

The most obvious way are timber camp, quarry, silver mine, and temple. They give you a regular income to play with; they work while you are away in real life, too. The higher the level of these buildings, the higher the yield will be per hour.

Using the advisers to build up your first city gives you additional resources and divine favor. Whenever you finish a quest given to you by the advisers, you receive resources or units as a reward.

Farming villages can be squeezed for resources and land units as well. The farming villages have to be opened up. In Hyperborea, you conquer them (you need offensive units for that, like slingers). In all later worlds, you use battle points to do that. Every time you ask the villagers for resources, they go into a sulk; you need to wait until you can ask again.

You can loot resources from other cities of ghost cities as well. Horses can carry a lot of loot and are good attacking troops. Harpies can fly and can be used for looting on other islands without needing a harbor to leave your island.

In worlds later than Hyperborea, the island of your first city has a bandit camp. Every time you attack it, you will get a spell. The returning units bring back looted resources as well.

Every couple of hours or so, you get an island quest to complete. If you decide to go for the attacking option, the returning units will bring back resources. The island quest options change from quest to quest; the attacking option may not always be on the table.

Offensive Units

To conquer farming villages in Hyperborea, combat bandits in all later worlds, loot other cities, and to get your next city you need offensive units, too. The cheapest ones are slingers, but they are not worth a lot in defense. Horses are a bit better in defense, but extremely weak against sharp weapons (that is defense against hoplites and chariots). Hoplites and chariots on the other hand have decent defense values and are useful offensive units, too.

In your harbor you should build some biremes for defense, but you'll also need light ships for attack (35 light ships are usually enough to get through 50 biremes). And then you have to remember to build a colony ship which takes up 170 population; keep that much population in reserve or you'll have a problem.

Building Levels

The following building levels I advise you to reach eventually are not set in stone. This is what I usually aim for if I am not building towards some specific city purpose.

I build up the Senate to level 24 as fast as I can to save building time. When I have built everything, I demolish it down to 20. I stop harbor and barracks at level 20, temple at the level where I still want to build mythical units (e.g. I want to build Cerberus in a Hades city, but not Erynies). I max out everything else.

The Cave

I personally have my cave up at max as soon as I can afford it and then fill it. Filling means reaching 200k silver as a minimal standard, 500k for working purposes and 1 million before WW start. But that has to do with my personal paranoia.

More reading for beginners:
Starter Guide
Farming villages in Hyperborea