CHAPTER 2 : THE INTERIOR OF YOUR KINGDOM

[lord_frank]

CHAPTER  2 : THE INTERIOR OF YOUR KINGDOM

A. Exploring

The lands are the spaces in your kingdom where you can build your constructions to make your kingdom prosper economically an to maintain a vast army that keep away your enemies..

There are three ways in the Archmage to get lands: Defeating another mage in battle, using an spell or an item to get them from nothing and just exploring (however you can explore indeed until the 3500 hectares, once reached this top you won't get anything wasting your turns exploring)


B. Building

1. Farms and Population
Farms make food for your citizens and this affects the maximum amount of population that can be fed. Generally and in theory a single farm can maintain 500 people. However, as you would see in the game, some troops can reduce you maximum amount of population. check the Units section in your Encyclopedia to know how many population consume some summoned creatures. The growth of you people is a constant 1.5% of your total pop by turn. Check that some other factors may alter the growth and the maximum space available, like some spells, summoned units (like dragoons or vampires) and finally the barrack's units.

2. Towns and Taxes
Towns affect the money you earn every turn. If you had less than 10% expect to gain less than a piece of gold for every habitant. Of course if you had more than 10% you'll earn more than 1 gold per pop, obviously having a relation between farms and towns. You can check the percentages in the Build menu.

3. Workshops
The function of the workshops are really simple but useful: the higher the number of workshops, the faster your buildings are made (the less turns you'll waste building something). In this case it doesn't matter the % of workshops.

4. Barracks
The barracks just speed up the recruitment rate of normal military units (militia, phalanx, etc) and some special units (depending which magic you choose). Obviously the higher the number of barracks the faster and higher the number of normal and special units you'll had (special until certain point, every summoned unit is better than an unit from a barrack)

5. Nodes
Every node generates 10 M.P. points per turn. Now this rule only applies if the number of nodes is equal or lower than the 10% of your total land. If you had more than 10% of nodes, you nodes will still generate M.P. per turn BUT it won't be 10 points. Check out too that if you build too many nodes you'll deplete the amount of M.P. your kingdom internally had. Now every node can maintain 1000 M.P. points, and if you want to know the total amount of M.P. you can had just multiplied per 1000 the total number of nodes you had.

6. Guilds
This structures helps you to decrease the time you spent researching your spells. apart from reducing the research time when you possess at least one guild, you had a little chance to get a free item. The opportunity to generate an artifact gets higher when you had a higher number of guilds. Check that the guilds are expensive, and are hard to maintain.

7. Fortress
The fortress had two basic functions: First, they gives you a bonus when defending your lands against an invader mage. If  the 1.25% of your lands are fortress, you'll had a little bonus while defending. Now if you had the 2.5% you'll had a bigger bonus. The optimum percentage of fortress is 2.5% however they are as expensive as the guilds so maintain a lot will cost you more. the second function of these structures is that they can be compared as your life. When you lose your last fortress your mage will be executed.

8. Barriers
Barriers are structures that increase your resistance to enemy spells. If you had at least one barrier you'll had a little chance to resist any item, enchantment or instant battle spell. If the 1.25% of your lands are barriers you'll had a significant bonus to block spells and items. Now having 2.5% in barriers gives you the optimum defense yield. Note that the barriers had a higher maintain cost in M.P.

C. Recruiting Troops

You're going to need troops to defend yourself from invasions and to make attacks to another mages. There are three kind of troops in the game: basic units (militia, cavalry, phalanx, archers); special units (each magic had their own types, phantasm don't possess special units) and summoned units (each magic had different creatures and you need to know the right spell to summon them).

You can recruit basic and special units from your barracks. Although they are not as powerful as the summoned units, each unit can be very effective if they are placed strategically in your army (you can send 10 groups to a battle) Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages by having more than one group of units. If you don't have any summoned or recruited troop, then you'll be completely DEFENSELESS and any mage within range can attack you, slaughter your citizens and reduce to ash your buildings. Always let at least some type of troop to defend you.

D. Gelding

As it indicates in the name, the turns you spent gelding is for generate money to buy stuff in the Black Market or for a deposit for your units. The geld depends on the residents and the towns. If you want to know how much you will gain by turn gelding check your Status Report and see your Income, to that quantity add the total Income (positive or negative) and the result is the total you'll get.

E. Destroy Buildings

Sometimes it's really necessary to wipe out some of your buildings that already completed their objective (like guilds once you finished the research) or to try to fix your economy if you are near bankrupt. The buildings you destroy become free land so you can build other structures in there. Careful with this option because once you destroy a building you cannot undone this action.

F. Disbanding

The same as destroying buildings, once your army had completed their part in battle (often fodder units) and you must prepare for the defense, you will disband them. Take care a disbanded unit will never return and you cannot undone this. By the way any unit that consumes population CANNOT BE DISBANDED as regular units (like dragons, and many of the nether units).

G. Maintenance: Why your units and spells may disappear

Buildings, troops, permanent spells, heroes, etc. all of them need maintenance. There are three types of maintenance: gold, M.P. and population. You can see in your Status Report you income in these aspects. Every resource had two aspects: the total you had and the total you win or lose by turn. If you had a bad economic situation you can destroy buildings, disband troops, dismiss heroes or even dispel spells to try to stabilize your situation.
Not all of your units require the three types to subsist, some need one or maybe two. You must check carefully your maintenance expenses to make sure that the expenses are not bigger than the revenues. If your expenses are bigger than the revenues you'll lose gold, M.P. or population until you are left out of resources. If your reserves ever get to 0 your units, buildings and spell will disappear.