Broke and Butter's Battlelust Battle Guide

Defending

When playing as a black mage, you’re going to be handicapped by mostly whites and greens. Whites will aim for holy damage and lighting damage against your units with dominion (dom), unicorn (uni), Spirit Warrior (SW), Knight Templar (KT’s), THL-ed crusader, Paladin, High Priest (HP's), and titan. Greens will aim for melee, magic ranged, and psychic ranged damaged w/ treant, mandrake, phoenix (nixs), Earth Elemental (EE), and nymph.

You can get around these attackers by stacking 3-4 solidly sized units (13%-20% or more) and filler sized units (3%-10%) and using the spell Battle Lust (BL) and either Brooch of Protection (Brooch), Missile Shield (MS), Bubble Wine (BW), Ash of Invisibility (Ash), and The Spider's Web (Web) as the item. Brooch is specifically for boosting melee resistance (+50%) against treants, mandrakes, and titans to near melee immunity for some units. MS is specifically against phoenixes, nymphs, and other ranged units (+50% ranged attack). BW (+20% Primary AP and +30%HP) and ash is for doing damage. Web is great overall.

Items--different set of items--then are very important and should be collected in numbers per run. MS, brooch, and bubble wine are usually cheap. So, you can easily amass them all together at affordable prices. W/out items, you will feel handicapped w/ your choices of stacking. Try to buy a bunch of one item on one run, the next bunch of another item on the next, and alternate your stacking and setup accordingly to the item on the next day round...or not.

Solidly sized units (13% to 20% or more) that are usually stacked at all times are: efreeti, lich, and horned demon (HD’s). Unholy reavers (UR’s) are incorporated, once you have the lands and population and demote HD to the filler rank. The 3-4 filler unit (3%-12%) can come and go and depend on you and what your can summon, disband, and keep. The frequent filler units include: djinni, medusa, salamanders, wraiths, and sylphs. They don’t have to be all stacked and shouldn’t. Lowed stacked sylphs are the most obvious example, since they will get stack wiped from the counter of top stacked treants in a short stack army.

Since solid stacks of ranged units can be easily stacked mid to low stacking, your fillers units, especially the flying ones, can be used to push down your ranged units. Your mid to low ranged units can then have a field day hitting lower and more vulnerable units of your attackers and still be in position to absorb damage if there are no other units on the ground stacked above them. Flexibility in stacking can then be easily attained with flyers and ranged units. Again, good to Full Barriers (2.5%) are needed for 70-75% of blocking incoming battle spell and items.

Purpose of Units Used

Salamander (7-11%) , 4th or lower; for targeting trees); great against "fat" greens who target black w/ mainly top-ground treants and mandrakes b/c such green mages won't have enough low stacks to engage w/ ur low salamanders; salamanders can then kill the top grounded trees (or top envading black's UR's); keep behind HD's to be protected from mid-stacked titains; on offense, great for targetting top-grounded levi; slow, however, will render salamander unless.

efreeti (15%-19%) as 2nd, 3rd, or 4th units for enemy's ground units to hit; can absorbs SW's and uni hits; w/ brouch of protection can take hit from titains' painful melee holy and trees' hits; ideal overall units. can be placed 5th or 6th to wipe out fodder units; problem is that the secondary attack might not be used against something else if the primary attack kill every unit or almost every units.

UR's (+20-25%) as the 1 or 2st ground units for enemy's ground units to hit; mainly to absorbs titains, SWs, uni, and trees; keep from stacked behind djini, succubus, or lich around mid-stacking; otherwise, UR's can be targetted by top lich or RD's/chimera; disband on skinny mages to lower # summoned to manage more easily. ONLY 20 UR is usually needed; use stackulator to see who UR will fit in w/ the other stacks.

lich (15-20%) as the 1st or 2nd ground units for enemy's ground units to hit. 1st if greens are attacking; 2nd if white are attacking more often; lich can deal w/ trees best because UR's no longer have spell resistance to verdant spell (rust armour); to attack reds at higher lands more must be needed; best to have enough to be able to attack reds and greens; can be top stacked if you don't see whites above you.

djini as top stack- used to lower lich top; won't be murdered by nixs if missle shield is used (same case w/ vamps--see warning!). easily over-killed by doms!

use HD's (if as filler) and medusa (each 10%-15%) to push down non-ranged units. use djini to push down wraiths and wraith to push down efreeti/lich.

DEM, as the last stack, rock! just need 50-40 barracks and recruiting setting of 9,999,999,999.

An army stacking could be something like below (for 1900ish-2400ish acres):

1st: HD’s
2nd: Djinni/Efreeti
3rd: Efreeti/Djinni/Lich--
4th: Wraith/Lich/Efreeti
5th: Medusa/Salamander/Wraith
6th-9th?: Wraith/Medusa/Salamander
10th: DEM
Battle Lust
Brooch of Protection
--Lich can be 2nd stacked and would work.

Yeah. There are many units that are can be switched around—too many! The foundation is still the same. With brooch HD’s and efreeti can provide you with a good defense against the teeth of white units and trees. You can also use djinni, medusa, and salamanders through out your stacking order to lower and cover your lich from white units. Likewise, you can use djinni, lich, and wraith to suppress and cover your medusa and salamander from trees (treants and mandrakes) and EE.

For safety, you are going to jack up your troops’ primary attack power (AP) by 80% w/ BL (battle lust) and by 10% with Battle Chant at a cost of 30% and 5% to your troops’ health points (HP) respectively. That’s a boost of 90% to your primary AP at a cost of -35%HP. Since you don’t want the HP reduction, or at least not all of it, your forts then must be built to at least 1.00% or higher to get some fort bonuses on defense to compensate for the loss of HP. Higher ratio of forts is preferred. You can also use Bubble wine (+20%AP and +30%HP) to compensate for your loss of HP and boost your primary AP further. Units with moderate (around 4) to high primary AP ratio (primary AP/power rank), moderate or above HP ratio, and moderate or better resistances will greatly benefits. You are basically doubling the numbers of HD’s, medusa, wraiths, salamanders, DEM, nymphs (get from market only!!), reengage wizards, hydras (have not tried yet), and whatever else with the mentioned recommendations via doubling their primary attack points. Please do try other units that you can think of and have fun with it:) Your fort bonus should cover some of to the majority of your HP loss from BL. Overall, the loss of HP for that much gain of primary AP for your moderate or high primary AP ratio endowed units is well worth it, especially if you use bubble wine. Additionally, you will need barriers! Considering how much battle spell and item determine the battle, you will want about full or full barriers (2.50% of your acres) to limit what your attackers can do to you in terms of item and spell used against you.

If you do use bubble wine, then stack:

1st: HD
2nd: Lich
3rd: Djinni
4th: Efreeti/Wraith (Wraith are difficult to place sometime)
5th: Efreeti
6th: Salamanders (at least 7-10%; for attacking top stacked treant in a short army stack)/Wraith
8th: Medusa/Wraith
Etc…

In the 1900 to 2300, you can ideally either enter damage protection after the third or fourth attacks. Battle Chant and over-summoning comes in handy here. You can more easily out-damage and enter protection sooner with Battle Chant and over-summoning w/in 1900-2400ish acres and 8-12mil-ish power ranking. If you lose land, then damage protection will come after the 2nd or the third attack. To enter damage, 30% of your mage's net power must be lost. So, you will just have to over summon to like 12-13mil of power and then drop to 8-9mil of power (that's about 30% loss from 12-13mil) after 2-3 attacks. Yeah, you will lose that much net power in army powers. Since you're land-skinny and oversummoned, you won't be toothless after some whacking. Also, around 2300 to 3500, you might want to use bubble wine in combination with battle lust, battle chant, and sun’s accuracy favor. W/ a few cheap valor heroes(2), you can jack up your primary AP to 120% and will probably get some interesting battle reports with this combo on defense. On offense you get a thorough disbanding of your stacking if you get battle lust through:'O Don't use battle lust on offense unless you need to disband ASAP.

Overall, you will tend to end up in protection, losing some lands or not at all, and hurting your attackers dearly. The odds are not that bad. (C'mon:O'? You're super-oversummoned, considering how land skinny you are and how you’re jacking up your primary AP for an army w/ moderate to high primary AP wielding units.)

As you move beyond 2400 of lands and into the 10million power, what you want to do is incorporate more defensive and moderately offensive unit—Unholy Reavers (UR’s) and vampires (vamps). The problem is your pop upkeep! keeping mind the lich, HD’s, wraiths, & DEM costs and effects in pop, you really can not really have them ALL. UR’s are most costly because you can easily summon 35-42 of them per casting. Disbanding UR’s requires pillaging mages to kill off the UR’s down to 15 to 20. Wraiths, lich, and vamps can be easily and cheaply obtained from Night of the Living Dead spell (NLVD). Disband all disbandable units from NLVD if you do use the spell to get the undead units. Don’t get greedy in using it--stop using it immediately if you have 1900 wraiths or 100-150 vamps because wraiths and vamps are difficult to stack mid to low. Wait till you have more pop to really use it often. Avoiding getting a stack of 20-26 UR’s might be better. In which case, you are using the previous stack, though with more flexibility because by now you have not seen top doms your way. Nature's favor helps with the food production and hence your pop-management! Get it to have more room for errors in pop-management if you want.

1st: HD/Djinni
2nd: Lich
3rd: Djinni
4th: Efreeti/HD/Wraith (Wraith are difficult to place sometime)
5th: Efreeti
6th: Salamanders (at least 7-10%; for attacking top stacked treant in a short army stack)/Wraith
Medusa/Wraith
7th: DEM
8th-10th: Skeleton/zombs/vamps & wraith left over/whatever

Use Missile Shield to protect your djinni from nix. (I’m assuming MS give djinni’s 145% resistance to ranged attack and not just 100%; sorry. I didn’t have the figures to calculate.) Bate lust

Try UR’s out though. They’re decent, like titian. Get them when you have build up more farms and towns (around 2700 acres) and only after you have disbanded some of your HD’s and lich, disbanded most or all of your vamps (the wraiths will die on their own) and have around 250-300 djinni. Disbanding the number of UR’s that you want to get rid off depends on luck and target selection (prefer super skinny, UNDERSTANDING blacks who are probably stacking zombs for ~5-8UR killed, and then whites/greens/blues/blacks/reds~12-17+URs). After killing off some of your UR’s, stack djinni on top of them.
1st: Djinni
2nd: UR’s (~18-22)/Lich--
3rd: -Lich/UR’s
4th: Efreeti (700 and no more!)/Lich
5th: Efreeti/HD’s
6th: Medusa/HD’s/Sylphs
7th: Salamander
8th: DEM
9th-10th: etc...

--Prefer lich 2nd stacked, though UR’s would be a good unit to match up w/ incoming, top stacked titian.]

--Missile Shield (esp. if your are expecting top nixs, assuming MS give djinni’s 145% resistance to ranged attack and not just 100%; sorry didn’t have the figures to calculate)

Battle Lust (if you feel like it)
or Giant Strength, Stun, and Paralyze=) (if you don't)

Staring around 2500 and especially beyond 2700, get your country ready to use Night of the Living Dead!! See Maintenance and Attacking on attack run w/ Night of the Living Dead. Also, staring around 2700 acres, limit the numbers of efreeti to 700-900 to keep them in the mid to low stacking. At the mid section and higher they won’t last as long and are just too costly to resummon. Resummoning can be VERY painful if your spell fizzles for efreeti twice or thrice. If you fizzle, mp charge once and then try casting again. You can’t afford that many efreeti anyway without losing your diversification.

1st: Djinni/HD’s/Lich
2nd: Lich
3rd: Djinni/UR’s
4th: Vamps
5th: Efreeti/HD’s
6th: wraith
7th: HD’s/Efreeti
8th: medusa
9th-10th: salamander (should be lower than medusa to avoid cost of resummoning to get the #’s) sprite/DEM

Battle Lust
MShield if you're using top djinni
Bwine if you are using top lich
Brooch if you're using top HD

Note: you need to watch your pop upkeep with a stackulator, keeping in mind that for every 900-1000 pop upkeep you will need about 100,000 of population in order move many turns with your pop-eaters. Get rid of some HD's and lich if you need to get your pop down. With wraiths, you might need vamps and/or djinni to cover them from good ranged units.

If doms are attacking, get rid of the wraiths and vamps, switch the top stacked w/ HD's, place the djinni where 3rd or 4th, and DON'T use battlust. Get rid of some lich and MR's ( too if you happen to have too many MR's.

1st: HD's
2nd: UR's or lich
3rd: lich or UR's
4th: djinni
5th: efreeti
6th: medusa
7th: sal
8th: MR
9th: Dem
1oth: etc

Brooch
Battle Lust
Or stun, blood curse, giant strength, etc. Do use flame blade only if the SAME greens keep on attacking.

--Note: Always try to counter the attacking greens and whites, even if you have to over summon. Don't be at a psychological disadvantaged by not knowing what the attacker stack on defense so that you can come up with better attacking stack next time…

After Defending: Maintenances and Attacking

Maintenance for black mages means doing some attacking to get lands or just to disband. There is no other way. Undisbandable units were meant to die in battles. Hence, in order to mp charge like mana-heavy colors, you are going to strip yourself of your pop eaters for a low negative or a positive mana income (1-2000mp; 2000mp= Spring Cleaning situations; avoid losing too many efreeti; too costly to summon) and MORE importantly a positive pop income (at least 200 w/ some whips of the 3 tails). You should commit to mp charging then only. Get moon’s favor for a boost in mana production, which is well worth it for Sabbath. While you’re at it, get Lucifer’s summoning and AP boost as well. Moon and Lucifer usually get along well 3/4 of the times.

With damage protection, you can take additional advantages of Sabbath and/or moon’s favor by mp charging per turn to get an extra 1000mp per turn. Sadly, YES, you’re mp charging per turn. Yes, you're that bored and addicted to TR!:D The mp you get is random when charging. For some reason, you can get more mana doing per turn charging for some amount of turns (3-4) than you do when charging all (3-4 turns) at once...call it a short term effect that can be extended in multiple short mp charging.

Attacking in damage protection is where black mage can bank lands. You can somewhat safely feed and even bottom feed, which is pretty neat for blacks. If you are lucky to be damaged and have an intact army core (lich, efreeti, and 2-3 other units), what you can do is mp charge, summon non-pop-eating units, bid some items, or whatever to recover some pop freed up from the loss of some of your pop-eater and later use Night of the Living Dead to grab some vamps, wraiths, or lich in a quick amount of turns. Then pump out some HD’s, sylphs, and sprites and go attack reds, blues, and greens after adjusting your stack per attack. Before you hunt, get Sun’s accuracy favor or Lucifer’s primary AP boost (&summoning boost) if you don’t have moon’s favor all ready. As you hunt, you grab some more units from NoLD, summon the cheap units, and re-adjust again. You then continue to attack and repeat till you are ready to mp charge, over summon, and end your run.

Try to incorporate NoLD into your run. The easiest way to do so is to attack and kill of your most of your wraith and vamps and some of your HD's and lich. Lich are tough units. Set up/recover/amass up your pop and then use NoLD. Disband the zombs and shadows. Keep the wraith, vamps, and lich. Beware. Wraiths and vamps will pill up to the top stacking very fast if you don't plan to alter our stacking thru summoning and keep using NoLD.

To stretch out your attack run, attack some blues, especially. They are unpredictable but don’t deal that much damage to your lich and efreeti (MR’s do kill efreeti very well though).

Blues
1st: Djinni/Lich
2nd: Lich/Djinni
3rd: Vamps/HD’s (light enough to hover above efreeti)
4th: Vamps/HD’s (light)/Efreeti
5th: Efreeti
6th: Vamps
7th: Salamander
8th: Medusa
Etc

--The top lich are really just aiming for top djinni. This stacking will usually be used as red targets are no where to be found. You’re really hunting reds with top lich. If not top-lich is not preferred, go w/ a top but very light stacking of djinni or vamps. Any good offensive matchups from djinni, lich, HD’s, and vamps would be great. The real teeth of the attack will probably come from low stacked efreeti and salamander targeting leviathans and elementals, and your folder-killing units. Slow, however, will neutralize salamander and HD's. Without slow or web, salamander will usually be super amazing against levi and grounded elementals.

Reds
1st: HD
2nd: Lich
3rd: Efreeti/Djinni
4th: Efreeti/Djinni
5th: Wraith/Vamps
6th: Vamps/Wraith
7th: Sylphs (Sylphs should be used if you think the reds are deep stacked.)
7th –8th-10th Medusa/Salamander/DEM/Sprite

--Reds’ fodder will likely be killed off before you attack. Sprite are then preferred for fatigue, so you can Leave the DEM behind.

--HD’s is the best unit to take hit from RD’s w/out using any item. Lich will still target top RD’s and are there to absorb chimera attack (best unit to do so). Efreeti is to take on red’s efreeti/hydras. Vamps are there to absorb any ranged unit’s attack away from wraiths if the stacking is in order. Other units are there to do damage to hydras and other grounded units.

You can also just use top lich if you like and bump HD’s below or above efreeti. Just make sure to have sprites and a denser stacking of lich, efreeti, and wraith:
1st: Lich
2nd: Efreeti/HD's
3rd: HD's/Djinni/Vamps for coverage of wraiths
4th: Wraiths
5th: HD’s/etc
… …

Greens (at 8mil-12mil)
1st: Vamps/Lich/HD’s--
2nd: Lich/Vamps
3rd: Djinni
4th: UR’s/Efreeti
5th: Wraith/HD’s/UR’s
6th: Vamps (enough to lower efreeti)/Efreeti
7th: Efreeti/Vamps
8th: Salamander
9th-10th: Medusa/HD’s/DEM

--HD’s usually get disbanded in matchup against trees and nixs.

--Attacking= wanting to disband too, esp. against greens and oil/stun wielding reds.

--Treants are too tough to kill in numbers. So, you’re targeting the other units. Starting at 9mil of power, greens trend to have many other units. You’re aiming for those other units. Call hurricane is often used. So, ideally you don’t encounter rust armour or sword of light. The top units of greens is what could make things painfully—losing many efreeti. Top lich aim for nixs or to absorb top treants. Top HD’s is to get 2nd stacked lich to aim at nix, getting 2nd stacked treants to hit lich, and for dying. UR’s is to absorb mandrakes and treants attacks. Low salamander is to target treants of green with few stacking. Everything else is there to do damage to folders.

Whites

Whites tend to go with all flyers: AA and Dom. You can attack the ground-stacking one if you want, though you might have to look for one thru pillages and good record keeping. Just bump lich and vamps down to about mid-stacking stacking. Do get rid of vamps if that would help with your pop!

1st: HD’s/Djinni/UR’s (avoid djinni if you think expect to see top Dom’s, AA, pegs)
2nd: UR’s/HD’s/Djinni
3rd: Djinni/HD’s/UR’s/Efreeti
4th: HD’s/Efreeti/Lich/Wraith
5th: Efreeti/Wraith/Medusa/Lich
6th: Medusa/Sylphs
7th: Salamanders/Sylphs
Etc…

--Top Demons are there to prevent getting the other units in matching with top Dom.

--Djinni are there to attack SW and Unicorn and mainly to bump down efreeti, lich, wraith, vamps, and sylphs. UR’s is there to go after SW too. HD’s, wraiths, and sylphs are there to go after titian. Medusa, HD’s, wraith, and salamanders are there to go after KT’s and white fodders.

Sometime you just want to disband.
Pillage is the safest way to disband. Regular or siege if you need to get disband multiple units; send in the lich/vamps/wraiths/hd together for a quick overall disband of your black pop-eaters. You can still also gain land if you risk losing your overall stacking more by selecting certain targets, depending on how your stacks can be move around. Blues are the best targets in not getting your units banged up, though not always the case:)

As you may notice, the high you go up, the lesser times you get attacked. After 10-12mil of power (assuming you are playing from the beginning of reset), whites tend to not use heavy doms and rely more on ground units. Doms are the toughest units to deal with if you don’t want to use HD’s and UR’s high. Against white grounders, you have a better chance of defending if you pack in more wraiths mid stack and get low stacking HD’s and medusa via outdamaging attacking whites. Wraiths and low stacked HD’s and medusa can hurt whites more than expected. Accept that some lich will be kill in numbers, and that lich are needed against other colors in defending and attacking. Fewer greens (esp. the same ones) will attack you; you can end their attack run with Battle Lust. Their ranged set units are very vulnerable to your mid stacked ranged sets. Plus, you keep using brooch, and devils can really hurt or at least, seem like it to them. For deviling see Doz’s guide!

Eventually, you get attacked twice at most, which is--so odd. Take advantage of the situation and gain lands and make room for mind rippers (MR’s) once you get the lands. Until you reach 13-16mil of power with 3650-3850 lands, you may or may not want to use Battle Lust for defense. Once you do reach the 15+ mil of power and around 3700 acres, you need to get the good items--ash, carpet, or web--in order to use battle lust and become damaged without losing lands. Battle Lust gets difficult to use because you can drop from 14mil of power to 9mil of power, be very land fat in one successful defensive stand, and not be in protection or not long enough for you to come back to your mage and play. It’s better just to lose power gradually with around 3650acres. This way you still have an intact army to defend, even with everything moving around. Additionally, don't forget to get MR’s and lose the vamps if you need to. GET MR's!

Also, consider switching to the 9 stacks below (not counting succubus summon from dream of seduction. With the nerfing, DoS may still be effective. Forget top succubus though!
1st: Djinni
2nd: Succubus
3rd: UR’s/Lich
4th: UR’s/Lich/HD’s
5th: HD’s/Lich/Wraith
6th: Efreeti/Wraith/MR's
7th: Lich/HD’s/Efreeti/Hydras/MR’s
8th: Efreeti (700max)/HD’s
9th: Medusa/Salamander/MR’s
10th: Salamander/DEM

DoS
Missile Shield

Or... Lose the DoS. Get the MR's. Lose some vamps if needed.
1st: Djinni
2nd: Lich
3rd: UR’s
4th: Vamps/Wraith (mid-vamps can be too costly and may require disbanding and resummoning)
5th: Efreeti/HD/MR's
6th: MR’s/Medusa
7th-10th: MR’s, etc

If you don't get MR's, consider using NoLD to its limits by making much room for wraiths and vamps and some stacking in mind to incorporate these high flyers.

Tips

always have some god's favor.

get magic's favor and recast conc. and BS.

get sun's favor if you want to do more damage. Accuracy really helps!

get moon and Lucifer' favors if you want to mp charge faster and summon more.

get heroes!

Population-manipulation

To have a much higher pop growth rate, have more residency(towns) than food production(farms)---NOT MORE FARMS:D

Having a higher pop growth rate allows you to build up your population to its max faster and without having to use wine of the 3 whips. You hopefully won't end up with an actual-pop: max-pop of 300,000/500,000 and a zero pop growth rate (which then some disbanding of most of your pop eaters and many 3tails drinks).

So if you have gained some lands and want to increase your pop faster, build up more towns than farms to get that higher pop growth rate. Then build the farms once you're about to max your population with the pop reduction taken into account.

Warnings:

MS might or might not boost djinni resistance against magic ranged. I thought it did and have not played enough to find out:P Assuming--(natural resistance + item resistance boost) / (#of attack types)= modified resistance if value is not greater than 1 (100%)??? for djinni=> (95%+40%+ 50%)/2= 92.5% magic ranged resistance

School usually ended my mage before ARM. I have no idea how people change their mages after early mid-reset.

Blah-blah:

The battle lust defense for black mages was developed from a joke to see what would happen if Battle Lust (BL), certain items, and some units were used for a black army. Its goal is to provide any black mage, who willing to try about anything, an enjoyable reset in getting some thorough whooping and in DOING some thorough whooping on Severs. Its goal is DEFINITELY NOT to ruin your eyes. If you can boost up the front, please do:(

This battle method is FOR SURE NOT the best out there, but it will give entertaining results and will be updated periodically to include your comments and suggestions, whatever new finding, and especially grammatical corrections. So don’t hold back any comment, suggestion, and especially jokes/other stuffs---the driving forces behind this battle method.

So, Hit Edit fix, comment, etc...:OP

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Best Wishes to ALL & MUCH thanks to the good people of Realms of Chaos!

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