OK. I\'m disappointed by the tiny number of white mages in the top 100. So here\'s something to help them out. This is from a post in the original AM bulletin boards, and is aimed at new or relatively new White mages.
It was written by a dashing and very smart gentleman named sirhatter.
Please keep in mind that it was written for the apprentice server in the original AM - 120 max turns, no ultimate units, and all the spells working. I\'m too lazy and ignorant to adapt it for this server. If someone wants to make notes in addendum posts, please feel free. Nonetheless - this stuff is pure gold - even for non-white players.
I encourage others to reprint Guides for other colors.
best,
D.
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sirhatter\'s Ultimate White Apprentice Guide
This is copyrighted by me. Feel free to use freely, so long as credit is given to the author and use of this document is not for profit in anyway.
This is version 1.2 Anything i had been wrong about in the earlier version (there were a few errors, only one of major substance) was corrected. Most notably the accuracy calculations are fixed, and part 5 is now in here, so this document is in its entirety. Hopefully you or your friends find it useful.
So, as I forever leave terra as a white. I come to offer a few thoughts that hopefully you all can use, and to dispel a few myths that are running around here. This will take some time to read, but it is worth it if you are not in the top ranks, and are not doing as well as youâd like.
I didn\'t come to white totally as a new player. I had fooled around with it before for part of a reset to test the effects of love and peace and a few other spells (largely bless and a few others)
I also had been able to get some white strategy off of my mentor Bale, who is truly an awesome player, and could hall with nearly any color, any server, and any time. (And he\'s almost as cocky as me
)
The first myth I want to dispel, is that white cant play offense, and is purely a defensive color only. To some degree, this is true, and perhaps for a new player, he will find defense easier than offense. However, just as the best defense is an unbeatable offense, I think the reverse has some truth to it too. BECAUSE of its defensive capabilities, white is a superior color to play with for offense, ESPECIALLY on apprentice.
I, however, have always been of the opinion that unless you want to get really good, you need a Kick butt offense before anything else. You donât learn great defense by playing in the 2500 range all reset. You donât learn good turn management, and you wonât hall if you canât gain acres rapidly.
That being said, this will teach you how to reach that level, and hopefully, as you learn, and read from others, your defense will develop too.
One last word of advice: This is what worked for me. Donât necessarily be a copycat. There are dozens of mages who tried to copycat Orpheus, and to this day I can think of only one mage who does an ok job of being Orpheus aside from Orpheus. To some degree you need to find what works for you and stick with it. If you are failing at what youâre doing, change it. This is what I was finding to work for me, and it isnât \"THE\" way to play archmage per se. It is my way, and it was effective for me. I do think it will be effective for a lot of players though. While a pure whatever strategy sounds simple, in reality it isnât, and requires perfect resource management to pull off well.
At the same time, I think this can work well for many players.
My strategy has some turn management difficulties, but after that it is relatively easy, versatile and forgiving, making it suit even a newbie well I would hope. It doesnât rely on precise mana management, or heavy deficits on mana or gold. It doesnât rely on a specific and exact stack arrangement, and thus if you screw up and lose most of your top stack you are still ok. It allows the user to hit a wide range of colors, and defense is easy, because your defensive stacking relies on pricey assignments and not stacks, so you can transition into offense more easily. Overall I hope many whites will improve their game with this guide.
Good luck to you in your attempts to restore white to its rightful place on this server.
Right now, there are a sad lack of whites high up, because it is supposedly a weak color. This is also untrue. Let us begin
and assume you have about 2000 acres, and are not set up for any type of offensive strategy.
The first thing you will want to do is reallocate your land. I play with 35-40% nodes, 2.5% bars (yes that is full). 10 forts or fewer (sometimes too few =P), at LEAST 10% barracks, a few guilds to hopefully make an item or two, and then a farm-town ratio of around 2.2-1.
This would leave you about... letâs say:
800 nodes
50 bars
10 forts
220 barracks
20 guilds
660 farms
260 towns
Once you are done, try to rearrange your kingdom into something kind of close to those ratios. Balance your geld and mana appropriately. ALWAYS keep on concentration and protection from evil. Higher up weather summoning is very good, and so is mind bar past 5k land.
Set up an army however you like. Try to keep at least 30k troops or more though. Log off until youâre at least at 110 turns. Anything less youâre playing with fire, and will slow down your climb considerably. Always being able to play in around 120 turns and not wasting turns is the first step to dominating this game. If you donât know that by now, learn it. If you still donât understand that concept, then youâll never be good.
Now you are logged back in. maybe taken a hit or 3. First thing to do is check your status report. Hopefully you have some mana to play with, and some troops to attack with. if you are attacking, now is a good time to decide what color you will want to primarily hit... for now lets say you will hit everything that moves (which low down is fine). Start recruiting either high priests or paladins. Recruit about 30 turns worth. They come kind of slowly, but thatâs fine.
LOW DOWN STRATEGY... Your first true run:
Start attacking. find a ranklister (yes I know thatâs supposedly against the Decalogue), or do random arena archmages of 2-3 letter strings or if you want to take turns and gradually open rank windows thatâs fine. Do whatever it takes. I\'ve used all 3 tactics, and if youâre lazy the best way to go is to make/find a ranklister. The other two work just as well though. Get a list, and hit the following:
Whites (only if you know they are troop less or over 3.5% forts)
Greens (only if you know their stackings or they are over 3% forts or troop less or REALLY FAT)
Fat Blues
Moderate-fat blacks, and the occasional thin one with hi forts
Middle of the road reds.
In all cases, a person with over 2% forts is really stupid, and asking to be hit, unless they are in geddon. Aside from the massive geld upkeep, forts are 20k np. 50 forts is a million net power. Power is good right? WRONG!
Here\'s a question. Would you rather defend a country with: 1050 archangels and 10 forts, Or 500 archangels and 30 forts?
Both carry the same amount of net power more or less, but in your first case, you have considerably more archangels, and no fort bonus, where in the 2nd case, you probably get a 30% hp bonus or something crappy, and can only deal out half the damage and only have to lose half as many aa to lose the battle.
Mages with over 2% forts are... in a word, FOOD! (Btw it pains me to say I was allied with TKA. they had more of these dummies than anyone I saw, and I couldnât touch any of them ={ )
Once you understand this power calculation, given that you are about 2k land, you can see that mages with over 30 forts and your land or higher, probably have almost no troops, or may in fact have none if they have lots of heroes/geld. These should be your primary targets, regardless of color. Some quick math dictates each acre is 1k power, and each fort is 20k power. Assume a million power for geld bars and stuff like that. If you see mages that are at 2800 land, 25 forts, and under 4.3 mil power, they almost surely are troop less. Doing this math quickly will give you winners in battle every time.
So start hitting. You have 119 turns to play with.
YOU MUST KNOW EFFICIENCY. If nothing else, learn what efficiency is, and how it applies to archmage. For me, this means attacking at the START of my turns. In fact, I think for most mages it means this. The 3 biggest complaints I hear about this are:
1) If I hit a lot of mages ill give out a lot of counters...
2) Iâm not ready to hit a lot of mages right away... my kingdom isn\'t set up for this!
3) I\'m always exploring and donât have a lot of power till the end.
In reply to each
1) No you wonât, not unless you are smart or targeted for a bbq by a guild far stronger than any Iâve seen here. Not if you power up well at the end anyway.
2) Your stacks donât mean that much. If you have troops and 20k mana, you can make attacks! You didnât deliberately cast bad units the last time u spent your turns did you?
3) To quote the snl guy who plays Alex trebek, are you English or are you retarded? (With apologies to absolution) Seriously, exploring is a major mistake. Land comes so easily down here, with such little risk to your troops, even if youâre HORRIBLE and can only win 25% of the time, winning 100 acres every 8 turns (4 hits) beats exploring for 8 turns at 7 acres a pop. Do not explore⌠You are throwing away turns if you explore past 1500 acres after research.
Your first few sieges this low will be really really easy wins. Here is a good place to burn your staffs of illusions. Spells? Bless/sleep/phantasm magic/blaze. They all work this low. If you are at 2k land, it doesnât hurt even to start your run at 5mil power or less. Then you are hitting mages at under 4 mil power. These are, without a doubt, the poor sisters of archmage. They are truly the newbies, and the people that are learning the game, or inactive, or just playing for fun/gelding. If they are in war, kick them while they are down. At least their enemies arenât getting the land. Win your first four or 5 sieges... This shouldnât be hard. You may get unlucky once, it is ok. Keep going and you will soon be at 2500 land and around 5 mil power, hitting targets at 80% of you.
Now you will have to start halfway playing. Your stack still shouldnât matter too much. If you have those kickass barrack units, and some good gate stuff or spirit warriors, you are fine. Even lowly knights are better than most of the junk people run. At the end of this document Iâve put in an appendix on offensive capabilities of all units.
As you go, you will gain forts. Every time you hit 20 forts, drop 10. This will drop you 200k in power, so you can hit targets lower, and weaker. Especially if you arenât experienced up top, you arenât going to dominate in this game by taking on jez and Orpheus and iuz and winning. You are going to only do well by dropping down to hit the weaklings.
At this point, I like to primarily prey on blacks. A veteran black is an even match for a veteran white, but a neophyte black will lose even to a neophyte white, and a neophyte black will die horribly to a skilled white.
First, you need to understand that almost no native black units have good resistance to holy attack. And guess what, white has lots of units with holy attack! Furthermore, units like liches and vamps, donât really dent white units too well. The natural advantage is almost always to white... the math ill explain later if you\'re not familiar with it. For now you only intuitively need to know that white has natural advantages over black that can easily be exploited. Lastly, most demon units that are black have a hidden weakness to holy attack. This was confirmed by the great DaveMcW (a god of archmage, has 39k land on Japan server as a blue!). Thus demon knights even die to holy attack in spite of their so called 400% resistance, long live the hidden weakness!
White has an awesome set of weapons against black. Most low blacks donât run shroud or bars (or only 1 or not at a high spell level or something else stupid!). For this reason, the spell holy word has like a 60% chance of getting thru. If it does, you win the battle.
Holy word will kill about (with some considerable degree of variation)
35 vamps
35 liches
200 wraith
150 hd
500 ghoul
1k zombie
1k skeletons
750 shadows
The beautiful thing is, the more black stacks they have, the better off you are. None of these units resists holy word at all (except hd some small fraction of the time), and you can do about 50k in net power damage to each stack. Stupid blacks stack lots of these things, and you will pretty much win the battle on this spell alone low down a good fraction of the time. This is truly wonderful. Blues will also run 1-2 of these stacks often.
The spell costs 10k, which is kind of pricey, but hey, itâs cheaper than a magic compass =P.
Start whacking every black you can find that doesnât have a good guild next to their name. Presumably good guilds will know to run shroud and barriers. Even the good guild blacks will do in a pinch. Keep your item assignment defensively oriented. You donât want to lose too many troops. The only people you may lose to are pure ghoulers. They are not a good match up for white (but oh they are for blue/green =P)
Keep whacking people over and over. This is sooo easy. If you do dip below about 14k troops, spend a few turns building. If you need to waste 2-3 turns, build farms, if you need to waste 10 turns, build lots of towns/nodes and a barrier or two. Meanwhile your barracks are giving you more troops each and every turn. Iâve taken land off of people with high priests top in this circumstance. If your net power also dips to less than 1.7 * your land, you also need to run this tactic, and possibly summon some stuff. This means if youâre at 3k land and under 5.1 mil power, you are probably too fat. You could drop that ratio lower, but unless youâre an expert or incredibly courageous (read: stupid and greedy like me), 1.7 is a pretty safe ratio.
At this point I sort of assume you have made it to 2800 land, won 9 out of 11 or 12 sieges and maybe burned a few turns building. If you canât get here, please find me in IRC (often Iâm in #gotr), or ICQ me 15173465 and I will see what I can do for you to fix whatever youâre doing wrong (and it is something drastic or else u are just uniquely unlucky)
If you recruited hp at this point, recruit either a few more or switch to kt now. If you recruited paladins, switch to hp now, just 20-30 turns worth.
You are probably at around 90-100 turns left. You will want to make 5-10 more attacks on this first run before you are done, but by now you are kind of fat, and will find it harder to win battles. If you have confidence in your defense, keep using holy word, and hope to win on that. If you want to switch to just the fattest targets you can find, that is good well. At this point though you may find yourself losing some battles because of not dealing enough damage, or getting out hit. Its better though to go for 7 more hits and only win 3 than to go for 0 more hits and win 0. 300 land is always good in my mind.
You will, however, need to eventually stop all of this fun, and picking off lowbies. If you have more than 500 land to build on at 80 turns, or really any land to build on at 70 turns or less. Itâs best to stop. That is cutting it razor thin as well. You could stop 5-10 turns earlier and play safer, but I have never been about playing it safe unless I am on top. There are a few times, if you somehow run into a mage who has 2 allies in the top 5 such that you will lose your whole army almost and have to stop real early, but again this doesnât happen often.
Build quickly. If you canât get the bars up right away, get them up on your next run and attack less. They wonât be full if you were really successful, but try to build at least 5 every day. If you intend to build more workshops (I virtually never build workshops only take what people give me thru sieges). Build nodes first, and then farms and towns, then barracks and whatnot, and try to build to take advantage of the decimal places in turn building. (I.e. better to spend just under 2 turns then just over 2 turns which is rounded to 3 turns) This way youâre enjoying the benefit of the extra mana for a few extra turns, and extra geld, and not paying the upkeep until the end (I even charge before building bars for this reason).
As youâre building, as SOON as you run out of whatever you recruited, you will have 40-70 turns left. Recruit 75 turns worth of kt or more. Knight Templars come pretty quickly, they are moderately priced, and are a very capable unit that has some weaknesses but overall is nice to use for defense. The stuff you recruit early will get killed as you recruit it.... Thus you will have less of it, and more of the kt
The theory behind this order of recruiting is that knight templars are going to be your most highly stacked unit. But your cheapest on the geld as well. Itâs better to have more of these and less of the other two barrack units than the other way around. Thus recruit the kt at the end, as I stated above rather repetitively.
You are now done building, and only have 55 turns left, and sirhatter, you have left me with 3200 land and only 5 mil power! I can never forgive you, you son of a *****! I made 1200 land today (if I was good/lucky id make 1800), but will lose 2200 tonight!!! Heh sorry. But if you follow me for 55 more turns, I promise you can get out of this, honestly, I do =P
You will need to disband your angels and knights, dropping you even lower in power. Save 1 angel and 1 knight. Mana charge now. You will want to get between 2.5 and 3.5 times your land power. So if lets say in theory you run from 2000 land to 3200, you will want to be between 8 mil and 11 mil power. I tended to play on the low end of this #, but you can play it how you like. Save any forts you gained from your last sieges. You should have between 10-20 if youâre not stupid/greedy.
You will need to have this number in your mind, and know how to hit it. So letâs do some math. Letâs say you want to hit 8 mil power, and you have 5.5 now.
You have 50 turns. You need 3 million power, that much is obvious. Letâs say you have enough barracks for 150 kt a turn (I donât have handy how many kt you make per barrack sorry). That will yield you just under 10k in net power a turn. Meaning over 55 turns you will make about half a million in net power. You have 2 million in power then you need to summon. You will need to bear in mind 2 things. Your mana, and your turns. The rest is easy. Gate, will, on average, give you about 150k in np. The other spells, can all be calculated, but the other biggie for me was spirit warriors, which gave me 62.5k in power per turn, or 250k over 4 turns on average.
So, you could just go with 12-15 castings of gate (a fetish of mine is to cast gate\'s in 3\'s, I donât think it means much though), or to cast 32 turns worth of spirit warriors, or some combination in between. For me here id run probably 9 gates and 2 spirit warrior castings and maybe one fodder cast. Meaning I could charge for 36 out of 55 turns. I then would visit the black market and buy any webs I saw, or cheap items. Then id summon as mentioned. You are done, and safely at 8 milpower.
Whites big 4 units are:
AA, Uni, Spirit warrior, Knight Templar...
All 4 are good units. The reason you disband angels and knights before mp charging is to make sure AA and uni stay ahead of knights and regular angels. Still this doesnât always happen. Higher up, you will have time to goof around, and cast unis and aa first to make sure you get what you want. once in a while you will roll snake eyes though, and that is just unavoidable.
The order of casting is critical.... ALWAYS CAST: Off color stuff first (one casting of dryads for defense to fatigue, ditto for soul speakers, if you choose to run this strategy), opening items (I often ran 1 coffin at the bottom, grew it to 80 vamps =P), do all the really cheap stuff and off color stuff early. you get fewer off color stuff, and this will help your mana/geld management.
Once you do that, summon your spirit warriors if you are using them (I *highly* recommend them). even if its just one cast. Then cast gate however many times you need.
Part of the key is to move thru your last 70 turns damn quick. You are woefully under summoned. 2-3 times this reset I got hit while madly under summoned. only once I blocked. itâs not healthy to stay there for long.
BUT... if you are afraid of counters, remember you were hitting chumps and knuckleheads at 4 mil power for the most part. You are now at 8 mil power. if they hit you, they wonât win. If they even do any damage at all, rebound counter if they have gay rules, after all free land is free land =P
As for defense, and assignments, you will need to read my defense post. Let us hope you havenât lost too much land and are ready to go at it again the next day...
The next part of this post is coming in a little bit. This is pretty long already. But Iâm trying to make this detailed and compact at the same time, not an easy task =P
Chapter 2: The Second Run
we can now assume you can start a day logging on at 3k turns or more... and perhaps even over the explore limit. feeding on newbies is no longer an option. well, there is good news. feeding on mediocre players who arenât quite new is almost as easy!
You will start your cycle again. Unlike last time though, where the natural defensive capabilities of white were more than enough to let you support 15 attacks without losing too much power, you will have to be a smidge more careful...
start attacking with 119 turns (mp charge for 1 turn, this will ensure that all hero abilities are in place (and any offensive spells as well)
Target selection will kind of remain the same. I still favor blacks and holy word here, but blues become a bit more desirable, as do reds... When hitting reds I use scroll of protection of fire often times... and use sleep. Sleep lowers resistances of one enemy stack, much like a candle would. IT rocks for nailing hydra and chims and salamanders.
I usually try to keep either item or spell defensively oriented when hitting reds.
Some good items to consider in this low-mid range of 6-8 mil.
Powder Keg: Lowers one enemyâs primary ap by 10%
Javelin of Lightning bolt: Lightning damage + lowers counter attacks by 25% of one enemy stack. I have confirmed these, thanks to ravashack for giving me this info.
Cosmetics: Adds beauty to all human units, which effectively makes them 11% harder to kill.
Missile Shield: I am THE KING of missile shields! This is seriously my all time favorite cheap item... And it is my all time favorite anti-blue item, cheap or otherwise. Missile shield halves all ranged damage effectively. Blues have... mind rippers, ranged; all their ultimate units (other servers) are... ranged! They also like to run a lot of... liches... range, psychic wisps/soul speakers/nymphs for their monkey brains... ranged! Blues have a ton of ranged units, and Iâve seen stacks with nothing but ranged stuff. And missile shield nerfs them all...
Combine this with some resistance and the natural large shield of knight templars; you yield this... totally kena!
Mind Ripper attacked sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar.
Mind Ripper\'s attack failed.
)\'s Mind Ripper was too distant, sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar was unable to counter strike.
\'s Mind Ripper attacked sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar.
Mind Ripper\'s attack failed.
sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar attacked \'s Mind Ripper.
sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar units slew \'s 6 Mind Ripper units.
sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar attacked \'s Mind Ripper.
sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar units slew \'s 14 Mind Ripper units.
)\'s Mind Ripper struck back sirhatter (#591)\'s Knight Templar .
Mind Ripper\'s counter strike failed.
That shows just how powerful the missile shield is. That opponent had mind rippers as a top stack, and my top stack stayed 100% intact. Even without the large shield ability, a missile shield is still a kickass item. That was always my biggest secret, and one thing bale and I shared in common. We donât use expensive items on offense, too much money. There are too many super cheap items that are incredible. I always jumped on the missile shields en masse...
Also good and kind of cheap:
Flasks of holy water (anti black and will be more likely to slip thru)
Potion of valor: I use this more high up, but it ROCKS on offense and defense. if 40% of your army is human or more (and mine usually was), you have just boosted those humans by 25% across the board!
Vial of venom: Kind of pricey, but good for knocking off blues...
Bubble wine: Good for hitting blacks... When you know you are going to deal enough damage and only worried about not losing too much, the extra 25% hp is nice
Ointment of healing... ROCKS! gives some nice poison resistance. I use this a lot against reds with hydra/wyvern suspected...
I think thatâs about it. ill edit this and put in more as I think of them... but never use expensive items until you are about to break 7k on offense. not worth it.
Always know what your spell and item do... Some good combinations
Anti red: SoL (Sword of Light)/scroll, sleep/scroll. sleep/ointment, potion/blinding flash, potion/plat hand of healing....
anti blue: missile shield/SoL (oh how I love thee), missile shield/holy word, missile shield/anything, potion/sol (for mad killer werebears, knights and knight templars), and some other setups Iâm forgetting...
Black: flasks of water/holy word (good for hitting mages in the 5-8 mil range), holy word/cheap item/ carpet SoL if I was absolutely desperate to beat a major enemy, or call candle as mentioned earlier.
green... web of the spider woman/ powder keg, web/brooch, web/sleep (to nail drakes)... a few others
white *gulp*: first let me say my success rate anti white sucked, I prolly lost 8 of my last 9 against even the fat ones... what was best though was call/vial, and a prayer.
Again start hitting mages hard and often. You probably should start regular attacking blues/reds now... The enhanced accuracy for your unis/sw\'s is well worth it. If your troops dip below 15k, mp charge, build, do SOMETHING. If your mana is low, charge for a turn or two, attack, charge etc.
You shouldnât finish attack runs until you either have a hugely positive mp/geld income, or youâve been SO good, that after 30 attacks you are at 60 turns and need to build. The latter will not happen. Somewhere you will lose a ton of troops in a win or loss, then you will get fat, and lose more and more each battle. Thatâs fine. My euphemism for lots and lots of attacks is known as Darwinian disbanding. Only your tough troops survive. The angels and knights from gate die quicker than your sturdy aa usually.
Now you understand why you need to take turns in big chunks. Taking them 70 at a time is worthless. I need 60 to rebuild my kingdom. So attacking for 6 turns, building for 2 and shopping for 2 wonât cut it. Not efficient. Better to attack for 30-40, youâll have to disband most of the stuff anyways at the end so why not kill it?
The more land you can take everyday, the more quickly you stay ahead of the pack and leave yourself only hittable by the top. Thus always think offense as a white. Your defense is so good you can get away with being fat. Your defense is so good you can make 20 attacks a day, and keep half your aa if you get lucky. Itâs just nice like that.
Chapter 3: To break through
Ok, if you have followed everything I have said so far, and your defense has held up with some degree of success, you are easily in the top 5% of all archmage players in apprentice. Unfortunately, if your goal is to finish in the hall of fame, you need to be in the top 10th of 1% of all archmage players roughly speaking. There are roughly 7000 mages on apprentice, and only 10 hall. So being able to consistently hold a rank of 350 or better wonât cut it.
By now one of these days you will log on, with 120 turns, 100k mana or more, and over 4000 land with upwards of 10 million power or so. You are now on the threshold of breaking through and being a threat to finish highly, but you canât quite cut it there. If this describes you, I may have some ideas and things you havenât thought of yet. Remember, especially at this level land, white and green, more than any other color, can continue to stay aggressive and think offense first. Though it doesnât matter that much what your stack is, it does matter that you know what it is, and pick targets accordingly. You have reached the stage where wins do not come easily, and you will have to win through a bit of quality now as well, in addition to your usual dose of a large quantity of sieges/regulars. You already know HOW to take your turns now when in an attack mode⌠Itâs a matter now of making sure that use is rewarded with land on your attacks, and a well spent army that can be built up again quickly on defense.
We are going to discuss 3 key things the rest of the way. Unit match-ups (which everyone has a theory on), resource use, and target selection. The third topic, is most critical in my mind, and will in the end separate the best players from merely the very good players.
At this point it is not easy to play your 120 turns in less than 45 minutes. I may have 6 windows open merely to play one server. I kept a rank list (and thus some would say cheated, but the devs have all but allowed it by now.). In addition, I kept an arena archmage window open to confirm my rank list findings and make sure I wasnât hitting allies. I kept an IRC window open always to ask people what they knew, and to shoot the breeze. I also kept my playing window open obviously, and a guild homepage window, and lastly sometimes I would keep a chron-terra window separately open in addition to my own library of battle reports in a separate folder with easy access.
SIX windows you say for one stupid game! Yes. You understand the use of a rank list and separate arena archmage window, but why keep that other junk.
First, IRC is a good resource. It is a good place to trade information and a good place to coordinate your guild. Use it, even if it is dorky. It is safe to say that for the apprentice server, #Gotr in galaxynet is the premier place to chat, usually having about 20 mages in there at any one time.
More importantly, you need to start using chron terra. I didnât do it nearly enough in apprentice, and it cost me my life. I think had I been more diligent, the last few days before I was supposed to hit 7k, I wouldnât have languished in the mid 6kâs unable to win a battle for the life of me. Had I used it more, I would have reached 7k, and been safely running some purely defensive stack and safe from everyone. I learned to use this from Lazzarus, a tarakian, and a mage who has more hall of fames than anyone will know (its hard to get him to admit which mage he is playing, since he is going for/already has hall in almost every color I think. Last reset he finished #1 on s2 as some blue mage) He taught me 2 resets ago the importance of using this window, and it made me a smarter player. The chron terra window is critical to target selection. Confused? Let me first put something simpler to you.
You as an attacker need to sort of guess what the defender is running. They can sort of guess what they are going to have attack them, and they stack against it. You need to do the same, but do betterâŚ.
If you see a white at 4k land and 7 mil power with 41 forts. You not only know that they are almost surely pure archangel, but with 41 forts, 4 mil power, and roughly 500k power in miscellaneous stuff, such as 1k for each spell level, in addition some number of bars, in addition to items geld. So you can estimate that they have 4mil power in land alone, an additional 820k power in forts, and 500k additional power. This leaves them with an extra 1.68 mil power out of 7 mil power that consists of their army. You almost surely know (80% sure) that this is going to be pure archangel (or else they just got raped simply or are mid attack run). Since archangels have a power rank of 750 (memorize the power rank of important units if you are going to continue playing this game after it switches to pay to play), you know they have 1.68 mil power worth of them, or are running 2200 archangel. As an attacker of any color, you have to ask yourself if you have a pretty good chance bring down 220, after resurrection and their spell. If the answer is no, move on to a better target. IF the answer is yes, you hit.
So if you are logging on at that hypothetical 10 mil power window, you might see a variety of mages⌠You have just started, and you are psyched to take it to the house today and break 5k. First thing you should do, is the one turn mana charge. Now you are at 119 turns.
You will see fat whites and anorexic whites (neither I particularly recommend unless if they have a retarded number of forts). You have really thin and over summoned greens, and you have fat greens. The fat greens, especially right around 3500 land, are almost always pure tree, or 95% tree or more. They explore for their land⌠and move very slowly. The thin greens could just have been whacked hard, or they could not understand the game, not understand plant growth or even how to research, and power up entirely on faerie dragons (ironically dangerous to white) and druids and militia⌠HERE is where you check the chron terra. Keep that window open separate, and tag in the white at 2100 land and 8 mil power. You KNOW he canât support trees on that kind of land. Has he been hit a lot or making a lot of hits, or has he not done anything in the last 24 hours. If the answer is on the side of the latter, you know this knucklehead has explored for his land, and summoned dryads and recruited barrack units. HIT HIM! But, do a reg. In spite of the crappiness of his troops, he has so many (more army power than you), that you may not do enough damage otherwise. Set your item and spell to the most destructive thing you can (if you have lots of melee troops go sword of light here). Set the item to something that will enhance your damage dealing capabilities. If you didnât check the chron terra, you wouldnât know if this guy was a crafty veteran, or a raw newbie. The veterans donât explore for their land. The newbies do.
Really any target under about 2250 land and over 7 mil power with an inactive chronterra (or one spaced out over 7 hours or more meaning the mage is defending not attacking), means that they are usually newbies. These are your easiest targets to hit. Take them. You will only gain 45-50 land, and lose some number of troops, but it is very high percentage. Your second high percentage, and Iâve already mentioned it, is the people with over 2% forts, regardless of color. The HP bonus gained from 2% forts is insignificant compared to the extra amount of fake power it gives you. These are also good targets
Of course, juicy targets like these arenât so easy to find. The chron terra will continue to remain usefulâŚ.
Here is a guide to picking targets and figuring out stackingsâŚ.. Iâm assuming a level of forts around 1% for fat mages, and .5% for nonfat mages for all targets. This is before you think to use the chron terra.
Mind you, there will be exceptions to these rules, but this is generally going to be pretty safe for you. I have listed the colors in order of mages that generally need the least army on up. I.e. a fat white is fatter than a fat black, and about the same size as a moderate black.
Fat whites: Pure flyer, very fat whites are probably pure aa.
Fat greens: Tree dominated.
Fat blues: Mostly using complex units, but it gets tricky
Fat reds: Pure efreeti, or they have been hit hard
Fat blacks: Unknown, could be heavy demon knight, or anything really.
Moderate whites: Flyer dominated⌠Maybe 1 ground stack
Moderate greens: Tree top (50% or so), diverse stacking after that
Moderate blues: Anyoneâs guess⌠Often heavy ripper though...
Moderate reds: Anyoneâs guessâŚ
Moderate blacks: Anyoneâs guessâŚ
Thin Whites: lots of ground troops (greens take note these are easier targets than fatties)
Thin greens: Canât support too many trees or gryphs. Lots of fodder, watch for animals
Thin blues: Running lots of crap somewhereâŚ.
Thin reds: Really thin ones like to run lizzies⌠The rest will have fodder lower
Thin blacks: Other servers its zombies⌠Here itâs a mix of pop eaters and red troops
This is your first guide to picking a target. White has some obvious strengths and weaknesses. To summarize:
Strengths: Very nice attack type in general (holy), Melee troops can easily be modified⌠Many troops can benefit from attack enhancing items/spells⌠good solid defenders.
Weaknesses: LOW attack power in general for their power rank. Vulnerability to some types of attacks. Generally not of a quick speed to attack⌠Fatigue easily.
What does this mean for you? Well two things. First, While your better troops will still kick militia square in the pants, your low attack power means that you wonât attack some fodder quite as well as it should. For example, knights are generally considered poorer attackers than knight templars. However, since militia have 0% resistance against anything, the knights, with a higher attack power ratio for its power rank, will deal MORE damage than unicorns if the knight templars! (assuming you have 100k worth of knights and 100k np worth of unis)
You need to find units that are weak to what you do well. You want to hit units that are weak to holy, and want units with low hp/low resistances in general.
The obvious place to look is black. Even the demon knight doesnât truly have good holy resistance. Archangels, angels, spirit warriors and the like will win almost all of their matchups against their nether enemies. Yet⌠you are now at the level where there arenât many bad blacks around, even at 80% of your power. You need to pick a black you can beat. How do you do that?
CHECK THE CHRONICLE TERRA!
White has an intimate fear of hitting pure ghoulers. The one hero I held all reset as a white (lasted me 3 days) died when I hit a red ghouler with flight. I could have saved that life easily had I checked the chron terra. By checking the chron terra, you will now know exactly what type of enemy you are facing. If the chron terra is idle over his last 48 hours, or only with attacks spaced out over a long time, he is probably playing defensively, making 1 attack a day or so. However, more than likely, there will be a long string of attacks one 5 minutes after another. This is when this mage is playing offense (or being barbequeued by an enemy guild once in a while, in which case youâll get the âso and so has taken a crapload of damage, try again in 24 hoursâ)
The key to checking his run, is to find out what type of food he eats. If in that run, you see whites and blues galore⌠Look out! This guy is some evil person either ghouling it or wraithing it. If you want to feel adventurous, and take a chance hitting him, go ahead. Itâs your call. I recommend either call hurricane (to at least ground those ghouls), or some sort of slowing device. I tend to stay away from these mages (at least I do if Iâm not lazy and actually check the chron terra). By keeping a separate chron terra window, you can write down the #âs, then enter them on your arena archmage quickly, by entering and hitting back to check color, and move more quickly, keeping you vulnerable for a much shorter time.
A black hitting whites is obviously not an ideal target. A black hitting reds however, is more often than not stacked full of liches, vamps, and mind rippers⌠Yummy! These are talented blacks, that know how to play offense, but they have left themselves vulnerable to you. Punish their weakness by taking 380 acres of their hard earned land. Go on a full out siege here.
A green doesnât really need his chron terra checked too closely. Only hit if you are stacked anti green. How do you stack anti green? First, web of the spider woman/brooch or some defensive item is a must. Then stack with aa top (these are weaklings when it comes to killing fodder, so you might as well have them hit trees), then kt/uni/sw (whatever it is pray item or spell gets thru or youâre screwed anyway), and then below pack a vicious punch with high priests and knights. Knights, as mentioned, have a high attack power/power rank ratio. They arenât horrible offensive units, and will often win matchups versus dryads and nymphs. More importantly though, you NEED to stack evenly. The aaâs will be top, but wonât be the bulk of your army.
Something like:
15% aa
21% kt
20% sw
19% uni
15% hp
10% otherâŚ
is idealâŚ
Archangels are top, but where you will really beat this mage, if you do beat him, is by killing 3 or 4 of his bottom stacks. If he is mono tree, you can almost forget it. If he has tree/bear/nymph/dryad/elven archer, you are in business. The unicorns and spirit warriors will lead you to victory here. You will only kill 20 trees, and may lose a lot of knight templars for your troubles, but you will win the battle. It will be close though, and you will need to do a regular so you donât get hit with the accuracy penalty.
Picking Whites for whacking is nearly never recommended⌠never never never⌠Can I get this thru any more clearly?
Picking reds⌠an intriguing option⌠Dangerous, and intriguing. Check their chron terra. If they are massively hitting whites, stay away, Either pure ghouls, lots of wyverns, you really donât know. If, however, they are hitting greens, you are in business. They then have fire units. Fire units suck defensively, except for the efreeti, which can also lose. Fat reds are often pure efreeti. Think carefully about how you will do enough damage. Take a chance on sleep breaking their resistances, and you should win. (efreeti have solid resistances for the most part, and you donât have access to flame blade)
Chims/sals/hell hounds, as nice as they may be on offense, kind of suck on defense. Your units will get hurt. You will need to regular, and you still may lose more power. You will need to set your item here possibly to ointment of healing (red has lots of access to poisonous units). Risk = reward sometimes. You will drop once in a while 1k chims, which isnât a lot, but itâs more than enough to win. Here is another worthwhile place to check the chron terra to see target selection. (and no red high up explores, since their defensive capabilities are so weak theyâd get hammered)
Your last color to check up on is blueâŚ. This is THE BEST color to chron terra, and it makes ALL the difference in the world. I didnât do this nearly enough, and again it cost meâŚ
If a blue is hitting whites he is running⌠Wraith/ghoul/mr⌠look out!
If a blue is hitting mostly greens⌠he is lich top⌠almost every time. Nothing else blocks treants. If you have a holy unit top, this is a win ž.
If a blue is hitting other blues⌠Spin a wheel, print out all of the units, and throw darts. God knows what heâs stacking.
If a blue is hitting blacks, he is running gate units heavy, with mr and maybe a few liches/fodder. This will be a tough win, but is worth a try.
If a blue is hitting reds, he is lich/mr/night of living dead stuff usuallyâŚ. SOOOOOO EASY!!!!
If a blue is defensively oriented⌠Think all-flier (aa/djinni) or a balanced stacking.
If he is hitting a mix of colors, look at the mix and sort of combine what I put up here. For example a blue can hit reds and greens at the same time kind of easily if he keeps lich top. He can hit blacks and blues easily if heâs mind ripper 2nd.
The chronicle of terra gives you so much information about your target, just by looking at the people he hit. Make sure to only look at all of the attacks in a row. The attacks 7 hours spaced apart are his defensive battles, and not attacks. Combined with the guide I put up earlier, you have a great idea of what youâre going to run into. Guilds often share information about enemy mages or just even random mages (kindred does and others). If youâre worried about the legality or ethicality⌠tough! Nothing will be done about it, and I think itâs legal to share information about enemies in guild servers (though not unguilded servers). Since enemy can be broadly defined, lots of good guilds have this information readily available. Check your guild to see if you have some sort of library. If not, or if there havenât been attacks on that mage recently, this guide I put up here will tell you what the mage is stacking, without knowing what he is stacking. Even those guild lists, are not totally trustworthy. While some mages will stack the same thing every time (either because they are damn good with it or because itâs the only thing they know), there are others that will have stacks rearranged either through battle or design. You need to be able to pick targets and plan your battle ahead quickly in your mind without such crutches. This game gives you exactly what you put in. Its not like everquest where playing 24-7 is all you really need along with a few brains and some friends. Yet the game as you get better takes more and more time, and something like checking chron terras isnât necessarily fun (and why when Iâm lazy I donât do it), but it makes a big difference. I hear mages ***** about how âUnluckyâ they are all the time. Thatâs bull**** 9 times out of 10. That mage doesnât know how to pick targets, and he wants a shoulder to cry on is what heâs really saying. At the highest level, the calculations the very best mages go thru mentally are absurd⌠I wonât even discuss them here because it isnât relevant to anyone, and few would believe it. Yet it is how mages win 33 out of 35 times in a days attacks on other servers. You want to make as many attacks as possible, but you also want to win as many as possible, for obvious reasons. The best way I can think of, is by picking opponents that are suited to you and your stacks. Now that you know what opponents are stacking, as we approach the end of this offensive treatise, I will next discuss matchups between units in a relatively simplistic, but effective manner, that makes the game easy, and doesnât depend on the wisdom (or foolhardiness) of the random mage that posts here with advice.
We were all newbies once. That canât be controlled. We can control what kind of veteran we are though. And the idea is to turn into a skilled veteran rather than an unskilled one. Good luck to you in your maging.
Chapter 4: Locking in on the top:
All of these sections contain information pertinent to other colors. This section, however, is truly the most useful for other colors. It was also the most difficult section to write clearly, for the nature of the topic leads to the risk of the post becoming arcane, mathematical, and boring.
Something very few mages understand is how battle really works. Sure they know more attack power is better, and understand a higher initiative is better, and that you want units with big resistances and whatnot, but they donât understand the mechanics of battle. They look at the #1 mage who stacks swanmays on geddon (as greens occasionally do) and then they go out and stack swanmays and wonder why they lose. Or they see some huge white (ander comes to mind) have vamps/wraiths high in their stacking and go out and try casting wraiths at 120k mana a pop.
Hopefully the first part of all of this has taught you a few key concepts:
1) Play efficiently. Turns are one of your most valuable resources, so donât dicker around trying to amass crazy amounts of stuff.
2) Attack often, and pick easy targets. This was all discussed above.
3) Match up units well, while staying efficient. This is best done through picking targets well.
The first part of all of this dealt almost exclusively with efficiency and pointing out pitfalls that other mages make and that you can prey on.
I sort of have alluded to how to make these matchups favorable, but only purely on a qualitative level. One could argue that archangels arenât really defensive powerhouses, or that high priests actually suck on offense. This section is intended not so much to impose my view of what units are good and what suck, but rather to give YOU the tools to allow you to make those assessments on your own.
I am a firm believer in finding your own way of playing. There are some definite concepts that you must understand if you want to be good, but there is still some degree of variation even after you play by these concepts, and you have to find one that works for you, and that you are happy. With very few exceptions, you donât play exactly like the person who taught you (I know of one hilarious case where the mage made hall of fame following a turn by turn script emailed daily to said mage... nevertheless that immortal is a quality mage in his own right).
To understand how units kill each other, you need to follow this formulaâŚ
#of dead enemies =
# of attackers * attack power * accuracy * (1-def resistance)
---------------------------------------------
hit points of defender
So, if 3000 angels hit lets say some number of wraiths⌠we can anticipate with some degree of authority how much they will kill.
You have 3000 angels * an attack power of 800. Wraiths have 0 holy resistance, so 1-0 is 1. That number stays constant. For now we will assume an accuracy of 25%. Thus the amount of hit points killed is = to 3000 * 800 * .25 * 1 or⌠600000 hit points of damage. Wraiths have 1000 hit points, so your angels would kill 600 wraiths. There is an obvious fault in the formula. If you wipe the stack, you cannot use the formula. Otherwise it stands.
This is the battle system. Seems simple eh? Well, to me, the hit points, # of attackers, attack power and hit points of defender are pretty easy to solve. They give you that on the battle report. All that is left to calculate is accuracy and resistances. Well, this is where the game gets really damned confusing, and I am left with the unenviable task of trying to make it easy to explain, when I myself still run into issues with accuracy.
To start, accuracy is really the key to understanding the battle system. Once you pick that up, the whole game is just math. Unfortunately, accuracy is truly a ***** to get a hold on. An analogy would be in basketball. Over my inglorious career, I am about a 35% 3-point shooter. However, that doesnât mean in my next game, wherever it may be, that if I take 20 3-pointers I will hit 7 of them. Rather, my accuracy is random. Sometimes I am cold and will make 10%. Other times I couldnât miss blindfolded, and will hit half my 3âs or more.
Most of your units act the same way. With magic being the common exception, your units will have a wide range of variance, even before taking into account any number of battle related items. To prove this, make an account, and get a few buddies to make one too on some other server. Make them spend 121 turns exploring. Play a color that has quick access to flyers (not red). I would recommend faerie dragons. Hit your friends. They will have the crappy 1k militia and so on setup⌠You presumably should kick their ass with 3k faerie dragons up top. However, thatâs not the point. The point is to look at what their archers do. Each friend of yours will have 300 archers. Sometimes they will bring down 15 faerie dragons, sometimes 25, sometimes in the middle or outside that range. The point is, resistances or no⌠fatigued or not, most units wonât keep the same accuracy.
This makes understanding battles difficult, but also fulfilling. An OUTSTANDING site, and one I frequent is
www.taka.nl/am. Go to the advanced battle analyzer. It will calculate all applicable accuracies for you, assuming 0% resistance, because, simply put, you donât want to waste your time on that. I recommend saving a few of your cooler battle reports in html and visiting here later.
As I said, the math of the game is easy, except for resistances and accuracies. Accuracy, if it wasnât already random enough, becomes even more random when you throw in the following factors:
Siege penalty (applicable to sieges)
Siege ability (given also to flyers it negates said penalty)
Charm, Beauty, Fear, Swift (lowers enemy accuracy)
Marksmanship (enhances your own accuracy)
Clumsiness (lowers your own accuracy)
Fatigue! (this is big⌠I still donât have this one figured out 100%)
Endurance (partially negates fatigue)
Attack type (some types are more accurate then others)
Items/spells (satchel/fog cloud/blinding flash/fear/lovesick you name it)
Unintended consequences: (battle chant increases fatigue rumor has it)
As a result, when youâre in a battle, you canât predict the accuracy of your troops with any degree of accuracy (whoops lets use the word certainty here to reduce confusion =P)
Every time your troops get hit, your accuracy lowers, every time they make a hit, it lowers and on and on. Leave it to taka to help you solve these mysteries. The grandmasters of archmage understand this better than I do, so I wonât go in much further. I will say this though. Be careful with the encyclopedia and what youâre told. When a unit has charm enemy accuracy is lowered by 50%. What this means is NOT that an attacking unit hitting dryads all of the sudden go from 30% (a good base rate for many troops) to -20%! Instead, it means the attacker goes from 30% to 15%. However, a satchel of mist, lowering accuracy by 5% DOES in fact mean that a unit goes from 30 to 25 I believe (but cannot prove since I cant find a battle report where a defender uses just that without a fog cloud as well, making my calculations useless).
If you are quitting in 3 weeks, donât bother itâs not worth it. If you intend to get better at this game, I recommend you research this until you find a level that YOU are comfortable at.
Now, to the second confusing aspect⌠remember our formula:
# of dead enemies =
# of attackers * attack power * accuracy * (1-def resistance)
---------------------------------------------
hit points of defender
All we have left now to explain are resistances⌠And you say, sirhatter, resistances are easy to calculate the encyclopedia gives them to us!
I say, yes and no. Itâs easy when your attack type is pure (say melee), and the defender has 80% resistance to melee. Then the formula is easy. Plug in 1-.8, and you will see that a unit with 80% resistance is 5 times hardier than a unit with 0% resistance to melee. For this reason each percentage point of resistance is more useful than the one before it. 99% is literally twice as good as 98%, but 100% is infinitely better than 99% resistance. Tangentially, you could argue that anything under 50% is near worthless, and wont do much good, especially to a unit with fewer than 10 hit points for its power rank (i.e. 80 power rank and under 800 hp).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the developers kept a few things secret from us. A pure attack type is good, but what about a blended attack type? i.e.: what happens when you use sword of light to make melee melee-holy, or your attack is blended to begin with (note the astral magicianâs magic-holy attack). Most attack types are blended. Breath-magic, breath-fire, ranged missile, and on and on. Enchantresses make melee units melee-holy. The encyclopedia doesnât list resistances for these⌠The effects of spells are often cryptic. Does vial of venom just affect melee units or units with other attack types?
Furthermore, to REALLY compound things, you get spells and items to fux0r your precious calculations. Oil flasks, candles of sleeping, stun, brooch of protection, rust armor, vial of venom. The result is when someone asks about these items, some uninformed jackass who heard about the item 3rd hand from his cousin and has never broken 4k authoritatively states what the item does, and thus bad information gets passed on.
As for exact calculations of items, if I wasnât so likely to retire at the end of this reset Iâd say its more than 50-50 I walk away from the game foreverâŚ. 100% if all goes as I plan in s1, Iâd do myself the calculations for these items. (editorâs note: I ****ed up my very high hall chances in s1, finishing 13th thanks to my overly conservative play, and stand before you this reset) Instead, I leave you with what I did find, or at least I think I found. Even this though isnât certain, but it was tested reasonably well. The developers said that blended resistances were NOT averaged⌠I asked them this. They wouldnât, however reveal to me the formula. So I started putzing around, and came up with a usually workable model for blended resistances among two attack types.
Unfortunately what the developers didnât tell me that Dave did is that they ARE averaged. There are hidden weaknesses that you will never see though (the most famous being most black units have a hidden weakness to holy attacks that was recently unhidden)
This also explains the effort for demon knights to have the faulty â400%â holy resistance. At first 100% wasnât cutting it when holy ranged or melee holy was tagging these freaks. The 400% represents an effort to make all blended attack types still have full resistance. Alas the developers still screwed up.
Add in factors like weakness to attack types, and scales, and you can see our basic formula is confusing.
We now know how battle works, and who to exploit. All thatâs left is actually finding a way to exploit our enemies. I will now discuss how to determine the usefulness of individual units on paper.
You have all seen the encyclopedia. That will give you all of the \'paper\' information you need. I want you though to not think in terms of how the encyclopedia puts out information, but rather on a scaled basis.
i.e.: you cannot compare treants against knight templar just by looking at attack powers and hit points. Mind rippers have 12k ap, and kt\'s 550. 500 mind rippers would be able to demolish 500 knight templar.
However, obviously, you donât compare attacking abilities that way... So here is a better way.
instead of attack power, use attack scale.
For me this is actually two numbers. The 2nd number is the primary attack/power rank, and the first # is the primary attack plus extra attack/power rank... An example would be unicorns.
they have a power rank of 375, a primary attack power of 2000, and extra attack power of 1000.
This means their attack scale is 8/5.333. The attack scale to me is the single biggest measure of offensive competence.
Why does the 2nd number matter?
Well. The 2nd number (primary power) is the number that can be wildly influenced. The secondary attack power cannot be valor boosted, plant growthed, paralyzed, battle chanted/lusted, or animal enlarged or have much happen to it really (its imitative, however, CAN easily be changed.) I havenât tested this entirely, but Iâm sure that it canât be paralyzed, or valor boosted as the following will attest to. (mods please donât pull this down the opponent is a now dead arma caster on s1)
This is my bottom stack in a battle. It had all but 1 of my valor heroes feeding this guy some steroids
Spirit Warrior 991 8323 1656 2288
sirhatter (#354)\'s Spirit Warrior attacked *** (#1087)\'s Treant.
sirhatter (#354)\'s Spirit Warrior units slew *** (#1087)\'s 110 Treant units.
Erin Herfel Shepherdess\'s attack failed.
***** (#1087)\'s Treant struck back sirhatter (#354)\'s Spirit Warrior .
***** (#1087)\'s Treant units slew sirhatter (#354)\'s 6 Spirit Warrior units.
Malein Scully Shieldmaiden\'s attack failed.
sirhatter (#354)\'s Spirit Warrior attacked ***** (#1087)\'s Treant.
sirhatter (#354)\'s Spirit Warrior units slew ***** (#1087)\'s 30 Treant units.
note that spirit warriors have an attack scale of 11/6.
The secondary attack normally would be almost as big as the primary attack, but since I valor boosted those spirit warriors rather dramatically, this example clearly illustrates that the primary attack, at 8300 ap hit first and killed far more than the secondary attack. The only explanation is (since the secondary attack didnât kill the last of those treants) that the secondary attacks donât valor boost.
Thus if you have 7 valor heroes, all at level 18, that 1000 in extra power will still stay at 1000, even as that first number zooms from 2000 to about 9000.
In this way, the two numbers are distinct, and important higher up. For now the first number is most useful though for attack proficiency. For my purposes on my overall offensive scale I usually average the two.
Also, instead of hit points, I use a hit point scale. Here this becomes VERY MUCH a matter of personal preference, and itâs easy to dispute what Iâm saying here. I will try to provide you the math as best as I can. Thus a unit like the archangel will have 5000 hit points and a power rank of 750. It gets a hp scale # of 6.67, which is worse than the phalanx! Unfortunately for our lowly phalanx man, he doesnât have a wonderful array of resistances that the archangel has. With only major weaknesses to poison and paralyze, most of the aaâs resistances are 75