Winning Through Combat

Creating an Army

If you're an Evil god, then you're going to want to take over enemy cities through force. That means that you'll need to make large armies, which in turn require two things: a city with a large population (since your platoons are derived from the unDiscipled male population of a city), and a lot of food. Soldiers don't need to visit a storehouse to eat, but will require larger amounts of food than a normal civilian does, and they actually require twice their normal rations when they move.

Actually building the infrastructure for a large army is going to be easier if you're playing as an Evil god, of course, since you won't have to worry about spending resources on satisfying your citizenry's need for happiness, free time, or other such trifle. Just build large fields on the most fertile land you can find, build granaries between them and the storehouses, and you should be rolling in food quickly enough. Food is actually easy to make if you're willing to do it manually; just find the largest field you have in your possession, pour a Water miracle on, and collect the resulting grain and plop it in a storehouse. Although this is quick, it does bypass the granary which can sometimes double the yield of a field if it's filled with refiners. Also, don't forget that you're going to need plenty of storehouses to hold the food that you're going to be creating.

The bigger the army, the more quickly you'll capture cities, but you'll require more food to feed them.

So far as population goes, you can get up to around half of a city's population into the army, so you'll want to be sure that your town is making babies as quickly as possible. This obviously entails converting as many spare citizens into breeders as possible, but you can also boost your population growth by unlocking and building Nurseries and Fertility Statues near your suburbs. The faster your population grows, the more quickly you'll be able to build and replenish your armies. For the first few lands, though, you won't have to worry about getting a huge early boost to your population; you can just adopt a defensive tack and wait for your population to swell naturally before fielding your massive army and sweeping out for the win.

Also note that you can't explicitly focus on food if you want to build an army; all of your platoons will require a certain amount of ore, as well, so you'll have to have a number of mineworkers if you want to actually build your platoons.

Healing and Replenishment

Any army that's used in combat will take damage; that's just a fact of life. Each platoon in your army actually has a couple different methods of calculating its health. Each soldier in a platoon has an individual health meter, which determines how close he or she is to death. The platoon as a whole will also keep track of how many soldiers in it have died.

The easiest way to replenish the health of individual soldiers is to cast a Heal Miracle on them when they're inside an influence bubble of yours; this will usually heal each individual soldier to full health, but will also cause you to earn Good points for each soldier that you heal. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, as you'll be capable of earning more evil points in the long run with a healthy group of soldiers. If you buy the Heal spell for your creature, it will also be capable of casting Heal spells, but it typically focuses on its own health instead of that of your troops. They may also heal naturally over time if you keep them out of battle; we're not too sure on this, though.

No matter how often you heal a platoon, though, it's going to lose a few soldiers during battle. You can check and see how many soldiers a platoon is missing by moving your mouse over it and leaving it there for a second. Losses in a platoon are permanent - soldiers won't magically come back to life or join up from a town - but you can replace the losses by essentially creating Soldier Disciples. Pick up a bunch of civilians with your Multi Hand Pickup, making sure that the last civilian you pick up is an adult male (it can't be a woman, or a child, or an old man, in other words), then hold down the button to drop all of the civilians onto the platoon. If it said that they were going to turn into Soldiers, then they'll instantly join the platoon as new soldiers.

You can usually exceed the maximum size of the platoon in this manner. If a platoon has 36/40 soldiers alive, and you pick up 20 civilians and drop them all in, then you should wind up with 56 soldiers in a platoon that originally had 40 units. There's no particular benefit or drawback to this, although with certain special units, like the Undead Legion or the Seven Samurai, you can make super-huge platoons of super-powerful units.

Attacking Cities

Most cities typically have two lines of defense: walls, and platoons. Thankfully (or not thankfully, depending on your point of view), the enemy AI in Black & White 2 is somewhat less than intelligent, making for some simple strategies.

Dealing with platoons is fairly easy, and if you're in an offensive mode, then you'll have to get used to taking them out. Most platoons you encounter will be best dealt with via platoons of your own, or, if you're using your creature as an offensive weapon, by sending your creature in and taking them out. Note that your creature is fairly vulnerable to archer fire, though, and be especially careful not to use your creature and your platoons to attack the same targets. Your creature's attacks are powerful, but they're not targeted, so they'll hit your own platoons if they happen to be fighting near its feet.

Enemy creatures are best taken out with archers, or your own creature if it happens to be a Soldier.

Anyway, the typical army organization involves a large group of swordsmen, with a group of archers linked to the swordsmen. (You can link a platoon to another platoon by picking up its flag, then clicking and holding on the platoon you wish to link it to.) The swordsmen are going to be your shock troopers; you send them towards enemy platoons first, and the linked archers will follow closely behind and open fire when they're within range. While your swordsmen will take a bit of damage, your archers should be able to help them finish off their opponents, and since linked platoons follow behind their leader, they won't get into close quarters combat which they're unsuited for.

Walls are another matter. In order to destroy walls, you'll need to either use a catapult, or your creature. Any creature can destroy a wall, but a creature that's been working out or has the Advanced Soldier upgrade will be better at it, and will be better able to resist damage from the archers on the wall. Catapults have the advantage of firing from long distance, but they are vulnerable to enemy platoons if they should happen to leave through their gates and come after you.

In the end, combat in Black & White 2 isn't especially tactical or difficult; it's mostly a matter of building up your infrastructure to the point where you can sustain an army big enough to kick your opponent's butt. If you can do that, then you should be able to win fairly handily in most battles. Even when you do lose a battle, your usual penalty is to just wait a little while until your Breeders build your population back up; the enemy AI here rarely goes for the kill in a particularly severe manner.