Time is of an essence. This is true for the time you spend playing Grepolis as much as for real life. But in Grepolis, time is the reason why some people win and some don't. It's not how much time you spend in the game that makes you a winner; it is time wisely spent and intelligently communicated to other players.
In Grepolis, time is everything. Wherever you look, whatever you do, it all hinges on time. No matter where you look, a timer is ticking down time. You demand resources from a farming village and a timer kicks in keeping you for 5 minutes to 8 hours. You send units somewhere and travel time keeps ticking before they get there. You want a hero in your city and a timer keeps him out until he had his beer and sandwich. The list goes on and on.
So let's get something straight. Time can be misunderstood. In daily usage, we think of time as in 'meet me tomorrow morning' or 'see you in an hour'. Add to that that only kings are on time, everybody else is fashionably late by 15 minutes. That is not what time means in Grepolis. Even the army is laggard compared to Grepolis timekeeping.
A close look at what is going on inside the game tells you everything. When a player enters the game, he gets beginners' protection of several days. Looking at the dove spell in the bar beneath the city name in the middle of the main screen top, it shows seconds ticking away. It's not several days, it's several times 24 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.
And that is just the beginning; everything ticks, the buildings, the research, the recruiting, ship building, traveling here and there, farming villages, heroes, revolts, sieges, you name it, time ticks. The first thing that has to be made clear in no uncertain terms is that an expression like 'my colony ship arrives in 4 hours' has no place in Grepolis. You're in the army now.
Communicating Time
The time format use in Grepolis is 24 hours: 60
minutes : 60 seconds. Time is running from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59.
Seconds in this game are important! When communicating times, do it correctly and completely. If you say your colony ship arrives at a city at 12:30, then someone will try to get support for it to land at 12:30:01. If you thought that the 4 seconds over 12:30 didn't matter, you'll learn differently when your colony ship is smashed to pieces by your friends biremes sitting in the harbor since 12:30:01.
The time communicated between players in Grepolis is always the time of arrival. When you send out a colony ship or an attack, time is communicated as 'arrives at 14:13:02' not as 'arrives in 4 hours'. The same goes for attacks that are coming to your city. Every second counts when battles are being fought.
Having said that every second counts, Grepolis knows this too. There are a lot of people who can time attacks and support to the second. Grepolis countered that with what is called an antitimer. More about that later.
In the rare cases (usually when planning an operation) where it is relevant to see how far away from a target you are, the time communicated is 'travel time' (tt); it is shown as 01:30 for one and a half hours. As the time is not yet set in stone, the seconds are left out to make it clear that it is an estimate.
To find out travel time from your city to another, click on the city you are going to and choose either the sword icon for attack or the green arrow icon for support (travel times are the same). Then click on the units you want to send to see the travel time. Travel time is the time shown that is constant; the time that changes is the arrival time.
As a test you can send the support or attack out. You'll note that the arrival time is now fixed and the timer counts the time down to when that happens. You can recall the support or attack by going to the little arrow icon at the top of the main screen to the left of the city name. Hover over it to get the unit movements; those with an x can be recalled by clicking on the x.
You can find out travel times for units you don't have by entering a figure below the unit icon. The system will do the calculation for you as if you had a valid number units to move.
Timing when Sending out Units
When sending out attacks or support, the action window will show travel time (tt) on the left and time of arrival on the right underneath the unit boxes. When sending out units to arrive at a given time, you concentrate on the right hand time and press the Attack or Support button at the time you want them to arrive. OR as near as you can get, that is.
Grepolis uses an antitimer. The arrival time shown when you press the button can be +/- 10 seconds (or similar depending on the world's speed). You sent out your troops when your window showed 17:45:36; when you check the time of arrival it can be anything from 17:45:26 to 17:45:46. Keep that in mind when timing it. If you notice that they arrive before the set and agreed time, recall them immediately.
Requesting Help
Grepolis stacks unit movement (attacks and support) by time of arrival. If an attack arrives at 15:15:25 and support comes in at 15:15:26, then the support will never see the attack. When attack and support arrive at the same time to the second, then Grepolis queues them according to their time of departure. If the attack time is known, that means any support you want to send has to arrive at the latest in the second before the attack lands, otherwise it will miss it because support was sent out later.
When asking for help in attacks on another player's city when sending a colony ship, give the time of the latest attack to arrive as one second short of the colony ship's landing time you are publishing. As your colony ship is on the way when you put up the post, any attack arriving in the same second will hit your units in the city you just conquered.
Time Zone Agreement
To make these times all work for everybody, alliances set an alliance time zone for all players. It doesn't matter if you are in Atlanta, Berlin or Melbourne, you will have to abide with the time zone set by the alliance.
As alliances enter pacts and share tabs and reservations, they too have to agree on a time zone. It has therefore become an accepted practice on the English servers to abide by London time. You usually will find a forum entry telling you something like the following:
This alliance uses the Time Zone UTC (London).
Please make sure you have the correct time zone before asking for support or help with attacks. And sending support to others or joining in attacking a city should only be done once you are sure you are on London time.
To check and or change your time zone:
1) Click on the cog wheel icon above the god icon.
2) Click on the menu item Time zone in the left hand menu below the title Game settings.
3) Choose Europe in the drop down menu under Continent.
4) Choose UTC (London) in the drop down menu under Time zone.
5) Click the blue Save button.
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