Walkough - Orc

Part 5 - Combat

You should now be on the map screen, The main window should have your castle just below the center of the screen. Because we're playing Orc, the castle is a wooden fortress. Each race has a different castle. When you leave a castle, you will always appear just outside of it on the map screen.

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Note that there are various other things around. On the screenshot above, I am mousing over an item near my castle. The item is 'Leather Gloves' and is a level 1 treasure. The level of the treasure affects the amount and quality of its guardians, and higher level treasures are more powerful. See the treasure section of the hero actions section for details.

Note the circular mini-map in the top right of the screen. The squares shown on that are castles; green are yours, aqua are allied, yellow are neutral and red is non-allied PCs. The triangles are mines (which we'll discuss later) and any small dots you see are heroes. There are no heroes shown on the mini-map of the screenshot.

Below the mini-map is the menu (with the same 5 buttons as found on the first tab of the Castle information window) and shortcut bars. The bar on the left (which is empty in the screenshot) shows all heroes you currently have moving on the map. If you click on a hero there the view moves to the location of the hero. The right bar shows your castles. Currently we have only one castle, and you'll notice that it looks much like the image in the map window. If you occupy castles of a different race it will be easy to tell them apart. If not, mousing over a castle on the bar gives you some information on it, such as its name. The same is true for mousing over heroes on the hero bar.

At the bottom is the information pane. If you click on a hero, you will get information on the troops that hero has. If you select a castle, the information switches to discuss that castle. Currently is the default view, which shows the same information as the first tab of the information window in the castle view. Most importantly, your Action Points can be found here. If you want to get back to showing this information, just click in this area.

Now it's time to get on what we came out here to do; attack a level 1 mob. There is none immediately near the castle, so the best way to find one is to use the game's excellent Search window. To open this, click on the circle just to the left of the mini-map.

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The search window will show you information on creatures, items and locations on the map. Only ones relatively close to your currently viewed location are shown. The tabs along the top of the window allow you to specify what you are looking for, but since the window always starts on the NPC tab we don't need to change.

Note that window shows NPCs of all levels. It turns out there is a level 1 NPC close (under our castle, actually) but if there wasn't we could either page along using the 'Next' button, or change the 'Select type' drop-down menu to make the window show only level 1 NPCs.

I'm going to attack that Imp. Clicking on the Move button would center the screen on the creature, but we don't need to do that. The 'Save COO' button saves the co-ordinates in our save list, but this doesn't help much with creatures. Click on the 'View' button to see the details of the NPC grouping.

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We now see that there are 11 imps and 5 spearmen in the grouping. These will probably be sub-divided into several smaller groupings. The strength of the force is 1923, and we have quite a bit more troops than that. Hence we can go ahead and attack by clicking the 'Attack' button.

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We now get the Go to Battle window, which allows us to select a hero to send to the battle. Make sure that you select the hero with troops, not the Castellan. You can do this using the drop-down list on the top right of the window. Our force strength is quite high (9946) so we should have no problem beating the enemy.

Because the enemy is weak, I decided to split my Cyclops up into seperate units. This should mean less wasted damage. I do this by clicking on the Arrange Units button, which takes me to the familiar Units window. I break the Cyclops into four groups of 1, and place them in the rear (bottom) row.

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Once I click on Close, the Go to Battle window appears again. In this case my combat hero is still selected, but it's always best to be sure. The drop-down list can change after arranging units, and it will default to the top value when a hero returns to your castle. At any rate we are now ready, so click 'Attack'. Once you have done so make sure to close the Search window.

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You will see the combat hero leave the castle on their mount and move to where the creature is. In this case, this means to the southern side of the castle. When the hero arrives, a window pops up asking whether you want to command the battle. There is a timer shown on the 'Okay' button; if you don't decide soon the battle will start without you. When you are fairly sure that you will win without taking losses it is probably not worthwhile to join every battle, but early on your command can make the different between losing troops or not.

Clicking on 'Okay' briefly shows a loading bar and then you enter the battle screen. Note that as this is written, a bug exists that means you may occasionally not be able to join a battle. This bug should be fixed before beta testing is complete.

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The battle screen shows both forces, with the attackers on the left and the defenders on the right. My four cyclops are in the rear row, behind the three groups of imps. Note that the units are shown as icons in the upper bar. Just above that is a blue timer bar and the gold timer in the center of the upper portion of the window. When the timer runs out, the battle will commence. You will also see the attacking hero on the bottom left, and the defending hero (if any) on the bottom right. NPCs never have heroes, which gives you and advantage. Your heroes abilities boost your troops during the battle. Along the center of the bottom are five spheres, which are used for casting hero spells. Our heroes don't know any spells yet, so they are black.

You can use the preparation time to give orders to your troops. Click on the unit you want to command (or their icon at the top) and you will see four choices appear. These choices are identical to the buttons on the bottom left of the window. I am commanding my imps to 'Stand by', which means they will stay where they are. I'm planning to have my missile troops (the Cyclops) do as much damage as possible before the enemy get close enough to attack. I do this for each of the imps, in turn. Their icons along the top have the writing change from 'Atta', which is the default, to 'Stand'.

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When the combat starts, troops start to act. Each unit acts in order of its speed, as modified by the commanding hero's speed. The Cyclops attack first, and damage the enemy troops even before they have moved. My imps would advance before the opponent's imps because of the boost from the hero, but they have been ordered to stay and do so. The enemy imps and spearmen advance. Once each unit has acted (or stayed) the turn is over and it starts again.

Because the enemy are weak, my Cyclops kill them all before they can get close enough to do damage. If they were getting to close I would press the 'Attack' button on the bottom left. This gives all troops the order to attack, meaning all of my imps would move forwards to join the battle on their turn. This is quicker than selecting each imp group in turn and ordering it to attack.

When the last of the enemy is dead, the combat window closes and the Aftermath window opens. This gives a summary of the battle, showing the losses for both sides (we didn't lost any troops) and the rewards gained. In this case we gained 100 gold (as always from a level 1 NPC) and 3 sulfur. The hero gained 48xp. Once the hero returns to the castle, our fame will be increased.

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When you close the window you return to map view. Note that we have now completed some tasks, so be sure to get your rewards. Make sure that the rewards won't take you over your storage limit though - if it build another building or train some troops.

Next - Daily Tasks

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