ATHENS, GREECE -- While waiting to check into my room at the Sofitel Athens Airport I had a little time to run through my email, post to my various pages and blogs, and give some orders in my ongoing "Grepolis" online game. In the course of doing so I noticed that all my time stamps were off and that I needed to change the time zone I was in and realized that it was kind of cool to be changing the settings for this wargame set in ancient Greece to reflect that I was now playing it from Athens and would be doing so throughout the Aegean over the next four weeks or so! 

In that I will not be in front of my computer on regular or prolonged basis over the the next month, my main goal in the game at this point is to make myself as less desirable target for attack by greedy or antagonistic neighbors and harden myself against any such attacks they might launch. The main ways I am doing this are by spending my resources as efficiently as possible so that there is not a tempting surplus for someone to try and seize; using them to improve my City Walls so that my troops will be better able to defend the city if it is attacked, especially if I am away when it is; expanding my Warehouse, so that I don't max out my storage capacity if I am away from the game for a few days and so that as many resources as possible will be safeguarded in my Cave if my city does get sacked (e.g., 1,400 of each resource at the current Level 14 for the Warehouse). 

Unfortunately, expansions to my City Wall and Warehouse both require significant resources at this point, especially disproportionate amounts of Stone. So, my last two upgrades were actually of the Barracks and Quarry (the latter of which will help me with the stone problem; I have just not wanted to increase my capacity to produce resources at this point for the afore-mentioned reasons). Also dumped about 1,200 Wood into upgrading one of my six villages from Level 2 to Level 3.