The Five Pillars

Part 1 the basics
First you have to look at how the game operates
there is but one way to die, and several ways of doing it
YOU DIE WHEN YOUR FORTS = 0
so lets now look at how those forts can be lost
you lose forts when attacked with or more than 3001 of the attackers units left surviving the battle
the spell burn land (BL) can also take forts
the spells Eternal Winter (EW), Flood (FL), Swamp Plague (SP) can take forts if you use a turn while they are on you
if you have 0 gold and your gold income is negative you will lose forts

now lets look at the mechanisms that allow forts to be taken rapidly
The counter/protection system
When you are attacked you see this
attacker (#123) [Lookup] [Battles] attacked you. You lost 1,316,669 Points (10%)
this means that attacker #123 attacked you you lost 1.3mil points and that was 10% of your net power
now when you get attacked multiple times the percentages add up to 30% you get protection and you see
You are in protection
below your attacks
Note: percentages are rounded up so 29.76% shows as 30% but you will not be in protection
once you enter protection the only people who can attack you are those who have a counter
Whenever you attack another mage you give them a counter, this means they have a automatic ability to attack you back within 24hrs regardless of power difference or protection status, once that 24hr limit expires things go back to normal.
However they can only counter you for the same net points/power (NP) or for the same amount of land they lost (land taken and destroyed is added together for both cases).
now it is the greater of the two (land/NP) that is the defining limit.

any spell that causes you to lose NP such as BL,SP,EW,FL will also give a counter for the NP lost which although small is also a counter, other spells may also give a counter but the chances can be random since they take no NP.
Note: no experience with sandstorm but since items give NP i assume it would be in the first case of definate counter.
Also while any spell is on you, you get an automatic counter while that spell still affects your kingdom
Most items used offensivly (ie. as not part of a battle) have much the same results as spells, some give definate counters while others are random.

so thats how the game works lets see how we can put this into practice killing.

To start with it helps to be able to coordinate, this is why so many guilds pester you to get on IRC, as it offers an easy way to communicate as a whole guild.

Now the usual and most common BBQ's (attempts to hurt bad or kill) usually go something like this......
first you spell them up with all spells so its hard for them to move and ruin your BBQ
then you get 1-3 mages to hit the target till they are fully in protection trying do do as much damage to their army as possible
then those with counters hit, you try and maximise counter usage so those with small counters power up high and try to do the most damage they can
the aim is reduce the enemies army to 0 units while still having counters left to use
once the enemies army is 0'd you attack with 3001 (though 3030 works still too) units, as this is the lowest number of units that will take a fort and thus will do the least damage per fort thus maximising your counter potential.
didn't get all the forts?
thats ok now comes the part where your red mages cast BL on the target, only use red mages since other colours BL's just don't do the damage.


stay tuned more to follow

now usually its not as easy killing as i stated above since there are plenty of factors involved such as the fact that most tims you won't enough counters to clear or kill and barriers make it hard to BL. In this case you must continually wear down your target, or hope you get lucky with spells or that they attack you back.

Now lets look at the offensive items and spells

Eternal Winter:
This is my favoured killing spell its effects are-
a portion of building are totally destroyed
a portion of buildings are converted to glaciers
you lose a fort or several
the more forts you have the more likely you are to lose more forts,
this spell is very effective at really messing mages. off colour mana is particularly vulnerable and most mages don't keep it very high thus losing 50-100 of these nodes can kill hero's, make you lose units and cause your barriers to fall. just one bad turn is enough to make life difficult for you.

Flood:
This is another nice killing spell, effects are-
Takes gold and pop
Destroys buildings
rather good at taking forts,
This is a quality spell with nice killing potential, the effects on buildings are not as severe as EW but but takes forts and is more effective at taking forts when the target is under 10 forts. the gold and pop destruction can leave a mage messed up though unless the target is low in gold the pop side is most effective as losing pop lowers your gold income and many pop using units are undisbandable, especially the major ones.

Swamp Plague:
This spell chews up population
and can take the odd fort
pop killing effects of this spell can leave mages in real trouble.

Vegetational Decay:
nasty spell effects-
takes a small amount of pop and gold
destroys barriers

Frightening howls:
halves pop/gold incomes

Burn Land:
This spell has a instant effect and destroys buildings, including forts
but is really only useful when cast by a red mage

Sandstorm:
this spell also has an instant effect which is to destroy the targets items

Return of the magpies:
anothe instant effect spell that steals gold from the target

Eagle Eyes:
this spell is like spying on your enemy it reveals information about you enemy though you will need to do several to get a complete picture

Chronomatic Disturbance:
This spell will remove turns off your opponent
but watchout it may take some of yours too

Items:

mana crystals
Yes mana crystals also work on your enemy
Each crystal takes ~25k mana of its respective colour

Cage of rats
This item removes about 50k population from your enemy

Temporal vortex
removes turns from your enemy only

Lockpick
Destroys items of your enemy though often will do nothing

inventory list
item version of eagle eyes

Fools stone
Removes gold off an enemy
always takes at least 1mil gold, if it shows under 1mil your enemy is out of gold

Spectral shadow
item version of burn land
also best used by reds

Thank you for the writeup DarkLord. Its been incredibly helpful to me in refreshing my memory of tactics used in Archmage and finding what works in T5P. I've got a couple questions though.

I caught one of my enemies flat footed today on Normal and blasted away the last of his Forts today through Burn Land. The mage is thoroughly dead. I just noticed that my Main Page does not list me as credited for having the kill. Does klling a mage with Burn land not register as a kill? Is this a known bug or something?

Do you have any advice in approaching an enemy kingdom who always maintains maximum Barriers? Using a large number of Mana Crystals would not appear to be a successful option as those items must get through the barriers to begin with, then were they to do so and I manage to deplete the enemies mana they may still be in positive mana gen unless they are heavily oversummoned on units. What strategies can I employ to encourage popping someones barriers? Apply steadily increasing pressure in attacks from a greater and greater net power and hope my target inflates as well and then aim to gut him from below or something?

Aside from watching an enemies net power for changes as an indicator of when they are actively using turns I am having problems getting much benefit out of spelling up an enemy kingdom. Most of my experience with this so far has simply resulted in my target stockpiling turns for longer than usual then simply dispelling and going about their normal business when ready. What are the formulas for determining success or failure on a dispel? The few occasions I've been counter-spelled I found getting rid of the enemies enchantment was pretty cheap to do.

Thanks for the help. =)

- if you killed a newbie (bronze star) it's probable you won't be credited with the kill. If the killed mage was gold or silver star and you still didn't get the credit then it's a bug .

- sabotage attacks, Vegetational decay and burn land destroy barriers. You can use any of that to lower someone's bars. The safest way to kill a mage with a spell is to spell him while he's running. It's possible he won't notice in time and take many turns at once (those who like to manacharge 20+ turns in a row ) and boom-he's probably dead or as good as dead. The other possibility is to thoroughly attack him (most often using many counters he gave you) and spell him up when he's on low land and burn-landed. He may not have enough mana to dispell all dangerous enchanments that you put on him.

-dispelling success is somewhat random. But more often than not the target will dispell if he/she uses enough mana for that. Only occasionally the dispell will fail if enough mana is used.

"Only occasionally the dispell will fail if enough mana is used."

Well that explains something. My calculations weren't off, I happened upon an occasion.

Noone mentioned that even if you use enough mana, sometimes the dispel doesn't work.

Looks like someones been using your guide darklord, i just died on the normal server... I dont know how, apparently i got hit about 5 times doay and someone cast over 5 burn lands on me... Not HAVOC yet is it I though we had 11 more days?

Edit: really strange considering I did have 40+ forts

You did with 5 hits and 5 Burn Lands and 40 forts? You are sure that you weren´t spelled and moved under one of the spells? or ran out of money and lost forts? or or or

Which kingdom was yours? Early on there was a kingdom that hit me hard / frequently enough for me to take note whenever I would see them at a later date on the ranking. I conveniently happened to see them after they had been hit heavily by what appeared to be very many counters and were down to 3 forts remaining. Exactly 5 Burn Lands later I avenged two or three of my Heroes. Hahah.

Darchangel was my kingdom (white)

And no, I didnt violate any ROEs or something like that. No, it wasnt because of enchantment, as i died when offline, and yes, before i logged off, i had at least 35 forts still standing. When i logged back in 24 hours later, i was dead... oh well, wouldnt have made it through HAVOC anyway, started too late.

Never know. There's got to be too many kingdoms left behind for them all to die. =)