Forums / Guides and Articles / Defending Against Plague

"Plague" is a level 8 magic spell which upon success will infect the target city from where it will begin spreading to the nearest cities within 5 normal scout ticks. While there has been no confirmation as to how far it can spread, 5 normal scout ticks seems to be a good measurement. "Scout ticks" being how far a scout can travel in 5 regular turns. Once plague has spread to a city, it will begin killing peasants, units stationed in a city, and units stationed in a city which are in an army the following turn at a set rate. The plague will last depending on how strong the initial cast was, so it could be as low as 5 ticks to as high as 60 ticks.

There are a few key strategies to avoid being plagued, though if a mage is determined enough and has enough power, they will still be able to cast it upon your kingdom.

1. Ensure there are no cities within 5 turns of your core which do not belong to your Kingdom.

2. Every city should have 10-25k MUs in it - with 10k being in smaller cities, and 25k being in 90ks. Double this number by Day 30.

#1 ensures that your KD has absolute control over your core area, as you cannot make sure that people in other KDs are defending their cities magically. You also cannot "Cure Plague" in non-KD cities, which means that even if you eradicated plague in all of your KD's cities, it can respread from a city which doesn't belong to your KD.

#2 is the best way to help your KD to avoid plague entirely. Since Plague is a high level magic spell, it can be difficult to cast it on a target which has even a little magic defense. Also if plague does spread, you now have MUs in all cities to cast "Cure Plague" on yourself and surrounding cities. 

Plague has reached your core despite your best attempts in avoiding it, what now? The bad news is that the only way to get rid of plague in your cities is to make sure that no city within 5t of your core has plague in it. This is how you can accomplish this:

1. Before any plague happens, make sure that either your mage, or anyone with level 4 magic, creates mini-magic cities with 50k MUs and at least 1k MTs 8 scout ticks from each other. This way someone active in your KD can cast "Cure Plague" on every city as soon as plague is cast.

2. Cast the level 4 spell "Cure Plague" on every city in your core, or the area which the plague is in. "Cure Plague" is a very easy spell to cast, so you don't need a lot of MUs with each cast. Typically I would start with ~10k MUs/cast. The losses will be minimal.

3. Cast "Cure Plague" on every city which your KD owns in the affected region.

4. If your KD doesn't own every city, you can either take the city and then cast Cure Plague on it, or you can use the Level 6 Spell "Teleport" to teleport the city away from your core.

NOTE: While 1 cast of Cure Plague is fairly inexpensive, multiple casts (with some cores requiring 40-50+ casts) will quickly add up. This is why you use 10-15k MUs per cast maximum. While each cast may not cure your plague, 2 typically will do so, and in those 2 casts you lose much less Magic Units than if you cast with 1 big cast of 50k+ MUs

1. An army which is plagued needs to be cured separately if it's outside of a city.

2. Plagued armies can spread the plague into cities only if they are already plagued and then spend 1 turn inside the city.

3. Armies which are inside a city will have the same amount of ticks removed when casting "Cure Plague" on that city. If the army has more ticks plagued than the city, then the army may not be fully cured, and will respread the plague into the city.

4. It takes 1 turn of sitting in a city with your army for that army to catch the plague. This means you can create a new army > move your units into the army > move the army out of the city, and your units will be safe from the plague.

If you see this message after a successful cast then you have probably not cured the entire city of plague:

Magic

Casting Cure plague from Vader upon Vee One with 84% chance of success...successful, the plague in Vee One will last for 46 less days. We lost 859 Magicians and 21 of your magic towers got destroyed in explosions

The report will show how many days of plague you removed (with "days" = ticks), which means there are ticks remaining in the plague for that city.

If you see this message after a succesful cast of Cure Plague, then you have cured the entire city of Plague:

Magic

Casting Cure plague from Vader upon Vigor with 86% chance of success...successful, the plague in Vigor has been cured. We lost 746 Magicians and 19 of your magic towers got destroyed in explosions.