Family History

Mr. Killer

Lived in Era 36, got 1 heir(s) (Killer) and was a member of Peacekeepers
Killer's guide to life

Alright, this is a guide to life for newbies, and will hopefully help some others(any would be nice, indeed) Unfortunately, however hard one tries, it doesn't seem to work for real life, but anyway. This guide will be divided into 8 parts, (i) How to come to power(completely irrelevant to VU, for the most part), (ii) General guide for all races (iii) Halfling Guide, (iv) Elf Guide, (v) Human Guide, (vi) Troll Guide, (vii) Orc Guide, (viii) Dwarf Guide, Be aware, however, I am not an expert at VU, or even a novice. This guide's purpose is to confuse everyone(or at least maybe newbies) so I might stand a chance at killing them. I apologise for any mistakes in this anyway.





(i)How to come to power

"War is the act of making peace."

Starting off as a hard-working peasant, whether fighting for your king, farming for food or digging for gold, one finds it hard to imagine becoming all the lands from east to west. Indeed, one cannot imagine even owning but a small house by oneself, they would doubtless be shoved into a little cramped space with twenty-four other people. All very well and good if you are but a small halfling, but a troll, standing over eight foot, has to bend over to prevent banging his head against the wall, though they probably wouldn't even pay heed to this.

So, firstly, the thing is to work your way up. I'll take an example of a small farmer, reaping but a few acres of ground. The first thing to do is to kill the landlord and a few of the surrounding farmers. You're bound to get more land if you haven't been hanged. So, you now have more land to farm, and so more money. Repeat this procedure enough times(carefully), and you'll have a profitable income. Of course, this isn't a guarantee, and you're most likely to get yourself killed. However you go about it, once you have enough money, you give it to the lord and buy a position of power(a kinght or such). You can then earn more money by hiring people to steal stuff for you. You get yourself as close a position(job) as possible to the lord(or lady, indeed) and then kill him/her. Then, you can become the ruler of a city, and gradually expand. Congratulations, you are now a ruler of a bit of land.

Next, you have to join a kingdom. This is easy. Join one on Fant. preferably, veterans or newbies. Prove your skill on the battle-field or as a mighty tactician, a farmer, a magician or even as someone who is on all the time, and you might get to be a vice. Next, the tricky bit, hunt down the king in real life, and force him to promote you. Next, ignore his ramblings and mark him as insane. Now, NAP everyone on the map and farm all era and annihilate any dudes that try to kill you. Now, crown youself emperor and rule the land.





(ii)General guide for all races

"It matters not race you are, you could be a dog for all I care, the important thing is that you're willing to sacrifice your peoples(or other dogs)."


Ok, a general guide to starting is to...

(1) Build your town close to a mountain(and build mines... duh). Always, ALWAYS, build close(obviously not shoved in right beside so you can only have the tiniest city) to the mountain(or lake if you are halfling)

(2) Build another town close to any lake, forest or mountain and build respective buildings(You can rainbow if you have a moutina and lake or lake and forest beside you etc. but in general it's better to stick with one). Keep your production above 90% if possible(a good idea is to build extra homes to whatever building you're building to start off with. Maybe 1:4 or something like that, towards 1:5. However, you should also keep your employment high, as peasants eat food, and employed peasants pay taxes. The ones that don't work and do eat)

(3) Build an armoury. Some people prefer to do this as their second city, or fourth, if they're rich enough.
Max discounts (50% That's 50% cost next to ordinary cities without armouries, so just try and keep it near half other cities)

Type of troop Homes Armouries
Level 1 100 300
Level 2 200 400
Level 3 500 1000
Level 4(MUs) 1000 2500
Level 5 1000 5000


(4) Train a load of troops before getting out of protection. Wait until your armouries are built though, and when I say about a day OOP to build an armoury, if you can manage it before, all to the good.

(5) Continue spending about half your gold(depending on how threatened you are) on troops(I'll try to give more information in each races' section on troops, science and stuff).

(6) Gradually, build your economy up, while training troops, sending out armies with those troops in them and obliterate everything.

(7) When you reach a certain mark of production(set it youself. Should be a million or two gold or other stuff equivalent to this at least, though I am being hypocritical here... My highest income ever hasn't even reached 2 million. But I'm not a great player, so do as I say, not as I do. Or better yet, ignore me altogether) start putting all your gold into training troops.

(8) Use the market to your advantage, there is great potential for all races to make gold from it, especially humans.

(9)If you have magic science level 4, stg if you have a lot of stone. Otherwise, just annoy someone into casting it for you.

(10) Do not rainbow your sciences. You should(unless you are really desperate and are being destroyed by enemies, in which case military, or are an elf, in which case buy magic first) buy mining(farming if you want as a halfling), then magic(most costly science, and science prices go up with other ones, then military. It is interesting to note(I'm pretty sure this is true, anyway) - Science costs go down if people in your area have already got them. Not by much, but still.

(11) Use as many tactics as you can when fighting, destroying cities you capture is always a good idea unless you can gain a lot of ground on your enemy quickly.

(12) Picking a race(maybe this should be no.1, but anyway). Pick whatever damn race you want and don't annoy me. Orcs, have of course, strong troops(the Nazgul). Trolls have cheap, powerful units as well. Humans are good fighters, they can be used offensively(catapults/knights) or defensively(knights/archers). They can also make loads of money with their (up to)10% bonus on the market, if they feel so inclined. It can be really annoying on the seller as well. Elves are good defenders(archers) but don't really do much attacking until they get high magic level, and then they get a great fighter, the archmage(who also now has the magic defence of one mu). Dwarfs are in my opinion, terrible, but they can make good fighters(well, numerous armies anyway) late in the era(and are excellent farmers(of gold, not food)). Finally, the halfling. The best race in the game(in my opinion). Before dwarfs got what they deserved, they were little played, but now they're used to hog the leaderboard. Of course, they can do so much more than this...





(iii) Halfling guide

"Armies aren't measured in height, but in numbers."


What's so great about a halfling you say? They've weak troops, even if inexpensive, and can only farm for points all era(this is of course a lie)
Firstly, I shall point out the advantages of Halflings, and then the diadvantages.

Advantages
- Their farmers produce extra food. 1 farmer for every farm.
- Their adventurers finds treasures(gold, science or experience)
- The farmers are cheap defence(if costly in peasants) Pony riders are also pretty good troops.
- Their scouts are invisible.
- They are an adaptable race. You can have good magic if they are lucky enough to pick up sciences, and can have loads of troops, or can just farm all era long.
- They are the only race with which it gives more gold(generally) to produce food. Annoying, though, some other races try to pester halflings by dropping the food market or even produce loads of food.

Disadvantges
- They have low OP/DP troops.
- They rely heavily on the food market(if they're producing food).
- Finding sciences can play havoc with their costs to other sciences.
- They get laughed at by taller races, but get their own back by kicking them down to size.

So, now how to play an era as them.

(1) Build a city close to a lake(and oh yes, ignore rivers, they are useless for farming, giving only max. 9 towards a lake's 11)/mountain(or even both). (Four farms to every home. You need the space for farmers. Technically, it should be 6 to every 25 but you can always use the extra peasants in an armoury or something.)

(2) Decide on whether you will go all out for farming or half mining/farming(you can do some lumbering as well, or even ignore the farming altogether).

(3) Build another city(closeby if you can) preferably next to a lake.

(4) Increase your farming science up to level 3. If you are mining as well, maybe level 2 farming and 1 mining(I'd prefer not to split sciences yet though)

(5) Train farmers. They aren't costly, however, I generally build a hundred armouries in one city to reduce the cost before building my armoury.

(6) Build your armoury about a day before OOP(out of protection). Build armouries and homes.

(7) Start training troops. Train more farmers for your farming cities, pony riders and a few MUs. I'd ignore slingers, they take up valuable peasants, and they'd actually cost the same as pony riders with double to triple the income with upkeep after but a short while. You don't really need adventurers yet. Farmers also provide a bit of defence in cities, that's quite good in the beginning.

(8) Keep building up on your economy(but spending around half on training troops, and by the end of th first week, start training adventurers, one for every two or so ponies, gradually making it's way to one and half to one over the start to middle of the era), and increase your farming to level 8 or 9, or even 10 if you're patient enough and haven't got war on your hands.

(9) Increase your magic to 4, then increase your military to 5, then rainbow your sciences. By this time you should be sending out those adventurers and getting them exp, so it won't matter as they'd mess it up anyway. If you can manage an extra mil or magic science, buy them.

(10) Ok, a bit about adventurers finding treasures - The more exp the better(you need at least some exp to find stuff. Exp also gives somewhere between 1 and 2% power each to your army. You earn more by attacking at less than 90(but don't kill your troops away at <60% chances)). The more adventurers the better. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter what other troops are in the army. There's no limit on how much you can find, You can find any sciences, gold or experience. Experience is probably the best, because you can find more stuff after that, but don't turn your noses up at anything(apart maybe from some sciences at just the wrong time).

(11) Over the rest of the era, raise you food income up to an amount of say 1-2 million, then raise your mining up to a 1 million to 3(you can't rely on food). Then pump troops and kill everyone. Later in the era, if you're strong enough, you don't really need any ponies.





(iv) Elf guide

"Magic is about making the possible become impossible(and vice versa)."

I'm just going to blather on about magic under this as Elves are really the most magical race. First, the advantages and disadvantages of elves...

Advantages
- Cheap magic science.
- Archmages have the magic defence of one spellweaver.
- Archmages also are cheap troops for power with high magic science(however, their cost does go up with magic science also). They are one of the best, if not the best, troops in the game with level 9+ magic.
- Ghosts are cheap, strong level 1 units.
- Archers are excellent defence units.
- They have the satisfaction of killing a load of troops with magic(so can other races, but not to the same degree).

Disadvantages
- Their upkeep cost can be quite substantial until they get high magic science(archmages).
- They rely on magic for strong troops, and have to forego mining and military science until much later.
- Archmages are completely useless at the start(Unless you you want a costly 3/3, or 6/6 MU(actually, just the defence of an MU, thankfully)).
- You have ot be fairly active and on the ball to be able to use your magic at the right time.

I haven't played as an elf(or indeed, anything other than a halfling) in quite a while(though this guide might be better for my lesser played races...)

(1) Build a city close to a mountain. Build mines and homes.(1 is to five ratio, or maybe 1 is to 4 if you prefer to have extra peasants to begin with.

(2) Build another city close to a mountain, and build mines and homes.

(3) Build an armoury around a day(when I say day, I mean full days. VU days are ticks or hours) before OOP. Train mostly ghosts, MUs and a few archers thrown in.

(4)Increase you magic science to two or three.

(5) Build a magic city as soon as you get enough money and quite a few mines(and homes...) in your cities(about a week OOP). Build MTs and homes. Start putting your MUs(not all) into this city. 20k MTs is probably the most you need. You might have to build them again anyway(Mts increase your range, btw).

(6) Annoy fellow members of your kd into helping you take a few cities. Point out the fact that mages are very imprtant to kds.

(7) Keep increasing your magic science. This may take patience. Even if you are not a mage elf, you need to do this for archmages. Increase to at least 8, if you can't manage 9 or 10. Keep building up your economy. Make another magic city far away from your other one at the far-side of the core. You needn't strain your magic too much, the kd will(or should) have a few mages, and other races can also do fairly good magic if necessary. So keep it at a max. of three magic cites. Concentrate your magic on whatever side is being attacked.

(8) Help your kd mates out by stg(stone to gold, magic)ing. Start training Archmages once you hit the level 7 magic mark, or are nearing hitting it. Just train MUs(for offensive magic mostly, if you're not a mage you don't need as many since Archmages provide magic defence, but it's still a good idea to have some lying around), Archmages and if necessary to defend someplace, archers then. Increase either your mining to 4(then military) or if you are being attacked, your military as much as you can. Then, finish off with medicine.

(9) Eits(Eye in the sky) all the armies you can, if it is not too costly in MUs and MTs. Burn them to hell if they don't have enough magic defence. Doesn't matter whether they're friendly or not, they deserve it if they haven't much magic defence in their army.

(10) Ok, now for magic. I'm only going to bullshit about the magic that is important. You'd do best to ignore the other magic as you waste a lot of MUs for pretty much nothing.(Unless, you have loads of shamans for example, and some dude comes along with a quarter million Nazguls, you might decide to cast Ownage(however, there would be considerable losses and the highest percentage chance for ownage isn't very high...

Magic is more effective when the magic POWER is up, regardless of the percentage chance. However, you either cast it or don't for spells like Eits.

I'm not sure about max. percentages, sorry, and I'll probably make a few mistakes here and there. I shall go from level 1 to level whatever. + = utility spell, - = combat

(1 +)Happiness- Useful spell. Morale increase your attack slightly(or rather, the loss it decreases it slightly). Also, when taking a city, you can just make all the people happy with this spell with very few MU losses. Useful for those angry orcs.

(1 -)Eye in the Sky - Probably the most used spell in the game. It shows you the number of troops in an army or the number of armies, troops stationed and buildings in a city. Un/fortunately, it does't show the armies in the city. Useful for finding out the power of the enemy.

(2 +)Magic Protection - Handy to stop slightly stronger mages casting magic on friendly armies, as it increases magic defence.

(2 -)Locust - Cancels prep time of attacking armies, very useful when you can't cast those stronger spell and have to wait for reinforcements. It also destroys food in cities if you want to damage them farmers.

(2 -)Crush Walls - Quite useful. Walls provide up to 100% defence for the defender, you can make that 0% and make it a pretty much even battle between the armies.

(3 +)Cure plague - Pretty useless, no one every uses plague, but just in case they do, just use this spell to stop it.

(3 -)Freeze - Stops armies moving about the place, and coming to kill you. Also freezes training time and building, which is very useful if someone is building up a massive army and you can't get there in time to kill them beforehand.

(3 -)Anger - Not great, but orcs' morale is generally low and you might be able to bring it near 10%. I'd rather use my MUs on other spells though.

(4 +)Bless - Used to be overpowered, but now it's not as good, but still ok. Increases defence of city or army.

(4 +)Stone to Gold - Brilliant spell. If you have a lot of stone, cast this spell. However, don't bring your percentage chance high as possible, keep it around 50% to be most cost effective in the long run. You must have warehouses(1 for every 100 building is probably a bit much, but don't bother going over this mark anyway) in ONE city, and cast it one that one city for it to be most useful.

(4-)Rain of Fire - Most satisfying spell to cast(at least, not counting a nearly impossible spell). Burns troops in armies and lumbermills in cities. Nazguls, alas, are resistant to it(they do die, but not as many as should die).

(4 -) Dispel magic - Gets rid of utitlity spells. I'm not really sure how effective this spell is, I never cast it, I'd say it's probably useless.

(5 +) Magic weapons - Not particurarily useful, but if you have 0 military and are in dire need of help, this will increase your attack by 50% for a short time.

(6 +) Invisibility - Pretty useless for the amount of MUs it costs, it makes you city/army invisible for a time. Still, you can sneak a big army somewhere, maybe.

(6 -) Teleport - Teleports the army or city far away(hopefully) Don't bother using this on cities, it hardly ever works for some reason. Only use it if you have no troops anywhere near you and need to get rid of that big army on your doorstep.

That's pretty much it. None of the other spells are really worth the effort. Don't forget, when you read other guides(you should do, instead of this one), Armaggeddon spell has been deleted...

(9 +) Control Time - Moves an army/city forward a few ticks. I doubt it'll be cost effective to use it on a production city, but maybe to get an army somewhere fast or train a few troops then maybe. However, other spells would probably be better.




(v) Human guide

" ' A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.' Words of the future when people from Mantrax land on Fantasia, the closest planet to them, to save themselves for armageddon.(A loop-hole in time shall make this strange magic occur)."

Humans can be deadly fighters, as well as having a good economy.

Advantages
- They have cheap sciences.
- They have up to 10% off buys on the market.
- They can get up to 10% more tax off peasants, the cruel and harsh leader that they are.
- They have balanced troops, which are quite powerful.
- The catapult is very handy if you want just attacking power and only a bit of defence to prevent you from being attacked, hopefully.
- They can make quite a bit of gold with stone to gold from the market, and they can actually even make a fair bit without using stg, though it's much handier to do so(and takes less time)

Disadvantages
- Their troops are costly...
- Catapults have little defence and are easy enough to kill.
- They can mess up if they're unlucky and don't stg properly after using so much money to buy stone, or if they rely on the market to sell their goods back at a profit, it could crash.

(1) Build a city close to a mountain, build mines and homes.

(2) Build another city close to anything you want(forest, lake or mountain) Build corresponding buildings. Increase your mining science to 3, or other if you want to risk it on something else(farming or forestry).

(3) Build an armoury about a day before OOP, and then start training troops. You can train about half swordsmen and half archers to begin with(for the first two days, then switch to knights), and throw in a few MUs.

(4) Increase whatever science you increased first(best would probably be mining). Build another city for income.

(5) Start training catapults along with knights and MUs when you're confident you won't need as much defence.

(6) When you've increased your science to 7+, switch to magic until level 4 so you can stg(or you can annoy that mage you helped earlier). Have 500 warehouses in one city and cast stg on it. Buy stone first. The best way to buy stone is probably to buy it in bits. The % you get off on the market is random, so you could get a 1% or a 10% bonus off, and if you get a 1% bonus it'll be hardly worth your while(unless, of course, the stone is cheap on the market), so you can even it out by buying it in bits. However, you might like to take the risk and hope for the best by buying it in one large chunk. You should stg a lot, if the market isn't too high(above 0.95), and makes loads of gold.

(7) You can continue on with your magic until 5, or switch over to military and get up to level 8 or so. Then just buy away at the remaining sciences. Keep training troops, stging, and hammer away at your opponent. Enjoy!





(vi) Troll guide

"It is not beauty that matters, but brains. No wait sorry, it's brawn that matters."

Advantages
- Have cheap and powerful troops.(Hobgoblins are brilliant for starting off 3/3 for only 160, which can be halved easily)
- Get a 10% bonus to tree production.
- Berserkers are cheap and powerful, and can kill masses of enemies.
- They have the cheapest MUs, and they have 1 attack.

Disadvantages
- Have very expensive sciences.
- Have very expensive sciences.
- I forgot to mention that Berserkers can kill loads of your own troops too.

(1) Build a city close to the mountains, build mines and homes.

(2) Build a city again next to mountains, or if you want to risk the tree market, next to a forest(they can, if you're lucky, and only really in the beginning will they fetch such high prices(they can stay at 4 gold until the end of the era though) can get 5 gold(or more!) a tree(after dwarfs have sold theirs, they are annoying, I know) which means 27.5 gold per lumbers, and then include science. But this isn't too likely, and it'll more likely stray around the 3.5 mark.

(3) Increase either mining or lumber science to 3.

(4) Build an armoury about a day before OOP. Train loads of hobgoblins and throw in a few MUs.

(5) Try and get a few cities straight OOP.

(6) Start training warlords and MUs about half a week in.

(7) Increase you science to maybe 7 over the era if you're lucky. Then magic 3, maybe 4 if you can get it, then get as much military as possible, and finish off with medicine.

(8) You can throw in berserkers with the warlords and MUs to train, but I highly advise to keep them in seperate, small armies, maybe 200 berserkers(with 100 MUs or so) each and fire them at enemies. But just put the majority of your gold into warlords. Or, if you really want to, join a kd you hate, train tons of berserkers, and shove them in with merges and chuckle as the evil armies are oblitering by incoming armies.





(vii) Orc guide

"The orc population of VU has risen considerably in the last few eras..."

Advantages
- The strongest troop in the game, the Nazgul, which is also hardy enough against ROF. They can also ignore walls, but they have to be on their own, and so, the ability is pretty useless.
- Their armies are cheap(upkeep) due to their power in strength, towards numbers.
- Gaia require no peasants to make, instead they're made of something else...

Disadvantages
- Require Upkeep even in allied cities.
- Their troops are sort of expensive for their power, even if strong, and can be a bit weak at the start.
- Have fairly low points for their troops.
- Look ugly.



(1) Build a mining city...

(2) Build another mining city...

(3) Build armoury... Train a single nazgul or two, train hammerthrowers(gaia if you're desperate for peasants) and MUs.

(4) Increase mining science to 2 or 3(You know, always increase a science once you settle your first colony, it costs nothing. You may as well get 2 and 3 most of the time as well straight away)

(5) Train only Ogres, MUs and Nazguls about a half-week to a week in. Nazguls are handy to surprise with as scouts.

(6) Increase mining science to 7+, magic to 3 or 4, mil to 8+, then medicine.

(7) Kill everyone.





(viii) Dwarf guide

"Dwarfs are greedy creatures, and it is best not to stand in the way of their gold. Then again, they can train more troops with that gold."

Advantages
- Don't need any tree to build, but need double the stone.
- And so they get gold from their tree at the start.
- Cavemasters increase mining.
- Troops score a lot of points.

Disadvantages
- They need double the stone to build buildings, as well as 50% more gold.
- Their troops are expensive and weak.
- They have the most expensive MU.
- Their army upkeep costs a lot, at least by the time they have decent armies.


(1) Build a mining city(whatever about any of the other races, only get mining science with dwarfs).

(2) Build another mining city.

(3) Do NOT train cavemasters yet. Don't bother with them until 90k land+. Build your armoury. Train hammerthrowers and MUs. Get mining sciences 3-4.

(4) Train about half and half hammerthrowers/axemen from a week in until you get a good enough economy, and then train axemen and MUs only. Train the cavemaster once you get a lot of land.

(5) Increase mining science to 8+, then magic to 4, then military for as much as you can, the medicine and other sciences.

(6) Just mine a lot.





(ix) A few last tips

"Everyone dies. It's just a matter of minimising those deaths."

You really just concentrate on mining science and ignore other ones, despite what I told you. However, if you're feeling adventurous, go for something else. Elves should get magic though, and quite a few halflings get farming science.

Burn whatever buildings you can if you have to, don't be afraid to do this.

NAP carefully, you need allies closeby.

The market is unstable and if you wish to make money from this, be aware that it could take some time.