Broke and Butter's Battlelust Battle Guide

Interesting Links

A Guide to Playing Nether by Umbra [[1]]

nether winning against ascendant [2]

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A BIG thank you to those editing
...and to all past and present members of Realm of Chaos for been you:P

Introduction

Black may not be a friendly color to play. However, the color sure can be a good one to take up to learn the game and a little more about its depths. Simply because, black will, from the get go (2,000 to 3,000 acres), often present you with more than enough problems that can keep you entertained. These problems, which are common in other color but not as prominent in initial play, include:
---Defending against attackers
---Population manipulation
---Running with heavy pop-eaters
---Attacking for lands
---Using your turns for all their worth (as efficiently for you as possible),
---& Pimping/supering up/upgrading on its available units, colored heroes, and spells.


Beware though… the color can get you hooked on it as you play and eventually resolve the mentioned problems. It seems to be a color accessible to all players, and this guide (and especially those who contribute to it in any way) will help make the color be so accessible.

Attackers’ Perspectives [Sever]

As I white mage, I will farm you for lands.
My units may not be powerhouses, but against your undead units, they are, buddy. So, I do not need that much NP in units to siege your lands. I will arrange my units and aim for as much holy damage against your undead units (who have low or no Holy resistance and suffer double the damage [weakness against Holy]) and some lighting damage against your non-ultimate demons (…more Holy resistance, low Lighting resistance, and do not have weakness against).

You got barriers?
Okay, so what if I can’t get my Sword of Light spell through your barriers? I just can get another spell with similar effect and more in automatically by just it running in my country. I will spend 10 turns and 200,000 MP to cast The Holy Light (THL) before I log off. This means I will need to have around 150 turns or more and may need to switch between cycles/days of attack and preparing to attack. (Check out THL’s accuracy and holy bonus without and with Sword of Light on Wiki out if you have not.)

Specifically, I will use units like arch angel (AA), dominion (dom), unicorn (uni), Spirit Warrior (SW), THL-ed Knight Templar (KT’s), THL-ed crusader, Paladin, High Priest (HP's), Werebears (WB), and/or titan, to intercept as many undead units as possible (usually heaviest in the 1st to 4th stacking). The bigger I am the more I can spread my more of my units beyond the 4th stacking. (See http://wiki.the-reincarnation.org/index.php/Maerlyn_Style_White#Stacking_Ideas for more details.)

I need to be wary of your demon units, though, for they can do damage against me.

As a green, I know you will be stacking against whites with your demon units.
My advantages… be my farm.
I can and will crush your demons and often whatever else, ultimate or not. So what if I’m way above you in ranking? I can still reach you as I disband my mana-heavy units to mana charge, re-summon, and over-summon on my treefolks and ultimates. In my run I will pop down and use simply use my treesfolks to do heavy melee against your top grounded units.
Against your non-ultimate (except Lich), I don’t need spell.
Against your ultimate (and sometime complex) demon, though, I will just have to get Rust Armour in to lower your Melee resistance. Your demon units do not have any Verdant spell resistance, so I instantly win if I get my treesfolk to go after your demon. Blame it on LotR for having ents;D

Alternatively, I can get my ultimate units to crush your demons and whatever. My Phoenix (nixs) and Earth Elemental’s (EE) Magic Ranged secondary attack are not so well resisted by most of your units (except Lich). You may then sometime want to kiss your Unholy Reavers (URs), Vampires (vamp), Horned Demon (HD), Demon Knight (DK), Wraith, and Djini good bye. I will come for them with my ultimates.

I need to wary of my lower stacks though. I can’t summon the units that I want yet without spending too much turns and mana.

As a black mage, I want you too, oh chicken leg! .
I just need to kill your demon units. Against UR, DK, and HD, I will either use Lich or more UR. Against HD and efreeti, I will need UR. With HD I can hurt your fodders. With Vamp, I can absorb your ranged units. With whatever else, I really don’t care. My Lich and/or UR just need to do go after their intended targets. If you devil…well, I can devil back and see a very interesting battle report:D

Your weakness against me is also mine though. Plus, you’re kinda of skinny… Yes, chicken leg:P

As a red mage, I just want you to know that you may be able to hurt my ultimate units with your Lich. Beside that, though, you’re not as strong as you think you are against me. My Efreeti may die to your UR. However, I will have more than enough efreeti and their primary attack (1AP) with Battle Chant (BC) to burn your UR to oblivion before they can even attack me. In addition, my Chimera can inflict heavy damage against all your units, except Lich. With Oil, hehehee… you’re invinted to my BBQ. Hey! I almost forgot! My efreeti can tolerate and even also do moderate damage against your units, even your Lich, with BC. Also, your HD are better me with me with BC:P




As a Blue, I’m like Greens on their runs. I can farm you. However, I can farm my own color more easily. If I choose otherwise, I will go after your most of your units with my elementals. My Ice Elemental (IE) and Air Elemental (AE) can easily kill all of your units, except for Lich. My Water Elemental (WE) may have problems killing HD, DK, and Vamp, but they can kill whatever left, including your Lich.

I just need to get your Lich and Vamp to not hit my AE and WE, your HD to not hit my MR or Djini, your Efreeti to hit something other than elementals. Also, you think you're twisted in faking Knighthood with DK? Please:P I can use your units and white units against you, yo:P

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.

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.

Get Nature's Favor for food production bonus. Sweet!:D

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 (best for powering up in ranking). --get nature's favor if you need more farm production.

• get some cheap valor heroes!

--w/ BL, BW, and valor, your primary AP can be boosted to 120% easily.

• quantitatively determine summoning efficiency (Excel might be useful here...)

--turn focused: Summoned unit NP/casting turn) and compare with other units' --mp focused: Summoned unit's NP/ casting mp and compare with other units'

• BS gives only ~+3000mp

--more nodes will be needed to stay competitive with (or have an advantage over) other colors --at 2000 acres(~35%) --at 2500 acres(~40%) --at 3000 acres(~45%) --at 3500 acres(~45%+) --at 4000 acres(~45%+) --at 4500 & + acres(~50%)

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:

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 and those editing the above stuffs!

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