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Index
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Ballerium Game Guide
Introduction Welcome Welcome to Ballerium. A world full of politics and conflict. You are an Avatar, the spirit of a great, now departed hero. In ages past, newly formed Avatars usually merged into existing Avatars, creating Great Avatars. However, in current times, there is a struggle for control of Ballerium. Avatars now prefer to roam the world, gathering followers and forming alliances, seeking to rule all of Ballerium. Ballerium can be a very dangerous land. The world is under siege by competing Avatars and also by monsters that emanate from Shard Rifts, portals from another world. You must be alert for these dangers, and guide your followers safely. With this in mind, we suggest you take the time to read through this section in order to familiarize yourself with Ballerium.
If you run into trouble, lose many troops, and feel like it'll be tough for you to continue, you have an option to reset your army. Once you find your army within the protection of the city walls and towers, you should spend sometime getting familiar with the buildings. Select your hero and walk around, try right-clicking on the buildings, some you'll be able to interact with. InterfaceA wise Avatar will use every tool available to them in order to become one of the strongest in Ballerium. The game's interface can be overwhelming to new Avatars, with all the buttons and information. But, unless you take the time to learn these, your experience in Ballerium will be much harder. A whole section has been written to teach you to use the interface to its fullest extent. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the game interface before you first enter Ballerium. Keyboard ShortcutsThings can get very hectic when you come under assault. If you take the time to learn these keyboard shortcuts, your time in Ballerium will go much smoother. Sanctuary Shard RiftsRifts look like black craters with a red center on the minimap. You won't know what kind until you center your view over it. Be careful when passing Rifts, sometimes there are large hoards of monsters guarding the Rift. At this early stage of your army's development, I suggest avoiding these all together. After you've reached a city and bought more units, plus mined some for cash, then you might return to the Rift and try your luck against the dreaded Keii or D'renn.
Monuments You gain control of a Monument by selecting a unit and then right-clicking on the Monument. The unit will move next to the statue and a countdown timer will begin. If the unit stays close enough to the monument and doesn't die during the countdown, the Monument will become yours. Keep in mind, if another Avatar already controls that Monument, you'll have to choose to declare war on them in order to attempt to take control. That Avatar, and all the cities they patron, will become hostile to you. Not to mention the possibility that their clan will go to war with you in the near future.
Sun PhasesThe different sun colors of Ballerium control how fast your units replenish their sunpower (mana) reserves. During a race's good sun, the sunpower replenishes the quickest, a bad sun, no sunpower is replenished. The sun color changes about every twenty minutes. A good leader will always be aware of the color that is approaching and alter their tactics accordingly. Take into consideration when building an army what effect the sun color will have on your forces. Resetting your ArmyTo accomplish this, you must not have any units left under your command. Kill or sacrifice all your troops and once the hero is dead, dismiss him. Exit the game, then login and a new hero and starting army will be presented to you. Cities - more to come Interactive Buildings Cities are the bases of operations in Ballerium. It is from here that you assemble an army, trade for cash and resources and wage great battles for control of the world. All Avatars can buy troops at the Parnasium and Workshop, trade at the Marketplace, purchase weapons at the Smithium, acquire skills at the Academium. But, only Patron Avatars can interact with the City Hall, others can only view the information available there. Cities are the main source of power in Ballerium. They provide money, Karma (increases your Control Capacity), clan power on the Ladder Map, and are a safe haven from hostile forces of the world. City Hall There are many activities a Patron can do within the City Hall. All of them are vital for the defense and success of your city. Along the top of the interface are various tabs to navigate the inner workings of the city. 
General Tab The General tab gives a quick overview of how your city is doing. You can observe current quantities of supplies, and by looking at the sliders, how much is needed to improve the city. This is the tab where you'd accept patronship, and also level-up the city's population. Each sub-window within the General tab conveys information regarding the health of the city. The Knowledge window lets you know how intelligent the population of the city is. 1000 is the maximum level attainable. Enlightenment is the resource needed to increase this attribute. 1200 is current quantity on hand within the city. The slider displays a graphical representation of how much of the resource is needed to increase the attribute one level. Once the slider reaches the far right, the city will upgrade this attribute on the next pulse/laborday. Enlightenment is an arbitrary resource, not collectable by Avatars within the world of Ballerium. A happy city will produce it steadily every pulse. The Industry window displays how far along the city is with constructing all the towers and buildings. Once a city reaches 700 in Industry, all buildings (non-houses) have been built. Sell constrix to the Marketplace in order to speed up construction of a damaged city. The Luxury window informs you of the riches your population is enjoying. Selling tofi to the Marketplace will help your citizens gain the maximum riches of 1000. The Patron window lets you know if who the patron is. If no player is the patron, it will say "Independant". If that's the case, feel free to attack the city, you won't be making any player enemies that way. The Militia window lets you keep tabs on how the city is doing regarding recruiting milita for defense. The maximum level for city milita is 2000, which equates to approximately 200 units. Selling metallix to the Marketplace will hurry up the recruitment process. A city can have 5 levels of max population; Hamlet (2000), Village (4000), Town (6000), City (8000), and Metropolis (10000). Selling lots of food to the Marketplace will raise the population up to the level limit. You can see the type of city/population limit, by looking next to the name of the city on the top of the interface. This one happens to be a village. Therefore, the max population is 4000. You can find out how to raise a city's level, further down in the guide. The Tax Due window is a very important one in Ballerium. Firstly, it shows how much tax will be added to the patron account at the next labor day. Secondly, it displays the labor day timer. This is important because the city performs many functions on the labor day. One of which is buy and sell on the world market, which can enable a city to possibly rebuild destroyed buildings and/or recruit more militia. If you just happen to be attempting to capture this city when the labor day rolls around, be prepared for a surprise visit from your local militia. The City MFU window displays the current amount of mfu (money) in the city's coffers, and also how much is in the patron's account (controller's mfu). The higher the level of the city, the greater the amount can be in the patron account.
 On the bottom-right, you'll see three buttons. The close button will always be visible, it exits the city hall interface. The withdraw button will be visible only to the patron of the city, it distributes the controller's mfu (patron account) to all current Control Point holders of the city to their personal mfu accounts. The level up button will only appear to the patron when the requirements for the city to increase it's level are met.
Defense Tab The Defense tab allows a patron to upgrade their city's tower defenses. This is accomplished by selling certain rare resources to the MarketPlace. When a city has enough of a rare, a button will appear on this tab to the right of the attribute that has the proper amount of rare resource in stock, enabling the patron to choose to upgrade that attribute of all the towers in a city. A fully upgraded city is an extremely powerful base of operations. Only a concerted effort by your enemies will make that city fall.
Development Tab The Development tab gives a patron the opportunity to alter the city's priorities. Starting at the left column, the first one lists the industrial buildings of the city. The next column displays the level of those buildings. The third column, which must equal 100%, is the percentage of the workforce employed in that industry. When a patron has the City Hall interface opened by a unit right-clicking on the building, they are able to alter this amount by clicking on the + and - buttons to either side of the percentage. The maximum for any industry is 30%, the minimum is 5%. The total of all industries must equal 100%. Once you have the proper balance, the "Update Distribution" button will become active. Click it to save your choices. The last column shows the proficiency of that city's industries. The more proficient a city is, the quicker it will rebuild and recruit militia.
Stock Tab The Stock tab is a quick way to see what a city has available for trade and use. It's basically the same interface that is available at the MarketPlace, just not interactive as that one is. It's a quick way to see if there might be a money making opportunity availabe by trade with this city.
Population Tab The Population tab lists the makeup of a city's population. When a patron has the City Hall interface opened by a unit right-clicking on the building, they can change this makeup by clicking on the + and - buttons to either side of the percentage. The maximum percentage allowed is 94%, the minimum is 1% for each race. Once the total of all races equals 100%, the "Update Distribution" button will become active. Click it to save your choices. Over time, the city will reorganize the population, and the city militia, to mirror your selection.
Diplomacy Tab The Diplomacy tab shows what your current political state with the city happens to be. You can also make and accept diplomatic offers by clicking on the corresponding buttons along the bottom. Be aware, if you declare hostilities on a city that is patroned by an Avatar, you'll also be declaring hostilities on all cities that Avatar is currently patron of. Declaring war is an important decision to make, please take the time to consider all consequences.Academium To go shopping for skills, select a hero and right-clcik on the Academium while standy near the building. The interface will open, allowing you to browse the selection of skills. Click on a skill to read its features. If a skill is greyed out, that means you don't have enough Glory Points to purchase that skill. If you can't find a skill you're interested in, that probably is becasue this hero has already bought the skill four times. Marketplace One way to collect many rares is to check the resources on hand at various cities by using the ladder website. When you find a city with some rares, fly a nubis, or buy one at city, and then buy all the rares from the Marketplace. This is one way for the rich players to keep the rares out of the hands of the poor. You do whatever it takes to keep the other Avatars down and you on top. If you are a new city patron, don't store your rares in the Marketplace, keep a large Dolom for that. Parnasium One of the tactics when assaulting a city is to destroy the Parnasium as soon as possible. This will make it harder for any players defending the city to purchase additional troops. As long as you can get patronship before the Parnasium rebuilds, any hostile players within the city will have to make do with what they brought with them. Smithium If the weapon you desire is greyed out, click on the small right arrow in lower right corner of the interface while the weapon is selected. This will open up the second page of the weapon description. Here it'll list the required resources needed for the city to build this weapon. If the city is low on one or two resources, sell some of them at the Marketplace and then you'll be able to purchase this weapon. Workshop If the unit you wish to buy is greyed out, click on the small right arrow in lower right corner of the interface while the unit is selected. This will open up the second page of the unit description. Here it'll list the required resources needed for the city to build this unit. If the city is low on one or two resources, sell some of them at the Marketplace and then you'll be able to purchase this unit. Control Point Another requirement in addition to five Control Points for taking patronship of a city, is to have the required control capacity available. Your first city takes one slot to patron, future cities could take one or more depending on your subscription status. If you have the five points and still can't patron the city, try sacrificing some units. If assaulting the city with allies, you still need at least five Control Points between you, but the Avatar with at least three points will be the only one that can take patronship. Don't make the mistake of each ally taking one to two points, enabling the defenders to spoil your assault. Once the needed Control Points are in your possession, select an organic unit located near the center of the city and right-click on the City Hall. If you've met all the requirements, you should see a button allowing you to take patronship of the city. Once clicked, the militia will ally you and the city will become hostile to any former defenders. Remember to tell your allies to stop attacking the city and accept its offer of peace. You can then turn your attention to routing any enemies left alive. Non-Interactive BuildingsThe following city buildings can't be directly accessed by players. The patron of a city can indirectly interact with these buildings by altering the city's development. The presence of these buildings within a city, and their level, affect the efficiency of the city. Read further to learn how each building helps a city grow. Keep in mind, the following information is just my guess as to how these buildings function. My assumptions could be off in a few areas, as all information was gathered by observation during gameplay. Constrixium One of the best ways to rebuild a partly, or fully razed city, is to have a squad guard the Constrixium while you transport as much constrix as you can to the Marketplace. This will speed up the construction of towers and other buildings. Once all the towers are up, send your squad over to the Metallium and switch to trading metallix. When seiging a city, it's just as vital to destroy the Constrixium in order to slow the rebuilding of towers and the other defensive buildings. If you can buy all the constrix from the city's Marketplace immediately before the attack, that will slow the city's recovery also. Distillery Fuzzium Hunter's Hall Now, if you're trying to raze a city down to the ground, in addition to destroying any houses, you should keep destroying the Hunter's Hall whenever it gets rebuilt. This will slow down the production of food into the city, which will stunt the population's growth. It's very difficult to lower the population of a Metropolis, but every little bit helps. Metallium In addition to being used to recruit milita for your city, metallix is used at the Parnasium and Workshop to produce units for purchase. You could see the importance of this resource in times of war. Make sure to keep the Metallium in good repair and your city will be well armed. From an attackers point of view, it might be a good idea to raze that building if they don't wish the miltia to reinforce too quickly. Running low on metallix will also increase the purchase price of units available in the city. Solarium Seriously, enlightenment is an important resource in a city. It increases the population's knowledge, which probably makes the city more efficient. A smart city must be better than a dumb one? Houses If you want to harrass your enemies, try killing off their city's population by destroying houses. If the city has been upgraded to a Town, City, or Metropolis, you can bring the city back down to Village or Hamlet size by lowering the population enough. It costs many rare resources to upgrade a city. Keep lowering the city's level each time they upgrade it and you'll have an enemy for life. Towers Bastillium Keep in mind though, once the Bastillium rebuilds, which is quite quickly in a metropolis, the militia will be back, spawning rapidly throughout the city. So, destroy the Bastillium, get in quick and capture/destroy your targets swiftly. Any militia that are currently defending will remain when the Bastillium is destroyed. Just no new militia will spawn. You can see why you would want to keep a squad defending the Bastillium while under attack. If you let yourself get distracted while defending your city, someone might run in, raze that building, and take the militia out of the fight. That someone could be me, that wouldn't be good for you :-) Mining So you like to play in the mud? You've decided to get dirty and earn some Fuzzz in Ballerium. You must have conquest on your mind to be in such a rush for riches. Well, you've come to the right place. You'll need hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to have a successful campaign of world dominance. There are two ways to earn this much Fuzzz in Ballerium. One, is to control many cities and withdraw a steady stream of cash from the city's patron account. But, in order to assemble an army large and powerful enough to capture a city, you must first do the second way of making a living. And that is by mining. Let's get to it... Mining UnitsThere are four units in Ballerium that will enable you to construct a mine: an Olligar Miner unit, a Mine Builder, a hero with the Mine Skill, or an Olligar Shadow Servant. You will also require Dolom Caravans to collect resources from within your mines and to sell at the Marketplace. The first three units are available to all Avatars in Ballerium. The Olligar Shadow Servant is available to only those players that selected the Olligar race for their Avatar. This unit comes equipped with a level 1 Mine Skill that you can summon anywhere in Ballerium. Handy for those far away mining ops, away from your enemies. Since those guys don't apply to everyone else, let's take a look at the pros and cons of the other three... Mine Skill Olligar Miner One strategy is to build multiple mining squads, with a Miner as the leader of each. This way you can spread out your mines, avoiding losing all your mines to one enemy attack. When the Mine Skill runs dry, you'll have your Miner nearby to rebuild the mine. Instead of having to run your Mine Skill equipped hero all over Ballerium, rebuilding mines that have fallen. Mine Builder The Mine Builders main drawbacks are the fact that it is only good for one thing, building mines. And, that it costs 2 slots in control capacity. My suggestion is to get an Olligar hero or an Olligar Miner, as soon as you can, to replace your Mine Builder. Dolom Caravans To enter a mine, select the Dolom(s) and then right-click on the mine. They'll walk over and enter the mine. To make the Doloms leave, double-click on the mine to open up its interface. From there you can exit all, or just one Dolom by selecting it. Doloms are very vunerable in the outside world. Make sure to defend them constantly. A lost Dolom, filled with resources, is a very costly mistake. ResourcesResources serve an important purpose in Ballerium. Firstly, they supply cities with the raw materials in order to survive and grow. If your goal is to improve a city, you'll have to sell 100's of units of varying resources to the Marketplace. Secondly, improved weapons and mechanical units all require different amounts of normal and rare resources. These will have to be sold to the Marketplace before the city can produce them.
Mining OpsThe first order of business is to assemble a small squad for your mining detail. Until you sell your first haul of resources, you won't be able to afford too many units. I would probably try to get one or two squads with the following makeup for each squad... Scout for ResourcesTake your newly formed squads and just start out walking from city to city. Along the way you'll discover things to investigate. One tip, if you head out too far from the concentration of cities, you'll enter the Badlands. Not a good place for the inexperienced to venture. The resources you'll find there are much more profitable. But, the concentration of monsters is much, much higher. Just keep to the cities until you amass enough Fuzzz to recover from a massive loss of units.
Construct MineWhen your mining squad is near the resource, select the unit with the Mine Skill. Now, click on the Mine Skill in the skill pane of the unit's stats. Move your cursor on top of the resource and click. The unit will then move next to it and cast the skill. In a short while your mine will be built. Once built, select your Doloms and then right-click on the mine. The caravans will now enter the mine and get to work. Now you just have to keep your squad close to the mine as the Doloms go about their business inside. Slowly they will collect resources until they used up all the power of the mine. At this point the mine will collapse and release your Doloms back out into the open. They'll be easy prey for those monsters, and other players. So, make sure to keep an eye on them. Defend MineThere are many ways to defend a mine. I'll only suggest a few. If you plan on doing lots of offline mining, may I suggest purchasing an Outpost Builder and/or Watchtower Builder at the Workshop. Building these towers next to your mine will usually defend them from the most agressive monster attacks. Be aware, the more rifts in your general area, and the farther away from cities you are, the greater the chance of a large attack against your mine. A good idea is to clear the area of rifts before you logout, and make sure that tower is repaired fully, using an Olligar Builder's Rebuild skill. Another defense is to use your properly assembled mining squad to defend the mine. Just make sure you stay online when you do this so you can take command when the monster attacks get too aggressive for the squad to handle on its own. What I do is order a ranged unit, preferably an Ealthai Defender, to hold position next to the mine. Then, making sure to be in single command mode, I select the remaining units of the squad and right-click on the Ealthai Defender. This will cause those units to guard the Defender. Most of the time, none of the units will stray too far from the mine. Sell ResourcesOnce you feel that your Doloms contain a decent haul of resources, head over to a city Marketplace to sell your bounty and make some Fuzzz. In the early game I wouldn't wait too long before you sell. This way if disaster strikes and you lose a Dolom, the loss of income won't be too great. When you reach the MarketPlace, select the Dolom and right-click on the Marketplace. The interface should open and from there you can trade resources. Hoard ResourcesMany times you'll need certain resources in order to produce a weapon or unit. Large Doloms, always kept inside a secure Sanctuary, make for a very nice safe deposit bank. I use a Nubis caravan to transport the resources to and from the Sanctuary. The large Dolom always stays inside except to transfer resources to the Nubis. This way, the valuable rares that are required to produce mechs and upgrade cities will be safe and quickly available. Always be careful of the "Pop goes the Weasel" attack. It'd be a shame to lose that fully loaded Dolom. Trading Trading is a vital part of the Ballerium experience. Through trading, a beginning player receives assistance from new friends, and experienced players earn millions to wage war and expand their territory. Almost everything in Ballerium costs MFU (money). Trading between players and cities is the most common way to earn MFU in Ballerium. This section will show you how to use the Market in the cities to trade resources for MFU and also how to trade between caravans. Either between your own caravans or with another player. Brand new players to Ballerium frequently require monetary assistance from established players in the game. A new player can quickly go through their starting allotment of MFU and if you already know how to trade, wealthier players are more likely to assist you. Auto-Trade Caravan TransfersThere are many times where you'll need to transfer resources or MFU (money) between Nubis or Dolom caravans. When this becomes necessary, the first thing you need to do is get the two caravans close to each other. Once they are near, select your caravan as in the picture on the right, and then right click on the caravan you wish to trade with as the picture on left shows. This will open up a new interface for you to do your trading with. From within this interface you will be able to transfer resources between caravans and also MFU between players.
Occassionally, you find yourself without a caravan to trade with. This happens most often with new players when their Dolom gets too close to the action and ends up as food for monsters. If you find yourself in need of MFU and have no caravan to use in a trade with another player, just summon a Trader Caravan. The caravan will last for about a minute or so before disappearing. This doesn't give you much time to complete your business, so only summon this unit when all parties are ready to perform the trade. I recommend buying an additional Dolom caravan as soon as you reach your first city. Then, once you pick up some resources, practice trading between your two Doloms before you attempt to trade with another player. Your skill at trading might convince other players that you aren't such a newb at Ballerium as they first thought. This could very well save your armies from being slaughtered by a blood thirsty player. Army Management Formations
 FrontIn this position a unit will primarily cast offensive skills. They will line up in the front of the Leaders selected formation. SideUnits will primarily cast offensive skills and will form up on the sides of the formation. RearUnits will primarily cast defensive skills and will form up towards the rear of the formation. MiddleUnits will primarliy cast defensive skills and will arrange themselves in the middle of the formation.If you notice, the leader doesn't have these icons on his portrait. The only time you can change a leaders assignment is when they aren't a leader. In order for me to move this Demolisher to a different assignment, I must remove all his followers from his command. It is especially important to be aware of this when you promote a frontline unit to a hero and give them defensive (healing) skills. If you leave them in their frontline assignment, the hero won't be as effective. |
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Your first act as a newly formed Avatar should be to guide your followers to a safer place, where monsters rarely roam. Look to the minimap and try to find a city (small yellow icon). Click on your hero (leftmost unit in lower army view) and then right click on the minimap, or main game view, to order the hero and followers towards the city. Be wary of any monsters, or competing Avatars, you happen upon. Many are able to destroy your forces quite easily.
This is a Sanctuary. A place where your soldiers can be placed to avoid loss of life while you are offline. If you happen to disconnect during your play session, your units will usually attempt to reach one of these. They are located near cities and throughout the Badlands. It is the best practice to always put your army into a Sanctuary before you log out. Otherwise you risk losing some or all of your army. Once you discover the location of a Sanctuary, they will appear on your minimap as small white dots. Since raw resources also appear as white dots, it's good practice to center your view on the location you suspect to be a Sanctuary. You are able to see Sanctuaries through the fog of war. This will keep you from traveling long distances only to discover you are heading towards a mine.
This is what a dormant Keii Rift looks like if you decided to inspect what you have found. Monsters occasionally spawn from these Rifts to wander the world and attack everything they come across. So be wary while you are in the area of one of these. I wouldn't linger very long and please don't attack one until I'm online so I can hear you curse and see you run away once you open up the Rift and let loose massive amounts of monsters upon the Ballerium world.
Monuments are statues of past Great Avatars constructed throughout Ballerium. They bestow limited power to those that control them. Your clan power will increase slightly on the ladder map for every Monument in your possesion. Also, the owner of a Monument will gain one Karma for every full cycle of sun changes, about two hours, beginning at the sun color of when you took control of the Monument. So, if you control ten Monuments, you'll gain ten Karma every two hours, no matter if you're online or not.
The City Hall is always located in the center of each city and is indestructable. You can open the interface for viewing by double-clicking on it. The Patron of the city can also interact with the City Hall by selecting a unit, and then right-clicking on the building. The only time non-patrons will need to do this is when they wish to take over patronship of the city. Once they are in possession of at least 5 Control Points, a unit should open the City Hall interface and click on the button to become Patron.
The Academium is where Avatars bring their heroes to learn new skills. Each hero gains Glory Points everytime they rise a level. You use these Glory Points to purchase skills at the Academium. As the popularity of a skill increases, so does it's cost in Glory Points. Each skill can be bought a maximum of four times, raising the skill's level each time.
You sell and buy resources at the Marketplace. This is where you'll make all your millions in Ballerium. Double-click on the building to open the interface in order to check the stock on hand. To actually sell or buy something, select a Dolom or Nubis Caravan and right-click on the Marketplace. Within the interface, you'll be able to transfer resources between the city and your caravan.
The Parnasium by any other name would be the barracks of Ballerium. It is here that you'll recruit fighters from the city's population. A city will sell the units from whatever race has the greatest percentage of the population. Selecting any of your non-mechanical followers - hero, organic unit, shadow servant - and then right-clicking on the Parnasium will open its interface. From there, as long as you have the cash and the control capacity, you can reinforce your army.
Ahh, Ballerium's blacksmith. Maker of strong and powerful weapons. Organic followers are able to equip better weapons from the Smithium. Heroes can equip any weapon available within the city. Normal followers can only upgrade their existing weapons from level one, up to level three. Select the unit you wish to upgrade and then right-click on the Smithium. If the city has the neccessary resources and you have the cash available, you'll be able to choose a weapon for the unit.
The Workshop builds the mechanical units of Ballerium. The caravans needed for trade, the war engines neccessary for heavy battle, the siege units required to assault heavily defended cities, and the aerial units that are great for scouting. To make a purchase, select an organic unit and right-click on the Workshop. If you have the Fuzzz on hand and the required resources are in the Marketplace, you'll be able to make your purchase.
Most cities have eight Control Points within its walls. An Avatar needs to possess five of these in order to attempt to take patronship of the city. You begin the takeover the same way as with Monuments, select a unit and right-click on the Control Point, starting a counter. You'll be given the choice to cancel or go to war with the city and its patron. If you choose war, be aware, all the city's defenses will come to bear on you. Towers will begin shooting and militia will spawn all around you. Make this choice wisely. Many young Avatars have met their demise at the base of a Control Point.
The Constrixium is an important building for your city's advancement. This building processes constrix, which assists in the construction and leveling of buildings and towers. Constrix is also used when recruiting units and equipping weapons. If a city runs low, or out of constrix, then structures will fail to be built and units will rise in cost or cease to be sold all together. That's why it is extremely important to defend the Constrixium while your city is under seige.
What better way to end a long, hard fought battle, than to stop by the Distillery and pick up a pint of Tofi Juice. Tofi makes the population happy and more efficient. Selling Tofi to the Marketplace in huge quantities is a quick way to get your city up and running, even if you're low on the other resources.
The Fuzzium could be the financial center of your city. I assume this building has something to do with taxes and money gained into the city's MFU fund. While enjoying Ballerium, I usually don't pay much attention to the Fuzzium. Only if a city's MFU account continues to stay low on funds, will I try to raise the Fuzzium's level in the development tab of the City Hall. Usually buying all your units and resources from your city, and selling resources to other cities will keep enough cash in the bank for the city to function smoothly.
In order for the population of a city to grow, there needs to be food available. That's the job of the Hunter's Hall. If you are trying to grow your city's population, make sure the Hunter's Hall is at a high level so that the city produces a lot of food each Labor Day.
Here's another vital building to a city's defenses. The Metallium refines metallix, which is used by the city to produce units, weapons and militia. The miltia are an extremely important part of overall city defense. Without militia, a city is an easy target for capture by any hostile Avatars.
I don't know much about the Solarium. It probably has something to do with Enlightenment, the unseen resource cities use. It's a nice looking tower, don't you think? I just imagine the fair princess is kept safe there. Maybe if you impress her with your leadership and battlescars, she'll invite you up for some refreshments ;-)
Each house in, or around the city, will be a home to 40 people. Think of them as apartment buildings. The more houses in your city, the larger the city's population will be. In a weak city, roaming monsters can easily destroy houses, causing the population to stagnate or even decline to zero. In a city with no militia, houses built outside the walls are even more vulnerable. Try using Outposts or Watchtowers to assist in defending those homes.
Towers are big and strong. They shoot spears and flaming balls of acid. Ahh, this is just filler, I'll put the real description in later.
We finally come to the heart of a city's defense, the Bastillium. The one building that fights back when attacked, by spawning militia and shooting deadly sulfious balls at you. Whenever a city comes under attack, some milita spawn at the Bastillium, City Hall, and possibly a Control Point or two. The Bastillium orchestrates all of this. A city without its heart, is a city with no militia. Destroy the Bastillium and the city will be yours to pillage
If you are going to be serious about mining, your best plan is to aquire an Olligar hero, equip him with the Mine Skill from the Academium, and increase his Industrialism attribute as much as you can. This will give you a unit that can build extremely high level mines. At higher levels, mines produce normal and rare resources much faster than level 1 mines. This will definately give you a heads up on purchasing more specialized equipment for your army, in addition to much more Fuzzz than the majority of Avatars.
Available for purchase at the Parnasium, in cities that have the Olligar race as the dominant population. He comes equipped with a level 1 Mine Skill, and carries the mighty War Hammer to help fend off attackers. With his high defense and lifepower, the Olligar Miner is a very formidable unit to have defending your mines. His main drawback is you are stuck with just level 1 mines.
Available at the Workshop of every city, and supplied with every Avatar's starting army. The Mine Builder is the bare-bones, basic, mine contructing unit. It has no offensive abilities and pratically no defense. It comes equipped with a level 1 Mine Skill. Its benefits come when you enter Ballerium for the first time. You'll be able to immediately construct mines and begin accumulating wealth. They also come in handy during intense wars, when all Olligar cities are in the hands of your enemies. Thereby limiting your choices to a hero with the Mine Skill, or the Mine Builder.
Doloms are the workhorses of the mining business. These guys are the ones that go deep into the mines and collect all the valuable resources. There are three sizes; small, normal, and large. The bigger the Dolom, the more resources it can carry, the stronger it is, and also the slower it is. Once you build a mine, you can place up to five Doloms into the mine to work. Obviously, the more Doloms working, the faster you collect resources.
A sturdy Constrix Mine will be built on top of Raw Constrix. Constix is what you get out of this mine. Constrix enables the construction of towers and walls to keep out the hostiles.
A nice Tofi Distillery will be built around the Tofi Tree. Guess what, you get Tofi from the Distillery. Tofi helps keep everyone happy and working efficiently.
A Metallix Pool is created on top of Raw Metallix. A Metallix Pool fills your caravans with Metallix. Metallix helps add more militia to defend the city.
The Mine Skill will build a Farm on top of a patch of Crops. The Farm produces Food for your Doloms to collect. Food increases a city's population.
The icons on the right are your caravans trade button. If you right click on the icon, you can turn on and off the auto-trade feature. The benefit of leaving the trade icon set to auto is your caravans will collect any fuzz (money) or resources that monsters or animals drop when you kill them. There are a few drawbacks though. With auto-trade active, your caravans will come awfully close to the fighting and run the risk of coming under attack. Also, during travel, the caravan will go out of its way to pick up resources, sometimes forgetting where you told it to go. Because of these shortcomings, I recommend you leave trade icon set to manual and pick up anything dropped manually. Just remember, upon purchasing a caravan, auto-trade is active and you'll have to turn it off if you don't want your caravan wandering around.
The column on the leftside of this interface is the inventory of the unit you began the trade with. The rightside column is the inventory of the caravan you right clicked on. You use the + and - buttons in the center of the interface to transfer things between the caravans. Once you have everything like you want it, you would hit the "Accept" button if you were transferring between your own two caravans. If you were trading with another player, the "Offer" button would be highlighted and you would hit that one. Once the other player makes their offer, then you both would press the Accept button. This would conclude the trade and transfer the resources or MFU between you.
The picture on the right shows a Demolisher leader with 5 units under his command. The bottom left of each unit icon shows the formation info. The squad is setup in the V formation. To change the formation for this squad, just left click on the leaders formation icon. The small triangles on the follower icons show where they will stand in the formation. To change the units location in the formation, just left click on the following areas in the unit icon...