How To Play Blight of the Immortals
This tumblr isn’t usually used for game related stuff, but nobody wrote a decent guide as far as I can tell. So here’s my very quick intro.
First first thing: DO NOT ENTER THE GAME’S PASSWORD AS YOUR NAME. (Not sure why, but it’s happened twice.)
Some general notes. BotI is a co-op, slow-form real-time strategy game. What that means is, the game plays out slowly over several actual days. Movement, building, etc. takes hours. Three reasons this is good: 1. you can think through your actions, 2. if you have only a few minutes a day, you can still play. The game doesn’t ask for much time commitment. (You will have to spend 20-30 minutes to familiarize with the game, but after that you only need a few minutes here and there) 3. The time element adds a lot of suspense.
Assuming you just started your first game of BotI:
1. Do NOT mindlessly collect taxes. There will be a blinking orange text at the top, beneath the coins. You should collect taxes after you conquer or bribe your first cities, if possible.
2. Have a look at the map. You’ll see there are cities and unit cards. Some of these are yours, as indicated by color. White cards are independent, hostile units which don’t move. They are just guarding their cities. You either fight them or bribe them. Black unit cards are zombies. They move and attack. You will have to defend yourself against them and then go on the offensive. The game is won when there are no more black cards. Cities and units are upgraded/built/reinforced with certain colored currencies visible in each city. The coins in the city represent how upgraded the market in that city is, which represents how many coins you will get at tax time. The grey walls around cities reflect how fortified they are.
3. Click a city. For each city you have 4 potential options, depending on resources and the last action you took. You can upgrade the market (gives you more coins at tax time), upgrade fortifications (gives your units a defense bonus at that city), recruit a new army, or reinforce an army (which sends units to an already existing army, is cheaper, and usually the better choice). In the very beginning, it’s wise to upgrade markets, fortifications, and reinforce armies — not necessarily in that order, though. Read about combat below to help you decide what to upgrade.
4. Understanding combat. Each unit’s attack = base strength + d6 roll per level + fortification. The top number on the unit card is its base strength. If it is in a city with fortifications, that’s displayed below with an addition symbol. Each unit also has a level, which is visible when that unit is selected, down on the bottom panel. Units fight whenever they meet at a city or on the road. The unit with the higher attack wins, but takes losses equal to the loser’s attack. (i.e. simply subtract the loser’s number from the winner’s.)
5. Trading and bribing. Trading coins with other players and bribing independents use up your 4 daily trades. You should find out which players can use which coins, either by asking them or looking at their cities. To send coins to a player, hit “new” at the top left, then hit the “Trade Coins” in orange text at the bottom left of the panel that appears. To bribe white/independent units, click on their card. At the top of the unit panel on the bottom of the screen, orange text will say “offer them coins”. If you have the coins and trades to do so, this can be a good choice.
6. Movement. Click on a unit. A “move” button appears next to it. Now you may select a town to move to. This will take a few hours.
Some other notes:
You can tell a lot just by looking at a city. If there are grey arrows around it, the fortifications are being upgraded. If there is a grey coin at the top of the coin stack, the market is being upgraded. If there is a unit face beneath the city, you can make/reinforce units from that city.
Units have special abilities, like ranged magical attacks. The range of special abilities is visible as a RED circle when you select that unit’s card. You can also read these from the unit’s card. Don’t forget to use your magic attacks.
When going into combat, pay attention to if it’s going to be decided by dice roll. You can’t always avoid that, but you may as well, if it’s possible.
What to buy and when (quoted from smellyterror.blogspot):
Very loosely: build as much economy as you can survive, and as little defence as you can survive. Spend the rest on units.
Judging what you can survive is the tricky part. Also, if you’re trying to win, you’ll want enough units to get a bit of a lead in the zombie-killing department - but you’re still going to need enough economy to sustain you in the long term.
Often, especially in the beginning, the best option for fighting zombies is to take the initial attacks in your defences, wipe the slobber off your walls, then counter-attack. You’ll need to plan ahead, though, because defences take a long time to build, but you can’t take them with you when the zombies go somewhere else. Work out where you’re likely to be doing some heavy fighting, and get defences down early.
Note that a level of markets adds an average of 2 coins per day. To get the last level, level 4, costs 10 coins. So that will take you 5 days just to make your money back. It’s often more cost effective to add a level of reinforcements so you can capture that 2-market town down the road. Not that you should avoid getting the level 4 markets, just consider whether you have a better alternative. A good example is bribing Dwarf-towns.