Walkthrough

Tutorial / Home City

The tutorial and Home City sections of Black and White 2 are pretty easy, as you might expect, seeing as they serve simply as an introduction to the game. You'll learn how to move your view, manipulate the environment, move villagers around, etc.

The one difficult aspect of the tutorial level involves the quest to unblock the waterfall for the villagers. You can't pick up the rocks at the end of the waterfall, so you'll have to use the rocks that are supplied to you and throw them across the gap towards the blockage rocks until you manage to hit it. If you turned your mouse sensitivity up, this is going to be a frustrating process of figuring out precisely how fast to move your mouse before letting the rocks go; if you throw too hard, they might bounce off the mountain and crush a few villagers in the nearby town for Evil points. If you're looking to have an easier time of this puzzle, you can adjust your mouse sensitivity to make it easier to get just the right speed on your throw, or just skip it entirely by clicking on the gold scroll on the mountain.

Also, when you get to the Aztec invasion, if you're having trouble dropping your villagers into the portals, try grabbing them, then holding down the action button over the center of the portal. Just clicking the button doesn't seem to always force them to fall. Shortly after you get through saving the villagers (and killing a few of the Aztecs), then you should be well on your way to reaching the first land, where your adventure really begins.

Land Three: Starting Out

Technically, the tutorial and Aztec invasion levels count as lands one and two of the game, brief though they are, so the first real land of the game is land three.

Getting Started

Well, you've luckily managed to get all of your villagers up and away from their razed hometown, and you've just happened to stumble across an abandoned settlement that's perfect for setting up a new civlization! What luck!

The bulk of the early portions of this age are simply a continuation of the tutorial level, as your assistants will laboriously go over every little detail of the game. And there are a lot of details. You'll first learn about creating disciples, which involves picking up villagers and placing them atop certain parts of the map to task them, such as by making farmers by dropping villagers on the field, etc. It's best to assign villagers to certain tasks to fulfill whatever needs your village currently is lacking in; you'll learn all about this as the little tutorial goes on.

Housing

There's nothing too complicated about housing; just lay down as much as you can to house your booming population.

After getting your villagers fed, you'll need to start building them some housing. You'll be asked to place down 12 villa foundations. You can place these anywhere you wish, but keep in mind that you might want to eventually lay down some roads extending from the center of town, so try to leave at least a little space between every couple of houses to ensure that your villagers have a place to walk. You'll also be taught about Godbuilding, where you can grab a tree or ore and hold down the action button over the building to speed up the resource requirements of the building. You lose a bit of the value of the item that you're expending in this manner, but it's generally worth it if you need a building in a hurry.

Moving On...

Anyway, the rest of these initial tasks are fairly easy, as expected. You'll need to increase your village's population by making breeders, build a temple, learn about the Toolbar, and so on and so forth. Everything will proceed at a pretty slow pace during all of this, and indeed one of the tasks you're given (to increase your population by 50 villagers) can be slowed down simply by not making any more breeders, should you want to take your time and get used to things.

Attack!

Eventually, you'll be told to make an Armory and start constructing platoons of troops. (You might also want to check your Storehouse around this point and see if it's getting full of certain materials; if it is, build another one to hold the overflow.) Keep in mind that Armories have a negative effect on the happiness of people who live in nearby houses; if you intend to become a Good god (Good God Yall!), try building the Armory at the end of a road, away from your villas.

To build a platoon, just click the flag on top of the Armory and place it within your area of influence; some of the population will automatically run over and join the army. It's important to leave the platoon's tent in place until it's done forming; clicking on it before the platoon is ready will cause you to create a smaller platoon.

When you have a full platoon built, you'll be able to easily capture one of the nearby towns by dint of your superior forces. It won't have much of an infrastructure in place, so you'll need to build a storehouse, roads, etc. After you've expanded a bit, you'll need to start playing a bit of a more free-form adventure. Your choice between good and evil is up to you!