The Grid

Click here for the quick reference.

It's an elaborate system made up of row upon seemingly endless row of perfectly chiseled squares, each ruled by either a fool or master strategian.

Once you enlist into this new world, you will be sent an activation link, which, when followed correctly from your email will transport you into The Grid in the form of a single entity known only as: a square. You will rule this square - or see it ruled by another.

Upon logging in, you will notice many other squares, fighting for survival, or to spawn themselves like amoeba unto the far corners of The Grid. If your spectacles are not too foggy from the freezing air in this wondrous utopia, you will notice a command box with several different actions you can take. If this is your first time here, you may be overwhelmed by the myriad of colors and cryptic letters strewn about all over the place like some abstract painting you wanted to destroy in that dull art gallery you were taken to as a child. Fear not, however - you will notice an option labeled, "Find Me" (under Tools), which when clicked will highlight your shiny new square for you in a glorious yellow glow. You will notice, no doubt, 3 letters etched across the surface of your new four-sided home, spelling out pure gibberish, I'm sure, to the causal observer. But, lean closer into the grease-stained window separating your physical body from this shell of a reality, and you will see that these same 3 letters actually do carry a meaning.

Hovering over a square's initials in cursor-form will reveal a name: the square's rightful owner. The number below denotes how many units make up the square, which for all intents and purposes is simply a gauge of strength, or power. The higher the number, the stronger the square and the more successful it will be in battle. When that number has fallen to zero, the square will take a new owner - the conquistador. It is extremely useful to also reveal a square's other attributes; namely, it's gold and clout (alliances), which can also affect it's overall strength. You may do this by hovering over the square's units. Hovering over the ampersand (@) symbol below will reveal the square's alliances.

Players who insist upon cursing and swearing in the Chat system, using offensive and vulgar language, spamming, or doing anything that is outside of decent sportsmanship, including cheating, using multiple accounts, or any other form of wickedness WILL BE BANNED. The Grid is a brutal enough world just to survive in, without all of the unnecessary hogwash. So, take care of your square, challenge other squares, make alliances, and multiply. Treat other square-holders with respect, peppered with friendly banter (if you wish), and The Grid will be kind to you. Fall outside of the boundaries of this geometrical world and find yourself with the dogs and sorcerers.

At the time of this writing, this rectangular world, although having the potential to expand to enormous proportions, is still in its early stages of infancy. That said, there is still much to be discovered and learned in the way of strategy and all manner of warfare. There are a few basic guidelines, however, that any player can utilize to make wise decisions in battle:

• Attacking with too few units is folly. Even if you do manage to conquer another square, your units will be spread thin like butter scraped over too much bread, leaving you open to attack by an enemy.
• Before attacking another square (this applies to land attacks as well as missile attacks), think about how many units you have compared to your enemy's. If the number of units is roughly the same, you will still be at a disadvantage because a defender will always have better odds fighting for his home. If the square you are attacking from has less units than the square you are attacking, then depending on the difference in units, your odds of winning will go down even more. Keep in mind that any offline players you attack will also have an additional 20% advantage that will help them defend their squares when they are not logged in. You will know if they are offline because the numbers on their square will be a dull gray color, and on the Ranks page there will be no * indicating that they are online. You only want to attack when you have a definite advantage in units.
• Consider all of the factors before attacking: Do you have a sizable advantage in the number of units? Is your clout (alliances) comparable to theirs? How about gold? Gold can be used to purchase units quickly, and clout helps your odds in battle.
• It is wise to form alliances with other squares, which will strengthen your odds in battle by raising your clout attribute. Since you will lose an alliance if you take a square from an ally, think about who you are attacking before you get too aggressive. Hovering over Clout in your Stats area will show you a list of your allies. Each alliance costs you 50 more gold than the previous one. If you're a gambling man, and need to raise a little money in a hurry, select Gamble from the drop-down (odds are 50%).
• Periodically there is a system-wide update that will regenerate lost units and gold for you. If you are the proud owner of multiple squares, your units will regenerate more slowly over time since you have more ground to cover. There may come a time when your lands are so vast that you will need to use gold (or build cities) to help regenerate your units. Although owning many squares can reduce your farm profits a little during updates, you also gain extra gold ($50) for each square that you own. Also, you will know how close you are to a system update by looking at the countdown in your command box. You may not want to waste time and energy attacking another player when the update is about to begin because the defender may have some, or all, lost units regenerated.
• If you own only 1 square, and have lost it in battle to a more powerful foe, do not fret - The Grid is generous. By selecting "Find Me" (under Tools), you will be given a new square, usually (but not always), at the lowest level of The Grid, where sometimes many re-born and newbie squares shuffle around together like annoyed beetles. There you will be regenerated back into a living square, no longer a ghost. On occasion, a respawned player may come back to life on another player's inhabited square. This happens when The Grid begins to get heavily populated, and The Grid itself rebels against the idea of expanding another row of squares down at the bottom of The Grid. For this reason, it is not wise to concentrate all of your efforts on one square, but to cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what evil may happen on The Grid. When you have lost all of your squares, the player who took your last square will win half of your gold (if you have any) (not banked gold). Some players choose to keep playing with no squares. They remain as ghosts - haunting The Grid, stealing and wreaking havoc.
• You are only ever able to attack squares that border on your own (unless using missiles), and if you own more than 1 square, the square you will be attacking from initially will always be the square with the highest number. Note: this is the square's ID number, not the square's number of units. When purchasing more units, the units will also appear on the square you own with the highest ID number. You may deploy units from one square to another to assist one of your weaker squares in battle.
• Newcomers, take heed! If you're just starting out and run low on units or gold, simply wait for the countdown in the bottom left of the screen to run down and you'll get replenished if you have under 200 gold. You should also start attacking or annexing other squares to create more resources for yourself. Each square you own will increase your update gold a little bit more. Farms are an excellent means to raise more gold, but as they say, 'It takes gold to raise gold.' Many adventurous square-holders have often been able to raise thousands of gold pieces simply by gambling, but swiftly lost it all when they couldn't control their greed.
• Not all lords are able to oversee their lands at all times. Attacking a lord in his sleep or sneaking into his lands while he is away is an effective ploy. Some lords, however, feign sleep, and attack just when the thieving neighbor has paused for refreshment. Others have the foresight to build their towers high and hire extra vassals to watch their lands during extended journeys into the unknown.
• Farms are all the rage because they increase your gold at update time. Start building farms and watch your gold increase. An 'F' on a square is an indicator that there are farms there.
• Building cities on your squares is a great way to keep your units regenerating during updates. Each city you own generates one extra unit upon the square on which it resides every update (providing someone is online). What this means is that if you own 10 cities you will get an extra 10 units every update on top of whatever else you would normally get. In one day, with 10 cities, it would be possible to generate an extra 2,000 units from the cities alone! A 'C' on a square is an indicator that there are cities there.
• Bank, bank, bank! Use the bank! The bank is perhaps one of the best features about The Grid. It serves as a safe spot for you store your extra gold so that it can't be stolen by other players. Or if you get eliminated from The Grid, losing all of your squares, you will have money in your bank account to help you rebuild. A small percentage of your bank money (0.00075%) will be absorbed during every update (unless you're a ghost, but then ghosts can't partake in Blessings), but this mainly only affects players with huge stockpiles of money in their banks.
• Walls are a way to fortify your square, making it stronger. You will know if a square is fortified because it will have a thick wall around it. This gives it some protection against havocs, burnings, and nukes, as well as regular invasions and missiles.
• Rebels provide a way to target any player on The Grid and drastically slow their growth by reducing a percentage of their units and gold during updates. To plant a rebel on a square, choose the "Plant" option and a target square number (33% chance of success). To remove a rebel from square 42 (for example), select the "Remove By Negotiation" option and target square 42 (33% chance of success). To just pay the rebel off so it will leave square 42, you would choose the "Pay To Remove" option and target square 42 (costs 1% of your total gold or $2500, whichever is more). You can remove rebels from other squares as well, not just your own. Rebels can be extremely destructive, especially to squares that have a lot of units on them since rebels work on a percentage basis. Rebels can also drain away a player's gold, given during updates, affecting only the gold produced by the square on which a rebel resides. That is one reason why you should never build all of your farms on just one square. You will know when a player's gold is being drained away by many rebels because the update gold will no longer surpass 42 gold until the rebels are dealt with.
• Clearing The Grid - A player who is able to control every available square (annexable and conquerable squares, not permanent) on The Grid becomes the overlord and shall be awarded a number next to their name on the Ranks page. Once the player has cleared The Grid, wiping all other players from their squares (except permanent squares), that player will not be able to get credit for wiping The Grid again until 30 days has gone by so that other players have had a chance to rebuild.
• Building embassies on other players gives you 5% of their on-hand gold once per turn. You will have to pay 1000 gold to the player that you are building an embassy on. You may also remove the embassies of other players from your lands so that they can't extract gold from you. Some players feel that it is mutually beneficial to have embassies on each other's squares, however.
• Permanent Squares are squares that have a double border around them. Their wall levels will never go lower than level-4 and they will always have at least one unit on them. They cannot be taken over by other players or bumped or respawned upon, and each player may have no more than one permanent square. The cost of a permanent square is 1 million gold, and to change the location of your permanent square costs one-quarter of a million gold. You can change the location by selecting a different square number in the drop-down. Permanent squares will stay permanent as long as the owner of a permanent square logs in at least once every 30 days. Permanent squares are great for building lots of farms and cities, and for storing units. They can still be affected by rebels, but havocs/burns/nukes cannot do full damage due to the wall level always being at level-4. If you own an umbrella as well, your umbrella becomes permanent because of your permanent square. You may not abandon a permanent square until you remove its permanency. If you choose to remove its permanency you will only get back 750,000 gold.
• Wizards can be bought, starting at 5 million gold, and doubling in price for each additional wizard. Each wizard you own multiplies your farm profits and city-generated units per update, your 'Bless' gold whenever you produce a successful 'Bless', and your embassy cash-out gold by (wizards+1 * .7). Also, each wizard you own increases your umbrella protection by 5% and your stealing success rate by 7%. For example, if you own 3 wizards, your umbrella protection is set to 48% (rather than the usual 33%) and your stealing success rate is set to 31% (rather than the usual 10%). No player may have more than 10 wizards, and getting even close to 10 wizards will be unlikely. Wizards cannot die.
  

  Wizards	Cost	Farm Income	City-generated Units
  0	NA	1,000	1,000
  1	5,000,000	1,400	1,400
  2	10,000,000	2,100	2,100
  3	20,000,000	2,800	2,800
  4	40,000,000	3,500	3,500
  5	80,000,000	4,200	4,200
  6	160,000,000	4,900	4,900
  7	320,000,000	5,600	5,600
  8	640,000,000	6,300	6,300
  9	1,280,000,000	7,000	7,000
  10	2,560,000,000	7,700	7,700

• There are still many things in this world that are confusing and complex. Sometimes, there are bugs and other critters that make their way into this world, distorting the reality of The Grid, like, disappearing or rogue-looking squares, which for no apparent reason may show up to impress us with their mysterious agenda. Oftentimes most problems can be fixed by simply refreshing the page. This game is in beta mode and uses unsafe database transactions, which means that every so often some data might get lost in translation. You may file a bug report if you wish, but most likely the data will be gone and there won't be any way to restore it (because there will be no log showing that it ever happened).

May your square grow strong and multiply!