CP

CP stands for Combat Points. It’s more or less an indicator of how strong the pokemon is, similar to the level system on previous pokemon games you may know from the gameboy, 3DS, etc.

In this game your pokemon don’t level up by earning experience, but they gain CP by powering them up using 1 candy (later on it will costs you 2/3 candy) of the species and an amount of stardust.

The cost of stardust to power up a pokemon increases depending on how far on the CP curve the pokemon is. For example at the beginning of the curve it may cost you 200 stardust to power up, but at the end of the curve it may cost you 3000 stardust to power up.

Also keep in mind that powering up is tied to your trainer level. By which I mean that on lower levels you cannot reach the end of the curve simply because the game won’t allow you to power up that pokemon anymore if that pokemon has reached a certain point on the curve.

The CP curve (indicated in the image below) is a relative indicator that indicates how far the pokemon is in acquiring his max CP potential.

Because weight, height, HP, the stage of evolution and the level of the trainer determine what the maximum CP of a pokemon is.

Since a pokemon gains CP when evolved, it is hard to compare two pokemon of the same species that are in different evolutionary stages (e.g. a Pidgey vs. a Pidgeotto).

Therefor it is advised not to compare the CP number, but to compare where two pokemon are on their CP curve.

Important to know is that a pokemon maintains it’s CP curve after evolving. So in the example on the left, if this Pidgey would evolve in a Pidgeotto. The Pidgeotto’s CP curve will remain on the same spot. It will however gain raw CP points.

It is advised to evolve a pokemon to it’s final evolutionary stage, before spending stardust to power it up. The reason this is advised is because of the fact that the maximum CP a pokemon can get is slightly higher when you evolve it to it’s final evolutionary stage before you start powering it up.

Another reason why this is advised, is because a pokemon get’s a higher raw CP number every time it evolves so this is a good way to increase a pokemon’s CP early on without having to spend stardust. A commodity that is hard to come by (only catching a pokemon, hatching an egg or collecting your defense bonus yields stardust).

The last two reasons are that you get 500XP for evolving a pokemon, something that could be very welcome when you’re trying to level up and by leveling up first you can see the attacks a pokemon at it’s final evolution has. This way you don’t waste stardust on a pokemon with attacks you don’t like.