SirHatterGreenGuide

Verdant Guide for Apprentice

Originally by Sirhatter

preface

So its in demand, and here it is, sort of.

A forewarning, the white guide took me quite a few hours to write (id say nearly 10-12). I dont intend to put that time into a green one given my retirement/laziness/need to take care of real life issues. However since many of the concepts in the white guide are pertinent here too, if you are familiar with archmage and have read the white guide, this should suit you ok.

I could write a better one, im sort of beta-testing the finer points on the new apprentice greens...

credentials: i consider myself to be most dominant as a green mage. it is the color ive played the most, and started out with, and while each color brings something unique to the table, green is probably the easiest to get good at quickly.

I put a green in the Ager-Non-Guild Hall of Immortals finishing 6th, and last reset, in spite of massive problems (read: multis wanting me dead) researching, i still was the 2nd fastest mage to 7k, and the only non-golemned green to hit 7k before arma (tho the other green clearly wouldve been 7k too given he bought the golem at 6500 acres)

To further forewarn you, I play a very aggressive green, and one that is very much on the high-risk high reward side. If this style of play does not suit you, stop reading now. Many veteran greens are going to argue that there are better ways, and perhaps even think that a few of my suggestions are blasphemous. So be it. This style worked for me. It can work for you on apprentice too.... The end goal of this document is... well thats secret for now. Good things to come I hope.

Part 1

Overall summary of green: Green is the strongest color in archmage. Outsiders to apprentice quickly note that, "what stops the treant?" The answer is very little really. Green does not need to rely on heroes much at all, and in apprentice is the richest geld color in the game, insuring a healthy economy. It has access to the single most dominant unit, and in spite of potential mana issues, it can quickly find a way to play within its limitations and outgrab every other color and then outgeld them for the toys needed to win on arma.

Part 2) Differences between apprentice and ultimate servers: Green on ultimate servers is an efficiency machine. It gets natures favor (spell that gives treants dryads and nymphs and improved farmland bonus every turn), a much improved spell level, and has ultimate units that can be placed high in stackings. The result is a much different style of green can be played on ultimate servers, where most of one's army is destroyed in an attack run, only to see that it takes merely 20 turns to resummon units at the end, thanks to wonders such as natures favor and the extra barrack space it creates. Green can play so efficiently that some even utilized blood ritual as a way of making a hyper-efficient battle machine: an army that could attack over and over and constantly regenerate itself. That is not the case here. You have no ultimate units, access to units such as efreeti and hydra are out of the question for the most part and you have to rely on the treant more to win battles, and be smarter with your economy. On the plus side, without the red dragon, reds cannot easily feed off of greens without fear of seriously being maimed on defense, and green's lack of reliance on heroes in a server where they are so hard makes it a very dominant color defensively.

Part 2) Land setup, economy, etc. At some point, you are going to finish research. This is when you will begin your grabbing and serious play. Economy should be set to around 35-40% nodes, gradually increasing bars as you grab more land, low forts (10-20 is ideal), a 1.8 farm to town ratio or thereabouts, and a healthy 10% barracks. Of course keep some workshops around as well.

Spell wise. IF possible, gain magics favor before casting. If not you will want to put on a level 328 sunray, plant growth, weather summoning, and concentration. Optional are the enchantments protection from evil, battle chant, and resist elements if anyone can prove it works for a green.

Geld usage: Heroes are not required, and in fact more than 1 or 2 are not recommended. The biggest reason for this will be discussed later, but ideal heroes to purchase if you choose to go down this path would include your top heroes that have above average non valor abilities. The warlord, high level shieldmaiden, and a shaman with channeling are probably the top 3 heroes a green can have. The sage and engineer remain useful as always.

Part 2) Unit breakdown With a low spell level, green will want to rely primarily on its native color units. In the apprentice server there is only one acceptable choice for a top stacked unit as a green that is grabbing. Most of you know what this is already... but perhaps its better to know why other units are not suitable. For the veterans, I only recommend reading the tree vs gryph comparison. The rest should be obvious to you.

There are only 4 units any non total newbie would consider (if you want to make a serious case for another, post it here and ill shoot it down). The Treant, werebear, mandrake, and gryphon. While any one of these units is probably ok to have first once in a rare while (say if you know someone you hold a deep grudge against is treant-gorilla with ring-enlarge, the surest way to beat them would ironically be mandrake-tree, to make sure their gorillas die badly).

However, three of the 4 units ive mentioned are pretenders to the throne, and one is the only viable choice in my mind. Lets take a look at the pretenders

Werebear... A good unit on paper, high attack power, a very nice potential to valor boost, they enlarge and ring, and get human perks as well. Mid-range resistances though low hit points. Your real problem with this unit is, as good as it looks on paper, it wont BEAT anything. It will hold its own against the white ground pounders, maybe even slightly win if enlarged, but it wont really do enough damage. They will also die a good bit.

Werebears will definitely lose to hydra and efreeti. This should be no contest. They are also going to lose head to head against salamanders and even possibly hell hounds, given the 0% fire resistance. Werebears will presumably outdo zombies if enlarged or ringed, and beat ghouls if they get first strike, but bears cant dent liches, and who on apprentice runs zombie or ghoul top anyway?

Lastly, the bear has to matchup against blue units. Any surviving werebears will put a decent dent in most any blue units, but since bears are so *******ed slow, and tend to die, surviving is tricky. THen theres the whole fact that the favorite spell of any blue is either slow or paralyze. Hmmm... bears have 0% phantasm resistance... and initative of one. This is not a good idea to hit blues with heavy bear. Doh!

last that leaves other greens. You could match bear versus bear... but greens seem to have better options then bear... for example, if you hit:

bear versus drake... These two units are similar in some aspects. The drake has more hit-points with plant growth, and a slightly better attack power. Similar abilites and resistances, tho the drake does not valor boost quite so well... The drake will win tho since it gets the extra hit points, and has the extra magic attack, unless both sides are severely boosted on heroes...

The drake isnt an answer though. We know its worse than the treant, and it faces the same problems bears do as a top stack... Cant dish out quite enough damage to whites, cant resist blue spells, they burn, and black doesnt run anything vulnerable on the ground to melee troops. Worst of all... you run into the complex units of green, which will murder you...

This leaves two choices

Gryphons and Treants...

Gryphons were created with the thought in mind that they could replace treants in some stackings. Whoever thought that did a bad job of implementing it. Ive heard some supposedly veteran am players argue for a gryph top stack. Most of these players are the types that will run all flyers all the time and dont want to play offense for real. They click explore until they hit 3504 acres, then they might attack, or they might just try using compasses starting then.

I dont respect gryphon users who constantly play them as a top stack. After youre done reading this, you shouldnt either.

Objectively looking at the units...

Gryphons cost 60 geld and 1.6 mana per unit, a cost of 4 mana per 1000 np and 150 geld. VERY EXPENSIVE.

Treants cost: 1.8 mana and no geld. This works out to around 4.4 mana per 1k np. Also very expensive, but only in one area. Both are nearly prohibitive in cost, and thus must be very good units to justify their cost. Furthermore the plant growth is an additional expense to be incurred by the user, which will raise the cost even more depending on how much plant life is in the greenie's kingdom.

In comparison, Unicorns only cost around 1.6 mana per 1000 np, and supposedly mana costly liches only cost around 2.4 mana per 1000 np.

Treants and gryphs are more expensive mana wise than any summonable unit in the game, apprentice server and probably non apprentice server. Gryphs also eat a fair amount of geld. Something better be special about these units or else there are cheaper solutions.

Gryphons have a main attack of 2400 and an extra attack of 3000. A ratio of 13.5 to 1. Not great, but solid. You would be expecting more though...

Treants have two attacks at 7600 (lvl 348 pg), and a third at 2500, also of type melee. This is a total of 17,200, and a ratio of well over 40-1. Now this... this can be dealt with.

Gryphons, you argue, enlarge, and ring... So they do. However, you will run into opponents who have this thing called barriers. Funny how they work. If your spell and item hits the barriers, they dont go through. I hope you arent counting on running enlarge/ring and getting it through every time. Enlarge adds 75% to the units hp, counter and ap roughly. Ring increases your ap/counter by 99%, and decreases enemies ap/counter by 99%, but as a downside it ALSO INCREASES their hp by 25% If i know someone is mass gorilla or bear, i do not use a ring on them, because id rather clear them out before they can touch me and not boost thier hp instead of watching them not be able to hurt me, but soak up damage.

Still, back to the gryphs... If you sneak thru ring/enlarge, their primary attack becomes somwhere around 6600. Add the secondary attack of 3000 and youre at 24:1, which is better, but the treant still clearly wins.

THe gryphon has better initiative, and it flies. whoop-de-do. Most apprentice armies that arent green rely heavily on a ranged or flyer unit in their stack somewhere. ripper top, or aa top, or wraith/lich top, or efreeti top. Your gryphs can still be reached....

The initiative is the only concern here.. Even if the treant has endurance, its nice to sometimes fatigue the enemy before they strike you. However, the treant has two edges that put it game set and match way above the gryphon.

Advantage 1: HP/power rank ratio. Treants have 7600 Hitpoints! a hp/power rank ratio of 18-1! Gryphons... by comparison, are about 6.25 to 1... vastly inferior. Gryphons also dont have the same set of resistances treants do. They fare better against fire, but that is about it! There isnt anything they are really 'good' against, defensively, lacking a single resistance over 60%. The treant, has most of its resistances at 50%, and a good number at 66.6% or higher!

If thats not enough, anyone who argues for these gryphons keeps depending on two things... Enlarge and ring, to make them great. First, enlarge and ring, just like plant growth, do not have a multiplicative effect with heroes. This makes trees with their first 2 out of 3 attacks being boostable, the superior valor boosting unit, (though both have initial ap/pr of 6:1, the treants is in actuality 12:1 with the boost)

Second, assignments are critical to beating units. I think people know that by now. Having to rely on offense on your spell and item getting thru is dodgy. Many argue souped up gryphons with rust/vial would demolish aa or sw and be the ultimate white killer! This is stupidity, and a newbie mistake. The old "let me pick two spells to use at the same time" bug has not been discovered yet as far as i know. You cannot cast enlarge animal + rust armor, and it would be quite a feat to use ring of animal command and vial at the same time!

Trees however, need no such boosting every battle. They are free to set their assignments as they please. They can set anti black/blue on defense with sword of light. They can go flame blade, rust armor, or do any number of very creative things. An animal user, if they wish to be creative, has to use normal size unfrenzied animals, which is a huge tradeoff. Really, for gryphons being so expensive, there is almost no redeeming quality about them that makes it worth the price. The only unit to use is the treant. And that is the first stack of just about EVERY good green in apprentice. The treant blows away all other green units in terms of pure performance. Use them, and use many of them at the top of your stack. Do not use gryphs top, which is the dead giveaway of an inexperienced player.

Its clear that the treant is your defensive powerhouse. i give it a rating of 41, which if youve seen my ratings for other units, is incredibly high. This will be the unit that carries you and stays at the top on long sieging campaigns across many kingdoms. this will be your unit that is versatile on offense... packing enough punch to beat white ground troops usually, being at least evenly matched against any green troop on the ground, and with 80% phantasm resistance, this unit will find most blue grounded troops to be treefood!

This makes the treant unique. Most colors, you see, have a unit that is best on offense, and a different unit best on defense, or units that are situationally the best.

Red has the chimera... outstanding on offense, but extremely suspect on defense (those low hp and resistances dont do it any favors for sure!0

on defense it has the efreeti, which is clearly sturdier in nearly every case to the chimera, but cant pack quite the same punch... (the hydra with major heroes may make an interesting case as one of the best units offensively and defensively for red, but i think most would still say the efreeti is slightly better at least)

there is also the salamander for red, that packs a huge fire punch, but is considered fodder because of its low defensive capabilities.

Blue has a mindripper on offense, a devastating weapon against the right troops indeed! But the mindripper has some holes on defense, and is not considered the favored defensive unit of choice for blue. Even the oft-spit on djinni, is probably considered slightly better. (and most blues resort to aa/uni/lich anyway for major defense)

black has a vamp, pretty good on defense, except to the whole holy thing which it sees alot of.... offensively though, very very weak.

the lich is similar, with a little more punch on offense, and being grounded on defense.

the wraith is again a slight upgrade from the vamp on offense (especially with valor boosts compared to the vamp), and the wraith has more hp, but is lacking in key resistances... there is the horned demon, which may well be blacks best offensive unit, but is weak to so much on defense...

overall, black definitely joins red and blue as units that dont have a 'dominant' unit

and white, if you havent figured it out, is the same way. the aa is usually a great blocker with a low attack power. the spirit warrior has major potential on offense, and is usually solid on defense, but some key missing resistances hurt it badly.

green though... green is different. the best offensive unit is: TREES!

the best defensive unit is: TREES!

so why use anything else even? no other unit can even do close to what trees do for green. sure blue needs rippers to kill things and then aa's and liches to protect it from ground pounders and on and on...

and red cant expect to play defense very successfully for very long with mono chimera...

but the green, pure trees, why not?

Part 2

this part of this post will tell you why you want to stack deep, and not rely on mono tree.

this is a warning. this is for aggressive players only. conservative players have done quite well as mono tree, and good for them. they have also had the top guild behind them if they wish to stay in the top for long at all. Some have hit 7k with it, and then gone on to hall. But the case for a deep stack, i think will outweigh the case for a mono tree, though i will try to be objective in all instances.

But before you go on, know this, you can get to 4k with mono tree, maybe even 5k. If that makes you happy, and thats your goal, then that is fine. Play along, and dont read the rest of this guide. GO mono tree, and work out your mana problems without my help... You wont want a player as aggressive as me and as driven as i was as your guide anyway. But if you want to do more, and become truly outstanding, i recommend the deep stack.

The first problem with the tree, as we mentioned, is that it has a god awful mana upkeep. Assuming about 40% nodes, every 3333 acres is around 10k mana. if you want to run mono tree, you are not going to get very many of them. lets say youre at 3333 land, and have an income of 10k. Your spells will cost at least 500 at the bare bare minimum, but assuming you have concentration and weather summoning to allow you that high % of nodes, your looking at really 1300 mana, If you dont elect to run barracks, you can squeeze in about 5000 trees before you run into mana deficits. of course, not running barriers is, as will be proven later, about the equivalent of putting a 'all reds come and please farm me' sign on your kingdom's front door, and for good measure throwing up a billboard down the road that says the same thing to make sure everyone gets the point.

lets pretend though that you havent put up barriers. you can afford about 5k trees. throw in another 3000 for good measure and now youre pushing your limits. 8000 troops. every battle you make will cost at a minimum 14.4k mana (siege cost) + 2 turns of negative 5000 upkeep + any spell. 24k mana on 3k land to make one lousy attack. compare that to a green that stacks deep on 3k land, and to be fair also has no bars. he might have 4000 trees, a couple casts of drakes and a variety of other troops, to get to about the same net power. the only difference is he runs a deficit of only 2000 mana per turn. His siege cost will be 12000 + 2000*2 or 16000. This makes a big difference, given that mana charging with a deficit of 20% of your income or smaller is not nearly as bad as trying to charge with a deficit of half youre income...

BUt you figure, hey, ive got 8000 troops, look at me, im invincible!

Well, perhaps you are. Youve left yourself more vulnerable on offense. Low down, mages go cheapo in their assignment. Ive seen enemies of every color put web of the spider woman on defense... guess who is stopped cold? You got it... sorry, there are no other stacks, so that web hits... your trees!

Furthermore there is the fatigue thing. Trees have endurance you say? They do indeed, but they also fatigue, just at a lower rate. If you stacked deep they get hit once, maybe twice by low stuff. Not a big deal. But a blue with ranged troops galore, or a white running low fatiguers (ss/dryad/psychic wisps), will make your treants quite inaccurate. You lose again.

Finally, even stuff like paralyze will take an effect. Since it has 3 elements (a init reducer of 1 stack, a ap killer of one stack, and some other effect), even a unit with 80% phantasm resistance needs to stop all 3 effects. .8*.8*.8 = .512

You have a 50-50 chance. Not so good. If the paralyze in a deep stack hit your trees, you lose about 2500 in your ap, not a big deal, you still do some damage, and hopefully have enough other stuff to win. But if it hits your trees when thats all you got, you have probably lost the battle. (the slowing effect will kill you either way, so that should not be considered).

These are all nice and well points, but i have left the best point for last. AN upside and downside all in one.

As its been mentioned before by other sages... it takes 5 surviving troops per enemy acre to take max land on a siege (ie if they had 3000 land, you need 15k troops)... it only takes 2.5 on a regular. So you have youre 8000 trees, and youre so good you only lose 100 in your battle. Congratulations, you can take max land in a siege from any mage that has 1580 land or less!!!

This is not going to help much... 8000 trees is 3.3 mil power, and you have 3333 land, and your spell level... your mage is around 7.3 mil power, and youre hitting guys at 5.9-6 mil. Who the **** has 1580 land and 6 mil power?

Hehe, this liberates you in a way.

Its the curse of the veteran mage. They click siege, and lose, where if they had gone regular they win. And when they click regular, they see soul speakers top, and damn themselves because a siege would have been so much more land!

If you dont like to think, or are incapable of it, this will work for you! You never siege... Click the bloody regular button every ****in time, and youll have made the right decision if your mono-treant

Even with this setup, you still cant take max land from any mage over 3200 acres. If you want to climb quickly, your going to not want to go mono treant.

Even without bars, you have to spend 5 turns mana charging, just to raise the 25k mana at 3333 land, needed to make a regular attack. And then you limit yourself to about 60 acres per win if you are lucky

and realistically, no matter how many trees you have, without bars you are meat. that red with lots of chims will find you, and molest you with web of the spider woman getting thru every time.

your mana deficit, even without bars becomes an issue. you only get 120 turns in apprentice. so disbanding, then mp charging, then summoning up treants 12 times is not a realistic possibility... the fact is you cannot go on long attack runs as a mono tree mage. you need to spend huge amounts of turns mana charging and resummoning and every siege is very expensive and the most you can gain is 60 acres... if you win.

this is why there is a better way.

instead of running 8000 treants... (3.3 million power) what if you ran:

4500 treants (1.8 mil power) 2000 drakes (.4 mil power) 2000 bears (.3 mil power) 1000 sals (.2 mil power) 5000 elven magicians (.2 mil power) 5000 druids (.2 mil power) 3000 dryads (.1 mil power) 1000 nymphs (.05 mil power) 2000 soul speakers (.05 mil power)

now you have the same army in net power...

but now are well over 25k troops... full land is assured almost no matter what.

furthermore, the upkeep difference is tremendous. the treants cost 8100 mana still, and the drakes and bears are another 1650. That puts you at 9750. The sals druids and em combined is just about 1k. 10,800 mana. Your last 3 stacks combined are 250 mana exactly. You have put this army together at a cost of 11,100 mana, under 100,000 geld, and 0 people. the 3300 mana makes a tremendous difference...

Instead of spending 14400 on troops alone, you now spent 11,100. Your income is 10000. The 3300 mana you have saved can be spent in the form of 66 bars, or 2%.

So i now pose the question, would you rather have 8000 treants, and nothing else on defense, without any bars, or 4400 treants, some buffers, then fodder, and a very good chance of blocking at least one of the spell or item, and a 1/3 chance of blocking both?

I leave the choice up to you... but as i do that, i will throw some probable attackers at you. Have a defense in your mind, any defense at all. Make sure it stays the same for all 3 attacks though. We will call these your three attackers for the day.

Attacker 1: Red. Chim/Efreeti top. lots of fire troops galore. sals, you name it. Throwing on stun/web...

Attacker 2: Green, just doing a regular... lots of treants, in fact, he is also mono treant. rust/carpet.

Attacker 3: black. lich top, a good number of efreetis and sals underneath, along with a few wraiths and vamps of course, and enough zombies to take land. He is going web of the spider woman/candle...

If you have stacked the 2nd option, with a good assignment, you will surely block 2 out of the 3, depending on the assignment used (web will stop #2, and gives you an above average chance against #3 because you now have first strike with your fodder). A carpet will block 2 if your bars block his carpet. IT will also let you probably beat one. Fb/oil will block all 3 of these if your trees can actually get to hit without getting clobbered.

Mono tree users will have a much tougher time if they are electing to play without bars.

Thats not the real problem though. Losing on defense isnt fatal, and its not that bad, especially if you can get it back. But if the mono tree stack is one thing, its slow, and plodding. 60 acres per win... move along slowly and steadily, and you can only afford to make 6-8 hits a day max. This will yield 360-480 acres if youre the best offensive player ever.

Losing is not an option for the #1 guy. THey cant gain the land back quick enough...

However, for the guy running option 2. He can take full land, is much more flexible with his mana, and can rise quickly. If he loses 350 acres, its ok, tomorrow he makes 600 and ends up ahead. If he loses 400 the next day, no worries he makes 700 2 days later as he finds some fatter targets. Its an upward spiral... ANd once you have that momentum as a green, it becomes very hard to stop you.

Right now i havent proven this yet, but if you believe me when i say green can climb very quickly, and can once they get the momentum, they cant be stopped, why would you pick such a plodding stack? The answer eludes me to this day... IT is, perhaps why, mages of varying skill and understanding, call mono tree users the ubiquituous term '*****'

|soandsoinIRC| Pure trees are for ***** |soandso'sbuddy| yeah, just like guild X

thus, even though green has no unit better than the treant, not even close, green needs to have a stack, and a fairly deep one. we will talk in the next segment about the actual target picking, and keys to grabbing quickly...

after that, what to do once youre over 5k or so, and are trying to quickly hit the cap before you can get maimed and drop tons of land in a single day...

cheers sirhatter