HalfDoneWikiStartupGuide

GUIDE FOR NEW MAGES

A hands-on introduction to The Reincarnation (edited May-June 2004, starting from an version by Darren, dd. 26 March 2004)

This guide introduces new players to the game The Reincarnation. It helps you navigating through The Reincarnation and answers the many questions new players may have.

You can use this guide as a turn-by-turn crash course (especially the parts in blue) and as reference. Please note that there are other resources to help you play the game too. The Game Manual documents the game’s various features, and the game’s Encyclopedia documents all the creatures, magic and buildings that occur in the game. This guide refers to the Game Manual and the Encyclopedia where applicable.

Guide Outline and Reading times

_______ Reading time Game turns Topics

PART I: QUICK INTRODUCTION

• Chapter 1 Day 1 – 0’05
  • Turn 0 Making a new mage, Different servers, Different mage specialities (colours)
• Chapter 2 Day 1 – 0’15
  • Turn 1 Introducing the game concept: Turns, land, geld, population, magic power, items, troops

PART II: QUICK START

• Chapter 3 Day 1 – 0’40 Turn 2-60
  • Exploring, building farms, towns, workshops,
  • Reading your Status Report
  • Turn 61-119 Explore more, build nodes, barracks, guilds

Total reading time Day 1: about 1 hour = Take a break here and continue the next day!

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• Chapter 4 Day 2 – 0’30 next 150 200
  • Importance of Forts,
  • Researching, basic defence

Total reading time Day 2: about ½ hour = After that only general advice follows!

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PART III: QUICK REFERENCE

• Chapter 6 Day 3 and after
  • War: offence and defence
  • War: composing your army
• Chapter 7 Up to you!
  • General tips for each speciality

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PART I – QUICK INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Reincarnating your mage

Creating a mage

Good! You have decided to start playing The Reincarnation, by reincarnating a mage. To create a mage you have to make the following choices:

• 1. Decide what server you want to play
• 2. Decide what name you want to use for you character (your ‘Mage name’)
• 3. Decide what speciality (colour) you want your mage to be

Choosing a server

You have created a mage on one of the servers on the portal-page ‘http://www.the-reincarnation.com’. Remember which server you choose!

Depending on the server, some restrictions and differences exist.

• A main difference is the rate at which turns generate (normal server, 1 turn /7 minutes; ‘Blitz’ server, 1 turn / 5 minutes) and how many you can store.
• ‘Guilds allowed’ means that players are allowed to form groups and play cooperatively. ‘Solo’ obviously means that this is not allowed: you are anonymous on this server and so are your opponents.
• 'ArchWar' is a server with old-school rules regarding counters and army summoning, that make guild-fights very different from the main servers (at least some players think so).
• The ‘Arch’ server runs a version of the game where turns generate slow (1 turn / 12 minutes), and where the most powerful (‘ultimate’) spells are not in use (making guildwars last long and play very different from the normal servers). Many veterans have ended up playing game rounds on this server for years and years.

Choosing a name

That is totally up to your imagination! Don’t use foul or insulting (e.g. racist, sexist) names. Many players use a different name for their mage than they use as their portal-and-forum name and in chats (mIRC, Messengers).

Choosing a mage speciality (colour)

Perhaps the hardest choice – this is a good time to introduce the 5 schools of magic (colours) in the game. Choosing the speciality, determines to what units (specifically more advanced units) and to what spells you will have access to (the Game Manual explains this in detail). Each speciality has its own magic spells and units, mages have access to all units and spells of their own speciality, to most units and spells of adjacent specialities and to the more basic units and spells of their opposite specialities. There are also units in the game, that are of no speciality at all (‘plain’), to which all specialities have equal access. The game is well balanced, any colour is equally strong. Read the information below, see what you like and if you can’t make up your mind: choose random!

The Ascendant Order

Ascendant magic is based on piety and holiness. Ascendant mages prefer magic that heals rather than harms. Nevertheless they are fearsome in battle as they call down a host of divine beings from the heavens to fight together with their more basic human units. They are particularly strong in defence. They despise the destructive nature of their opposing specialities Eradication (red) and Nether (black).

The Verdancy Tribe

Verdant mages channel the powers of the wild. They harness the forces of nature to enhance their countries and armies, which include plant folk, forest animals and elves. Some would consider their reliance on woodland creatures a weakness, but those who have experienced the full power of nature have learned otherwise. Verdancy’s opposing specialities are Nether (black) and Phantasm (blue).

The Eradication League

Eradication mages believe in creation by destruction, leaving paths of scorched earth everywhere in its wake. Only Eradication mages can control the mighty red dragons, the most feared and destructive single units in the game, whose offence is awesome. Masters of fire and chaos, their brutal nature is opposite to Ascendancy (white) and Phantasm (blue).

The Nether Convent

Practicing their dark arcane arts, the Nether school spills hordes of foul demons and undead over the lands of Terra. Nether mages often are despised mages: not only does their magic draw upon their kingdom’s population violently, these mage also sell their souls to unleash the full fury of hell upon their mortal enemies. Their opposites are the Ascendancy (white) and Verdant (green) schools.

The Phantasm School

Phantasm mages are beyond the physical earth: they rely on magic and psychic attacks to gradually beat their enemies down, and rarely use physical assault to defeat their enemies. Some phantasm mages believe that all other specialities are merely corrupted forms of their higher, purer magic. They despise the primitive nature of their opposites Verdancy (green) and Eradication (red).

Your mage is created!

After the above choices are made, your mage will be created immediately. You can proceed and play your mage for the first time - go to Chapter 2!

Next time you want to play your mage:

• 1. go to http://www.the-reincarnation.com portal page;
  • If you selected it to do so, the portal page will remember your account
  • If not: login to the portal page.
• 2. Click on your mage on your server of choice

• If you like the game, you can create a mage on another server too. You are allowed to have only one portal account, with one mage on each server. Creating multiple portal accounts to play multiple mages on one server is cheating. Mages of cheating players are frozen.
• Note that there are backup links to login to the game, of use when the portal page is offline. You will need to remember your password to use these.

Chapter 2: Your Resources, your main menu and the status report

The aim of the game

You begin The Reincarnation with only a very small kingdom and knowing only a few simple spells. You must explore or engage in war to gain more land. You must research your spell books to be able to control powerful army units and magically enhance your performance. The ultimate goal is to be the most powerful mage on the server (a fully researched mage with thousands of acres of land controlling an incredible army!). Power comes primarily from the land that makes up your kingdom and the army that defends it. You have to manage your land-use in such a way that you can support an army to defend your kingdom against land loss and to attack other kingdoms for more land!

However, before you start expanding your kingdom, you must first understand how to manage your kingdom and learn to navigate through the game. You can manage your kingdom using the information of your ‘Main Menu’ and your ‘Status Report’ screens.

Measuring your powers

Your ‘Main menu’ screen indicates the powers of your mage is measured in several ways:

• Net Power

This reflects a combination of the size of your kingdom (acres of land), the size of your army (your battle power), the number of forts you maintain and a number of generally less important smaller contributions (e.g. your stocks of geld). Your net power also determines which mages you can attack and which mages can attack you.

• Ranking

Your ranking is based on your net power.

• Spell level

Your spell level is determined by the spells that you have successfully researched. For new mages it is very low (spell level 5), for fully researched mages (they’ve learned all the spell books available to them) it is much higher.

Generally, the first mission for new mages, is to research all their spell books, and become ‘fully’ researched. This generally takes up ~1500 to 3000 turns (depending on efficiency and a bit of luck) i.e. at least a week of playing. A high spell level comes first – worrying about Net power and rank comes later!

Managing your resources

There are quite a few resources available to you in The Reincarnation: turns, land, population, money (‘geld’), magic power (usually abbreviated as m.p.) and items. Any action in the game draws upon these resources. In addition, you may consider your land and item inventory as additional resources. This includes managing your Interior, practising your Magic and leading your army. Therefore, they are introduced below.

Turns

This is the only resource that all mages get in equal quantities. A new created mage will have 180 turns available (on the Apprentice server, 200 on a normal server or Blitz server – this amount we call ‘max. turns’). If a new competition has just restarted you may find you have less turns, because at the moment the game restarts, a reincarnating mage still has 0 turns. As time passes by, you will receive new turns (once every 12 minutes on Apprentice Server, once every 7 minutes on a normal server, once every 5 minutes on a Blitz server), but only if you have not already the maximum number of turns available. This means you have to login and play your mage almost every daily to spend all the turns you can possibly get.

• FAQ: When and how do I spend turns?

You can spend turns when you are logged in to the server. Login in and checking the status of your kingdom by browsing through the games menus do not cost turns. Most actions in the game do take turns (exploring land, constructing buildings, getting army units, researching spells, casting spells, using an item, attacking other mages, buying items, destroying buildings amongst others). Casting more complex magic (powerful spells starting enchantments or summoning strong units) takes multiple turns. Some actions take no turns (disbanding army units, managing your defence assignments) and neither does messaging other mages.

• FAQ: What happens when I spend a turn?

Supposing, you just reincarnated your mage – just try and spend 1 turn. A good idea is to so by exploring (click Explore, type ‘1’ for the number of turns, and click on the confirm button. The game will tell you, you have found 18-26 acres of new land (without any buildings, i.e. 18-26 acres of wilderness). Proceed to the Main Screen. At the bottom of the screen, the game will notify you what has happened while you spend your first turn.

> EXAMPLE TO BE PUT HERE <

Note that the game counts the number of turns that you have spent since creating your mage. During your first 120 turns your mage enjoys a special protected status for new mages. After spending turn 120 you’ll fully take part in competition on the server. It is wise to take notice of this now and not spent turns too ruthlessly! A decent way to use your first 120 turns is provided in the next chapters. Following this will guide you along the basic features in the game.

Land

Your land can also be viewed as a resource. The more land you have, the more powerful your army can be, the more population, geld and m.p. and items you can generate/maintain. You use this resource by building structures. There are different types of structures that you can build on your land. Some of these building you may want to have loads of at one phase of the game, and much less during another phase of the game – i.e. depending on your strategy, you decide what to build.

• FAQ: How do I get more land?

There are several ways to get more land, most importantly (1) by exploring and (2) by warring other kingdoms, called ‘land grabbing’. In your first 120 turns exploring is the only way to get land, and you can not be attacked yet, so you can’t lose land. After that exploring remains a possibility, but you will find that the more land you get, the less new wilderness a turn of exploration will give you. On some servers, exploration is limited to a maximum amount of land (3500 acres), thereafter common exploring gains 0 acres/turn and is useless. Land grabbing is a more challenging way to get land. It is less save than exploring, because the mage that you attack to try to grab some land may successfully defend its territory, or if you happen to win land, may decide to try to grab it back in a counter attack!.

• FAQ: How do I lose land?

The most common way to lose land is when you are unable to defend your country. The maximum amount of land that you can lose in a single battle is proportional to your total amount of land. There are protection mechanisms in the game that stop new mages attacking you for a while, so you are not likely to lose all your land over night. The amount of land lost when you fail to defend is usually more than you can win in a single attack (after a battle the attacker only gets 1/3 of the battle ground, while 2/3 of the returns to unexplored wilderness). You can first be attacked after you’ve spent your 120est turn. Don’t worry about it yet, and keep reading this guide, in the next chapters we’ll set you up so you have a decent chance in the game!

• FAQ: What do I do with my land?

You need to find a proper way to use your land (numbers of farms, towns, barracks, etc. etc. etc.) and manage the other resources (population, geld, magic power, items) to maintain your army and defend your kingdom. We will guide you doing that in the next chapter. Getting more land and spending turns! Getting land is central in the game. It is generally unwise, to spend your very last saved-up turns to gain a lot of land: you need additional turn spending bringing newly gained land in to use, other wise chances are that you will not be able to defend it! This is why after you’ve read up to chapter 4, we advice you to log off and continue playing the next day, starting with maximum turns again.

Population and Geld

These two resources are very closely linked. Generally, the more population you have, the more productive your economy and the greater your geld income. Your population lives in towns, but their food occurs on farms. Hence a significant part of your land should be occupied by farms and towns. Your army units are also part of your population and have to be fed using the same farms.

• Checking your population and geld status

Your ‘Main menu’ screen tells you how many people your farms and towns can potentially support, and how many people currently inhabit your country. However, you’ll find much more detailed information in the ‘Status Report’ screen, in its ‘Residential Info’ section. So have a look at your status report! The ‘Residential Info’ section gives information on:

• Max. Residential Space – the total population space available from all buildings.
• Food Production - the number of people your farms can support with their food.

To manage your land in the best possible way, these two numbers should be in balance (it is a waste of land to produce to much food when it is not used; it is a waste of land to have to much residential space when nobody lives there because there isn’t food enough). In practice this means from time to time, you’ll have to check your status report, and decide if you need more or less towns or farms. It is not needed to get the numbers exactly equal – approximately equal is good enough. Build or destroy towns to change Max Residential Space, and build or destroy farms to change Food Production (we’ll do that in the next chapter).

The amount of population that you actually can maintain may be lower than the maximum determined by Residential Space and Food Production. This is because the troops in your army rely on the same food production, and some troops occupy residential space too. Once you’ve reached your maximum amount of population, you will notice that your population will no longer grow (i.e. no/very few new population is created each turn).

• FAQ: What are geld and population used for?

Geld and population are used to maintain buildings, to maintain certain enchantments and to maintain certain army units during every turn that you spend (we’ll do that in the next chapters). You may also use geld to acquire items, spells and heroes on the Black Market and even donate it to the gods at the Altar of Darkness (we’ll do that later in the game).

• FAQ: Can I lose population?

In the game, it is possible to lose your population, for example, because you summoned population-consuming units, or because you contracted the epidemic Black Death in one of your wars). It may take quite a couple of turns to recover your population, so if you can avoid losing your population – avoid it! It is also possible to have more population than you can house – in that case you will lose the excess population within a few turns.

• FAQ: Can I lose geld other than spending it?

A result of losing population is that your geld income drops too. This will make your geld reserves shrink drastically, since the upkeep for buildings and army will draw upon it. If there is not enough geld in reserve to supply your country while your population and economy recover, you will begin losing summoned and recruited units that require geld upkeep and eventually may even lose your buildings. In the worst case, you’ll start to lose fortresses – and when you’ve lost the last one, your kingdom has collapsed and your mage is defeated. That means it is ‘Game Over’ and you can only reincarnate a new mage and start all over. Another way to lose geld is by attacks (pillages) or by magic (spells, items) released on you by other mages.

• FAQ: What do I do if I am losing geld?

If you find you are running out of geld, you may sell a few items on the black market (but it takes a while before you get your money) or pillage another country to gain more resources (but you may be countered for that). Gelding only works when there is some geld income left, and when upkeep is demanding less than twice your geld income. If you find you lose geld because you have too many troops, you may disband a number of your troops, but not all units are disbandable!

So basically: avoid running bankrupt and maintain a healthy population in your kingdom. When you are learning the basics of the game: take small steps, don’t build too many buildings at once and don’t recruit or summon too many units at once. Leave experiments and living on the edge of population and geld for later times! Learning how to recover from population loss or geld bankruptcy is certainly worth it, but it is stuff for more experienced players and not something new mages should trouble themselves with.

Further reading: you could check-out the Chapter INTERIOR in the Game Manual and the Book of buildings of the Encyclopedia.

Magic Power (m.p.)

Magic power (m.p.) is your resource to cast spells, for example to summon units to your army or to unleash a spell over another kingdom. Many actions in the game consume m.p., either instantaneously (casting spells, dispelling enchantments) or turn-by-turn continuously (maintaining enchantments, upkeep of army units, heroes and magic-barriers). Magic power is related to the nodes built on your land: nodes both generate m.p. and store m.p..

You may run a negative m.p. income (e.g. have to little m.p. generated each turn by your nodes, in comparison with the m.p. your kingdom consumes each turn), permitted that you have saved up enough before. Many mages do this, because it allows them to have an oversized army for a while, which is be beneficial during attack or defence. The M.P. charge action allows you to focus on generating m.p., which causes your nodes to generate significant extra amounts of m.p. (in exchange for turns ofcourse!). Alternatively, there are items that give a quick extra dose of m.p.. If you run out of M.P. you will not be able to sustain enchantments on your kingdom, and summoned or recruited units and building that have a m.p. upkeep will disappear: not just a few but complete divisions (‘stacks’) of your army – so beware!.

Items

A last resource are items that you may generate, buy or steal. Items will generate occasionally when you have build amounts of ‘guilds’ on your land. You buy items by spending ‘geld’ on the ‘Black Market’. Stealing items is possible by attacking (‘pillage’) or by using certain magic (spells, items). There are many different items. Some are very popular and hence their price on the ‘black market’ may be high. Instead of using those items, you can also decide to sell them. When used in this way, you may consider items an extra form of cash.

• FAQ: What do I use items for?

Items can be very valuable in battles and in-between battles. Knowing about the exact effect of each item is an advanced mage skill. The descriptions in the encyclopedia gives an indication for each item, but does not tell exactly you how each items works, nor is it specific for what unit or against what unit it is most effective! The types of things items can do:

• • Battle-use items may modify the performance of troops (yours, your enemies) in battles
  • Non-Battle items benefit your kingdom (give resources, give troops), and/or

harm your enemy’s kingdom (reveal tactics, destroy resources)

When not yet used, normal items (‘lesser items’) do not have any impact on your own kingdom: you just have them. For ‘Unique items’ this is different. Unique items are so powerful that while in your kingdom, they may have an effect on your kingdom each turn they are in your possession. Dealing with unique items is stuff for advanced mages, so don’t mess about it while learning the basics of the game.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘Magic’ in the Game Manual.

Troops

The last asset discussed here are your troops themselves. They make up your army and contribute a lot to your net power (similar as land does). In someway, all the other resources are used to upkeep and regenerate troops for your army. They determine your offensive and defensive capacities (together with your spell level, enchantments and your forts and barrier buildings).

• FAQ: How do I get troops

You can get troops for your army in various ways. You can train part of your population to using the barracks that you may have built. These units are called ‘Recruits’. These are troops that come relatively cheap and in large numbers, but in small numbers they are not that strong. When you just reincarnated, you’ll find a basic number of recruits are already in your army, for example at the bottom of your ‘Status Report’. We’ll introduce you to recruiting in the next chapters. Another way to get troops is to use your magic. As you learn more and more spells, you’ll gain access to more and more powerful units that you can ‘Summon’ into your army by casting a spell. In general, the more powerful these units are, the smaller their number is and the higher their price (in amount of m.p. and number of turns needed to cast the summon spell, as well as in their upkeep once you have them). Some items also summon troops. We’ll introduce you to summoning in the next chapters. A third way to get troops is by hiring them on the Black Market. Heroes are a special kind of troops that you hire individually. We’ll introduce you to hiring troops and heroes in the last chapters.

• FAQ: What troops do I use?

That is totally up to you! Each type of troops in your army we refer to as a ‘stack’. You may choose to use just one type of troops (a mono-stack), or have multiple troops composing your army (a mage can command 10 stacks in his army). All troops have different strengths and weaknesses that can be modified by enchantments, battle spells and items. Battles can be won in different ways: depending on the types of troops involved, a lot of troops may die at both sides, or hardly any unit may die. So there is no single answer to this question, but there are some typical combinations that a lot of people tend to use. We’ll introduce you to composing an army in the last chapters.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘War’ and ‘Black Market’ in the Game Manual, and the Book of Units and Book of Heroes of the Encyclopedia.

PART II - QUICK START

Chapter 3: Your First Turns

Different phases in the game

Most mages try to research their spell books reasonably fast, to reach their ‘fully researched’ spell level. This takes about 2000-3000 turns (about two weeks of play, login in every day). Only the first 120 turns you enjoy some protection, so during most of your research time you have to defend your land. The problem is that during research, parts of your resources (land, turns, etc.) are used for your research. Guild-buildings have to be accommodated (they need land) and have to paid for (their upkeep) and researching a complex spell takes many turns. Only when you finish researching, you can drop part of your guilds and can start using your turns and land to maintain a bigger army that can grab more land and defend against more powerful other mages.

Most mages therefore lay low with less than 2500 land, most of it filled with guilds to research as turn-efficiently as possible, until they have learned all their spell books. Mean while they have to defend, but these are less ‘big’ battles than the mages with more land fight, and the losses are equally less. For your first try, in this guide for new mages we advise at least to learn parts of your spell book before you start attacking other mages, and try to learn all your spells, before you try to really climb the ranks. Of course there are many other strategies (like attacking from the first moment that it is possible, or concentrating on getting a lot of geld first), specifically when the server has just restarted and all mages on the server still have low spells levels, simply because not enough turns have been generated yet.

The very first 60 turns (turns 1-60)

During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion. More land, building, using workshops There are several key structures that are important to building and maintaining your country at this time. You will need plenty farms and towns (for geld and population), quite a lot of guilds (for research), some forts (you have to have forts, if your last fort falls it’s game over!), some nodes (for m.p.), some barracks (to recruit army units)….. but most of all: you need to build all these buildings and to do that reasonably efficient you need a nice amount of workshops.

• The more workshops you have, the more buildings you can build in a turn:
  • If you have XX workshops, you can build XX farms per turn
  • If you have XXX workshops, you can build XXX farms per turn

This also goes for building workshops themselves: the more you have, the more you can build the next turn. As you build extra workshops and then go to the build screen again, you may see the amounts of buildings that you can build per turn increase.So build workshops step-by-step (in amounts worth one/two turns at a time), rather than building a few hundred in one huge step (over many turns) – because you will build more workshops in less turns in the first way. We are going to use this in our first 60 turns.

Turn 1-10

Our aim is explore some extra land, and build a nice amount of farms, towns and workshops on it, so we have a basis for the next 60 turns. We will not worry about troops: each mage has received a basic amount on reincarnation that we’ll just keep. Also, we will not worry about researching spells: we’ll set up our kingdom so we can start researching later on.

Check your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have 200 land (220 land if you already explored 1 turn), with a basic amount of most buildings and some wilderness.

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Your income of m.p., of geld and of population is all positive, so at this moment there is nothing to worry about. Let’s explore a little bit more land. Go back to your main menu, choose Explore and explore for 9 more turns (10 if you didn’t already explore a first turn). You will have increased you kingdom with about 200 acres of wilderness.

Turn 10-20

Check your ‘Main Screen’ and your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have about

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Let’s build some farms and towns for more population, and let’s start to build some workshops, in preparation of major building in the next turns. Hereto you go back to the Main Screen, choose Interior and type in the following:

Turn 11-60

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

How many workshops you keep at what phase in the game, depends on your strategy. If you (plan to) have a lot of wilderness to build on, you may want to build more workshops (in advance, during or immediately after exploring/warring for land). For a new mage, who will get his first land from exploring this is the case.

• Are workshops only important at the beginning of the game?

It is wise to always maintain at the very least have some (100) workshops. If you find your kingdom heavily attacked, it may be wise to have workshops to be able to rebuild your country quickly! As a rule of thumb: a reasonable amount to keep is ~300; a fairly good amount to have is >599 (that way you can rebuild 1 fort in 1 turn...)

Your second 60 turns (turns 60-119)

During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.

Guilds

Your ‘Guild’ buildings generate items and allow you to research spells. The more guilds you have, the faster your research goes. You should try to keep at least 1000 guilds while researching. Many mages try to maintain 1500-1600 guilds or more during the research phase of their country. Some mages also like to keep a few hundred guilds present for item generation after research. This may not always be a very efficient use of land unless items on the market are very expensive. Often it is better to just buy items you need rather than rely on random generation from guilds.

Note: to confuse you a bit, the same word ‘Guild’ is used for this building and for groups of mages that play cooperatively – our apologies!

Barracks

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

See you tomorrow!

During your first 120 turns you could not be attacked, but as soon as you have spend turn 120, you will be exposed to other players. It makes little sense to expose yourself, when you have only 60-80 turns to spend: you can only make limited progress and can hardly set up your defences. So: let’s not spent turn 120 right now, but wait a bit. You can calculate at about what time you will reach max turns on your server. On apprentice server, 120 turns will accumulate in 30 hours (about one day). So you if you have spent 120 turns in the last hour, tomorrow at about this time will be a good time to continue reading this guide.

Chapter 4: The next 150-200 turns following turn 120

Login again (select server, and enter mage name and password)

If you had not spend more your 120 turns, you’ll find your kingdom exactly as you left it, with the only difference that you have accumulated extra turns (150-200 may be available, depending on server and time since last login).

Remember, that soon as you spend your 120 turn, you lose your apprentice status and other mages are allowed to attack you. Let’s take a look at the mages around you before we start moving! Click ‘Ranking’ on the Main Screen, to display the mages in your direct vicinity. You’ll probably see that some mages are marked ‘A’ in the Ranklist. These are apprentice mages just like you are/were. Mages without the ‘A’ have spend more than 120 turns and in principle can attack you. Don’t worry: they will not be all online at the same moment as you. Chances are it will take a few hours before someone will notice you and decides to hit you but nevertheless – let’s make the most of our turns before that time and see if we can research some spells and set up some basic defence using our turns!

If you follow our guide line – don’t stop half way – that would leave you very vulnerable! There is a small chance someone may attack you while you are trying to follow our guide lines – in that case – don’t panic. If it is just one hit, and you lost land: try to restore the damage by exploring a few turns and rebuild farms, towns, workshops and guilds, and proceed (you will just have a few spells less researched). If you find that someone hits you a couple of times: sit it out - eventually you will be ‘in protection’ (check your ranking and see if a ‘P’ appears. After that, no-one can hit you anymore for 24 hours. See it as a blessing… it means you don’t have to worry about defense for 23 hours, can spend all your turns recovering an researching, and just have to log in the day after, at a slightly earlier time, to research some more and set up the basic army. Let’s not think about these doom scenarios.

Let’s get in to gear and spend a good amount of turns building guilds and researching, and meanwhile let’s work on a bit of an army.

• FAQ: Why fortresses?

You must have fortresses to defend your country, however they are expensive. If you lose all your fortresses, your country will collapse. Having many fortresses gives your troops a hit point bonus when defending (see Game Manual). Fortresses also add significantly to your net power and thus your ranking. Too many fortresses will boost you high up in the ranking among mages with much more powerful armies that will be difficult to defend against (despite your defence bonuses). Many mages keep about fifteen to twenty fortresses. In war-times (repetitive battles with the same enemies) you may need more, if you have a lot of land, you may want more.

Your first 150/200 turns after turn 120

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NEVER FINISHED

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Part III - QUICK REFERENCE

Chapter 5: Raising your defences: your army

The dilemma of numbers versus power

To win a battle, an attacker needs (A) to cause a minimum amount of damage to the enemy army and (B) not suffer more damage with its own army. The damage is calculated based on the power of your army. The minimum amount of damage to win a battle is 5% for a regular attack and 10% for a siege). To win land (including a fort) after a battle, the winner needs enough surviving troops to claim the acres of won land. The maximum amount that a defender can lose is 5% in a regular battle, and 10% in a siege battle. For a regular attack this happens when the attacker has at least 5,000 surviving units in his army. For a siege attack this happens when the attack has at least 12,500 surviving units. In the latter case, at least 2,500 troops are needed to win the fort.

• FAQ: what does this mean when I am attacking?

So just having a few tens to 100’s very powerful units is not enough if you want to grab land with them: you need to bring in larger numbers of troops. However, troops of which you can afford large numbers are not that powerful. Mages have to solve this dilemma when they compose their army for attacking. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

• FAQ: what does this mean when I am defending?

For defending armies, it may seem smart to only have small stacks of very powerful, very hard to kill units. However, that will make you vulnerable for pillages: you only ward off pillaging armies if you have a sufficient number of troops in your army. Their power doesn’t matter that much. Another way to deal with it, is to try to kill off large numbers of less powerful enemy troops. As long as that is successful, even if you lose the battle, there is still a good chance you don’t lose that much land, since so little attacking troops survive. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

The dilemmas of Flying versus Non-Flying units and Ranged versus Non-Ranged units

Stack pairing, unable to counter etc.

The dilemmas of Initiative and Accuracy

Base accuracy, Marksmanship Fatigue,Endurance

Chapter 6: Raising your defences – non army

Apart from composing a strong army

Forts

Barriers

For new mages: don’t worry too much about barriers, while you are not yet researched. Only when you start to grab large amounts of land and start climbing the ranks, you will need the barriers as part of your defence.

Barriers are magical structures that ward off harmful spells and items that other mages may attempt to use against you. However, it is usually not efficient to build barriers until you have finished researching all your spells. Barriers are magic buildings, that require a significant amount of m.p. for their upkeep. Once you finish researching spells, building barriers on 2.5% of your land will provide maximum barrier protection from spells and items. That percentage will give you the maximum resistance of 75% (i.e. you’ll block 3 out of 4 incoming spells and items). You may be able to further increase your resistance to spells of specific speciality by casting certain enchantments on your country.

Barriers are the only buildings for which the building rate is not influenced by workshops: it is always 1 turn per barrier. This means that if you work yourself to 4000 land without barriers, you will need 100 turns to build the 100 barriers that would give you maximum resistance against incoming magic… 100 turns is a lot of turns – it may be wise to start slowly build barriers earlier, as a rule of thumb, they are worth it (and you’ll be able to afford decent numbers) as soon as you climb over 2,500 land.

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OLD STUFF FROM ORIGINAL VERSION=

CHAPTER IV: How to Start Your Initial Build-up and Research

Since you cannot attack when you first reincarnate, explore a few turns to gain some extra land. Start building your workshops. When you are about half finished with your workshops, build a few towns and farms to keep your population and geld increasing. You may need to explore several times. Continue exploring and building workshops until you have as many as you want. Now many mages will build 100-150 nodes and more towns and farms. You should have taken about 70-80 turns by now. If you wish to continue expanding through warfare, select a unit to recruit and begin building barracks. Popular recruitable units include archers, militia, knight templars, high priests, faerie dragons, elven magicians, elven archers, fire giants, troglodytes, wolf raiders, and dark elf magicians. You may want to experiment with others. Continue exploring and building barracks until you have about 1200-1300 acres.

Keep watching your geld and mp income. If either become negative, you should probably build more nodes or towns and farms. At the end of 120 turns you should have about 10,000-20,000 troops. You may also wish to include some summoned units. However, your summoning power is very limited at this stage due to your low spell level. Now you can begin attacking other mages in your power range. It is usually best to wait until you have all your turns before you begin attacking. When you have enough land, build guilds and research spells beginning with your own color. Summon a defense. Archangels, unicorns, efreeti, griffins, wraiths, horned demons, djinnis, and mind rippers are popular choices for defense as this stage, but you may want to try other units. Also remember to set a defensive spell and item assignment.

A. During Research Expect to be attacked occasionally during research and to lose some land. It is difficult to defend well at this time. You may attempt to explore your land back or attack other mages to gain land. Some mages prefer to keep a small amount of land with no army during research. If you attempt this, be sure you have enough forts that you will not lose them all to attacks. Also, cast Concentration on yourself, and dispel and recast occasionally. It is a phantasm spell that can significantly help speed up research. You should research all spells of each magic specialty that are available to you. When you are finished researching all the different magic specialties' spells, you will have the opportunity to learn Armageddon. However, researching Armageddon will not help your spell level or spell casting abilities.

B. After Research After you have completed researching spells, destroy most or all of your guilds and begin converting your kingdom to prepare for warfare.

3. Nodes Depending on the kind of magic you play, you will need different amounts of nodes. The following amounts are approximate; you may need more or less: Nether: 25%-35% nodes Verdant: 40%-50% nodes Phantasm: 40%-50% nodes Ascendant: 35%-50% nodes Eradication: 25%-35% nodes

3. Other Buildings Most of the rest of your land should be farms and towns. You need some barracks if you want to use barracks units and keep about 299 workshops.

3. Enchantments Cast enchantments at your full spell level after research. If you already casted them during research, like concentration, you have to dispell them first. Some enchantments worth considering are: Nether: Shroud of Darkness, Concentration, Black Sabbath Verdant: Sunray, Plant Growth, Concentration, Nature's Favor, Weather Summoning Phantasm: Concentration, Mind Bar, Weather Summoning Ascendant: Protection from Evil, Concentration, Weather Summoning, Resist Elements Eradication: Concentration, Weather Summoning

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CHAPTER V: War

Eventually you will need to go to war, either to defend your country, retaliate against your enemies, or to conquer new land. When you are attacking, you are most likely to win battles against foes that are at 80% of your net power and who have more land than you. When you are defending, you should be oversummoned to the point that you have a significant negative net MP or geld income. Having a larger army than your resources could normally support will help you defend better if you are attacked. When using your turns for warfare, there is a basic sequence that allows you to use your turns most efficiently. Generally, this is to wait until you have full turns and then use them all at once to: attack / disband / build / MP charge or geld / summon / attack

The attacks at the beginning and end of the sequence are optional. If you are using recruited units, you should be recruiting them while you are MP charging or gelding. It is often more efficient to disband some of your units before MP charging or gelding and then to summon them back when you are finished than to MP charge or geld with your full army in place.

A. Conquering Land

1. Regular Attack

In a regular attack you can conquer up to 5% of another mage's land. Approximately 2/3 of this land will be destroyed in the fighting, leaving the other 1/3 as structures and wilderness that is added to your country. This is the easiest kind of attack to win.

2. Siege Attack

Siege attacks allow you to conquer up to 10% of another mage's land. Again, approximately 2/3 of this will be destroyed in the fighting. In a siege attack, the defender gets several defensive bonuses. This makes siege attacks much more difficult to win than regular attacks.

3. Occupying Land After War

In order to keep the land you win, you must have an army large enough to occupy the land. It is not possible to use only your most powerful units and take any significant amount of land. Although powerful units are necessary to win battles, weaker units must be present in large numbers - and survive the battle - in order for you to have enough troops to occupy the land you win. Generally you should have at least 5,000 surviving troops for each 1,000 acres of enemy land you are sieging.

B. Building an Army There is no one single correct way to build an army for each magic type. Experience, experiment, and personal playing styles all play significant roles in the types of armies mages create. To create a successful army, you need to become aware of your own units' strengths and weaknesses. You also need to become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the units often used by mages you most often attack and who most often attack you.

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CHAPTER VI: Units

A. Ultimate Ultimate units are the most powerful units in The Reincarnation. Ultimate units are capable of defeating most other units in the game. However, their upkeep is very high, so most mages cannot afford to keep very many of them in their armies.

B. Complex Complex units provide the bulk offensive power in many mages' armies. There is at least one complex unit that can attack each ultimate unit with relatively good success. Liches fare well against eradication ultimate units, for example, but they do not do well against ascendant ultimates. Ascendant ultimates can be beaten by the treants many verdants use, but treants are in turn harmed by the eradication ultimates. Many complex units also do well against certain other complex units as well as the weaker units.

C. Average Average units are often used to protect weaker units or sometimes appear in large numbers to challenge complex and even ultimate units. Most average units do well against only a few other units and must be carefully placed in an army to avoid being attacked by more powerful units. There are some exceptions to this. The nether average units (ghouls, wraiths, and horned demons) are sometimes used in very large numbers to fight ascendant mages, for example.

D. Simple Ranged simple units such as soul speakers and psychic wisps are often used at the back of an army to make ranged attacks against more powerful units while avoiding being directly attacked. Units such as dryads and zombies are often used to build up the total number of troops attacking so that maximum land is gained. However, almost all simple units will die very badly if attacked by more powerful units.

E. Barracks Using barracks units is usually an efficient way to acquire part of your army while using turns for other things such as MP charging and summoning ultimate and complex units. The most popular barracks units to use are probably the ranged units like archers, catapults, high priests, elven magicians, and dark elf magicians. Others such as faerie dragons can be very powerful in large numbers, as can knight templars. In this way barracks units serve the same purpose as simple units: boosting the total number of troops surviving a battle in order to occupy full land.

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CHAPTER VII: Ordering Your Troops for Battle

Ordering you troops for battle, or 'stacking,' is one of the more complex aspect of playing The Reincarnation because it affects which of your units attack which enemy units during battle You can send up to 10 different kinds of units into battle. Each group of units is called a stack. The order the units will appear in battle is the same as the order given in your status report. The percentages in your status report give you the percent of a unit's net power in your entire army. If you have more than 10 stacks, only the first 10 will engage in battle. In the simplest terms, if you want a unit higher in your stacking, summon more of it or disband other units that are above it in your stacking. Likewise, if you want a unit lower, disband it or summon more of a lower-stacked unit above it. Be careful when working with units with population upkeep like liches and wraiths. These cannot be disbanded.

A. Stacking Details The net power of a stack is determined by multiplying the unit's power rank (listed in the unit's entry in the encyclopedia) by the number of units in the stack. The order of stacking is determined by the stacking modifier applied to each stack. These modifiers are 1.00 for all ranged units, 2.25 for all flying units, and 1.50 for all other units. The modifiers are multiplied by each stack's net power percentage to get the battle power. So if you happen to be an ascendant mage, for example, and the net power of your army consists of

   25% knight templar (a melee unit)
   20% archangel (a flying unit)
   20% unicorn (a melee unit)
   15% high priest (a ranged unit)
   10% mind ripper (a ranged unit)
   10% dominion (a flying unit)

The battle power is

   Knight Templar: 25*1.50 = 37.5 battle power
   Archangel: 20*2.25 = 45 battle power
   Unicorn: 20*1.50 = 30 battle power
   High Priest: 15*1.00 = 15 battle power
   Mind Ripper: 10*1.00 = 10 battle power
   Dominion: 10*2.25 = 22.5 battle power

And your stacks would appear in battle in the following order:

   Archangel
   Knight Templar
   Unicorn
   Dominion
   High Priest 
   Mind Ripper 

B. Attack Pairing

There are three general rules that determines which of your units will attack enemy units. First, melee units do not engage flying units; they engage the first available unpaired unit on the ground. If there is no unit on the ground for them to attack, they will not participate in the battle. Second, flying and ranged units will attack the first unpaired flying unit available to them; if there is no flying unit, they will attack a ground-based unit. Third, unpaired units tend to attack top stacks if ranged or flying, or a lower ranked ground-based unit if melee.

C. Attack Pairing Details

If the ascendant above were to attack a nether with the following stack, what would be the pairings?

  Horned Demon (melee)
   Lich (ranged)
   Wraith (flying)
   Zombie (melee)
   Efreeti (ranged)
   Ghoul (melee)
   Dark Elf Magician (ranged)
  vs
   Archangel (flying)
   Knight Templar (melee)
   Unicorn (melee)
   Dominion (flying)
   High Priest (ranged)
   Mind Ripper (ranged)

The top stacks are archangels and horned demons. The archangels will attack the horned demons, but the horned demons cannot reach the archangels. They will attack the first available ground unit, the knight templars, instead.

The next stacks are the knight templars and liches. The liches are on the ground, so the knight templars will attack them. The ranged liches will attack the archangels because no unit has been paired to the archangels yet.

Next are the unicorns and wraiths. The wraiths will attack the unicorns, but the unicorns cannot reach the wraiths. The unicorns will attack the next available ground stack instead, which is the zombies.

The flying dominions will attack the wraiths since the wraiths have not been paired yet. The zombies cannot reach the dominions, so they will attack the high priests.

The efreetis are ranged, so they can attack the dominions. The high priests are also ranged, but there are no flyers that have not been paired, so they will go ahead and attack the efreetis.

The ghouls and mind rippers will attack each other since both are on the ground and there are no flyers for the mind rippers to attack.

There is no unit left in the ascendant army to attack the dark elf magicians, so they will not be attacked. The dark elf magicians are an unpaired ranged unit, and unpaired ranged units tend to attack top stacks, so the dark elf magicians will attack the archangels.

So on the ascendant side, Archangels attack horned demons Knight templars attack liches Unicorns attack zombies Dominions attack wraiths High priests attack efreetis Mind Rippers attack ghouls no unit attacks Dark Elf Magicians

and on the nether side, Horned demons attack knight templars Liches attack archangels Wraiths attack unicorns Zombies attack high priests Efreetis attack dominions Ghouls attack mind rippers Dark Elf Magicians attack archangels

D. What You Really Need to Know About War

You do not need to try to go through a complex analysis of the possible pairings before each battle, although in higher ranks the ability to guess an oponent's stacking and to create a stacking specifically to defeat it becomes more important. Both experience and luck play a part in successful attacks. You will soon find that certain units tend to appear in certain places in opponents' stackings. For example, eradication mages almost always have red dragons as their top stack. Nether mages attacking eradication mages often put liches as their top stack to directly attack the dragons. Phantasm mages frequently have unicorns and mind rippers near the top of their stackings, and both are weak to treants. However, a verdant attacking a phantasm mage could end up taking a serious amount of damage if the mind rippers are stacked such that they attack phoenixes or simpler units like nymphs or dryads. There is always such an unknown element involved in any attack. However, after you play The Reincarnation for a little while, you will begin to develop an intuitive idea of where enemy units are most likely to be stacked and can begin to better match your own units against them. Concentrate on attacking the magics you are most likely to win against with a good variety of powerful units, and you will have a decent chance of winning..

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CHAPTER VIII: Basic Strategy

Each of the five magic specialties has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. This makes it easy to conquer land from certain mages and more difficult to gain land from others.

A. Nether Nether has wide access to units with cold and magic attacks that eradication units are typically weak to. Nethers may also attack other nether mages, verdants, and sometimes phantasm mages. Nether is generally weak to ascendant. One of the key enchantments for nether is Black Sabbath. This powerful enchantment generates zombies and skeletons and increases MP income at the expense of population growth rate. Shroud of Darkness is an enchantment that adds additional protection from the holy spells of ascendant mages. Nether's most important resource is population. Population is necessary for the many undeads and demons that nethers generally keep in their armies, and it also powers Black Sabbath. If you lose your population, you lose most of your good units and one of your key enchantments, so be careful with your population. Concentration is a phantasm spell that many nethers also use because they often cast phantasm and eradication spells. Having Concentration reduces the chance of failure when casting these spells. Liches are one of the most powerful units in the game. They stand up well to most forms of attack except holy, especially from dominions or treants with Sword of Light. Wraiths are another popular unit because they usually do good damage to angel-type units that ascendants often use. Horned Demons have a very powerful attack that can be modified with the Flame Blade spell to give them an additional fire attack type. They can be very useful against treefolk and most other average, simple, and barracks units. Zombies and Skeletons are generated from Black Sabbath. Zombies are relatively good at absorbing damage from ascendant units, but they lack a good attack and tend to die badly to verdant units. Many nethers also keep efreeti, mind rippers, salamanders, and dark elf magicians in their armies. Hydras and Chimeras can be useful against verdants and sometimes ascendants, but they can be a defensive liability in many situations. Vampires are useful against most complex and weaker units, but they tend to die badly to most common ultimate units. Contract of the Soul will summon many Devil units into your army. They are nearly unstoppable in large numbers, but the price for calling on them is very high....

B. Verdant Verdants have access to many powerful melee units. However, they suffer from low initiative and a general weakness to fire. Verdants often attack other verdants, ascendants, nethers, and sometimes phantasm mages. Eradication mages, with their access to many fire-based units, are sometimes very difficult for verdant mages to defeat. Plant Growth is an important enchantment for many verdant mages because it significantly increases the size of treefolk units. Other enchantments such as weather summoning and nature's favor greatly increase farm production. Verdant is often an MP-intensive magic to play, but their enchantments allow their farms to be incredibly productive. Treants form the heart of many verdant armies. Their only real weakness is to fire. They have a very powerful melee attack that can be enhanced with such spells as Sword of Light or Flame Blade to give them an extra holy or fire attack type. Concentration is a useful enchantment to have if non-verdant spells such as these are cast often. Using the item Vial of Venom will give melee units a poison attack. Verdants can also weaken the melee resistance of enemy units by casting the spell Rust Armor in battle. Mandrakes, werebears, and griffins are commonly used to supplement treants. Another popular verdant unit is the phoenix. Phoenixes are a high-damage magic unit that are immune to fire and have a powerful fire burst when attacked. However, they can be beaten by liches, mind rippers, and large numbers of wraiths. Verdant's barracks units are quite useful, particularly elves and faerie dragons. Some verdants like to use eradication units such as efreeti, salamander, and hydra, or ascendant units from the spell Gate. However, verdants can do very well using just their own units.

C. Phantasm Phantasm is perhaps the most versatile and unpredictable magic specialty. Phantasm mages have broad access to many different kinds of units and spells and can build many diverse kinds of armies. However, phantasm is often a turn- and MP-intensive magic to play. Phantasm mages often attack other phantasm mages, eradication mages, and nether mages. Ascendant and sometimes verdant can be difficult for phantasm to defeat. Concentration is an enchantment that every phantasm mage should use because it significantly reduces the time it takes to research spells and also reduces the chances of failure when casting spells from the other magic specialties. Phantasm usually relies on the magic of other specialties more than any of the other magics do. They often use ascendant units from the spell Gate and nether units as well. Some mages like to gather their nether units from the spell Night of the Living Dead, but you should use this only if you want a variety of undisbandable units. If you want a particular nether unit, it is best to summon it directly. Horned Demons and wraiths also frequently appear in phantasm armies. Phantasm's most powerful unit is probably the mind ripper. Mind rippers are excellent used against any unit that does not have strong resistance to magic and psychic attacks. Leviathans are ultimate units that have powerful defensive abilities but rather weak offensive abilities. Phantasm's other ultimate units come from the spell Conjure Elemental. The spell gives air, ice, and water elementals randomly. Water elementals are dangerous to many ascendant units, and ice elementals are harmful to many eradication units. Air elementals can sometimes be used effectively against ascendant units. All phantasm elemental ultimates are difficult to maintain in a small country, and many phantasm mages do not use them at all until they have 5,000 acres or more of land.

D. Ascendant Ascendants use many holy, magic, and melee units. They often attack nether, phantasm, and sometimes eradication mages. Other ascendants and especially verdants can be very difficult to defeat. Ascendant mages have many healing spells that enhance the healing abilities of many of their units and have perhaps the broadest selection of useful barracks units of all the magic specialties. Protection from Evil is an enchantment that many ascendant mages use to help ward off harmful nether magic from their countries. Ascendants also have access to two other very powerful enchantments. Love and Peace greatly increases geld income at the expense of battle attack power, and The Holy Light increases attack power and accuracy at the expense of MP income. Archangels are one of the best defensive units in the game, so much so that even many phantasm mages use them as their top stack. Unicorns are another commonly used unit. Unicorns have two major weaknesses: treants and mind rippers. Both archangels and unicorns can be obtained from the spell Gate or summoned directly. Knight templars, high priests, and catapults are very useful barracks units. However, they are rather expensive. Most mages who use them rely on the extra geld income from Love and Peace to pay for them. Dominions are a very powerful angel unit, but they can die easily on defense. However, they resurrect extremely well when the spell Resurrection is cast on them. Some ascendants like to supplement their armies with units from other magic specialties. Mind rippers, nymphs, werebears and sirenes are the most commonly used. Treants are rarely used by ascendants because plant growth cast by an ascendant is not strong enough to be worthwhile.

E. Eradication Eradication is the most destructive of the magic specialties. Eradication mages most frequently attack other eradication mages and verdant mages. Sometimes they target ascendant mages. Nether and Phantasm mages can be difficult for an eradication mage to defeat. Battle Chant is an enchantment that some eradication mages like to use. It increases unit attack power at the expense of unit hit points. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a geld deficit since many of their units rely heavily on geld for upkeep. Eradications also have access to Red Dragons, one of the most powerful offensive units in the game. Many eradication mages keep almost all their army power in their dragons. Many eradication mages often rely heavily on the spell Stun and the item Oil Flasks. In addition to red dragons, chimeras and efreetis are commonly used in eradication armies. Chimeras have very powerful offensive capabilities when given a melee-fire attack by the spell Flame Blade, but they are weak defensively, especially to mind rippers and phoenixes. Efreetis are strong both offensively and defensively. They have few weaknesses except to fire and psychic attacks. Some eradication mages will supplement their units with nether or verdant units. The most common way of stacking for eradication mages usually involves a very large stack of red dragons and then a moderate stack of chimeras or efreetis. After this average and simple units are placed so that there are ten stacks in the army. Most damage will be caused by the top two stacks, and the rest are meant to simply survive in enough numbers to take a large amount of land. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a positive MP income and negative geld income. Red dragons are very geld and population intensive to maintain, but require very little MP compared to other ultimate units.

F. Other Sources of Information Joining a guild or searching The Reincarnation's Universal Bulletin Board (UBB) are both good ways of learning how to play better. Many guilds are willing to take in new members and help them learn more advanced war and resource utilization strategies. Many players also enjoy the comradery that comes from being in a guild. Strategic and technical aspects of the game are also discussed in the UBB's Hall of Sages. Search first before asking your question - it may have already been asked and answered before.