I want to rant about Land 3

[GeneralAtrox]

Hi there.

Just joined the forums as I'm interested to see what kind of things are happening with this precious IP.

I recently played Black and White over the past few days and oh my God have I not missed anything past land 2.

Land 3 is the most infuriating, difficult and annoying land to finish. I originally set off, expansion, influence towns under my control, great! But nearing the end, the last town is WAY out of reach, damn I thought, I'll keep building and expanding, oh all my trees are gone and everyone is randomly dying.

My main town had a case of death and eventually became unlivable. Eventually i used the invincible man to just destroy the temple after about 15 minutes of throwing a rock at it and got a portal to open. Overall, what an awful land, I have this disobedient creature as I didn't teach him as much in Land 2 due to a save file corruption (which I have since fixed by hard saving via quitting), I lost the 3rd town due to destruction, Lethys flattened it with none stop fireball barrage and my death spree in the other villages made sure I wasn't able to protect it. So I'm left with the portal to land 4 that I cannot fund in any way with extra resources.

The primary issue with Land 3 which I'm surprised the Developers didn't really pick up on was the lack of Wood and distance between all villages. The Celtic Wonder in my opinion is utter trash, give me back the Norse one!! The supreme lack of space isn't good either, I had accidentally blocked my creature entrance with a massive wonder (which I regret) and he ended up kicking it none stop.

I'm not too sure what went wrong with my play through but damn am I left with a bitter taste in my mouth. This game is like Spore, after the 2nd level, it's just awful.

Onto Land 4, within the first 15 minutes my entire village is dead already and I'm wondering what I should do, very tempted to give up as Land 5 is just plain awful too with the lack of creature support.

 

[fenton_pat]

Few things are as therapeutic as a good, healthy rant. However, I may be able to help.  As someone who's useless at modding, I've found myself to be not that much helpful these years.  But on these kind of problems, I think I can get you back on track.

In general, it's always been much harder to play good in B&W1, particularly after Land 2.  But let me rattle off some of the helpful hints for playing good (some of which you may know) that should prove helpful:
[list type=decimal]
  [*]PREPARATION:  This is the most important one. Before leaving a land (e.g. Land 2 in your case), you should throw in as much supplies as you can into the portal.  Not all of it will make it's way through, so be generous.  Items you should pack include:
   

• 
       
• Wood & Food.  Just take as much as you can from your storehouses and chuck it in the portal
       
• Miracle bubbles. I was a long time playing the game before I came across this bit of advice.  If you build a miracle dispenser and cast one of your miracles on it, you create a miracle bubble.  Addressing one of your specific Land 3 complaints about no wood miracle, I created a whole heap from Land 2 and sent them into the portal.  Sending in a whole mix of miracles really helps out with the initial startup of your new village.  But wood is definitely the most useful.
         
  • 
             
  • NOTE 1: In the case where the miracle bubble you're using isn't available to use at the worship site, it costs you no worship power to use it.
             
  • NOTE 2: Where you do have that miracle available at the worship site, you can drop the miracle bubble for that into the bowl to use the belief power for another miracle available to you.  Makes for a handy exchange rate!
           
       
       
• Artifacts.  You probably know how to make these.  But if not, just take a rock (other objects work too, but rocks seem to be the best I think.  Singing Stones are very good too) and place it in one of your villages.  Villagers will dance around it in their free time and it will begin to glow.  A fully charged artefact will have your symbol floating over it.  You can drop this into other villages and it will slowly give you belief from that village.
         
  • 
             
  • NOTE: Once you've put an artifact into the portal, it'll never have your symbol above it again on subsequent lands.
           
       
       
• Villagers.  Nothing like bringing your workforce with you.  And there's an easy-ish trick for it too for villages close to the big portal.  Raise the totem of that village to the top so they all go to the worship site.  Place a teleport at the temple and another near the big portal.  Lower the totem in the village again.  If you do this right, the villagers will try to use the teleport as a shortcut and get sucked into the portal when they come the other side!
         
  • 
             
  • NOTE:Only do this when you have no more need of that village, i.e. all other supplies (including miracles) have been packed up.
           
       
     

 
  [*]Artifacts: They have more than one use believe it or not:
   

• 
       
• Placing them in a small circle and planting a wonder scaffold in the centre helps you build much bigger wonders.
       
• A neat trick is you can throw an artifact over a village and get some belief (be sure it lands in range of your influence so you can pick it up again).  The amount of belief drops on each subsequent attempt, so be sure to mix this with other actions.
     

 
  [*]Another trick to help get you to another village is to build scaffolds for village centres.  You can drop these at the edge of your reach and give yourself a staging post to plant the next village centre.  This way, you can build a chain of "stepping stone" village centres to get you within miracle casting distance of the next village.
[/list]

A lot of those tricks work for Land 4 and Land 5 also.

However, I'll also offer some more specific tips.

• When attacked by wolves, you gotta slow down time and zoom in real close to get them.  After that, they make handy food in the storehouse
• Real handy for Land 4 and Land 5 this one!  Make sure you've packed plenty of spiritual shield miracle bubbles. Where you have incoming fire (from either fireballs or mega blasts), place a wall of small spiritual shields along that area.  You only need to cover the spot where those miracles land.  Don't be tempted to create large shields or ones that encompass the entire village.  They take a lot more belief to maintain and will collapse in short order because of that.  Smaller shields require much less energy and are fare easier to maintain indefinitely.  Keep an eye on your worship site though, making sure you have enough worshippers/belief.  As a temporary measure, you can also drop a miracle bubble for another spell into the worship site bowl to help keep you topped up.

All that advice doesn't help solve all your problems, but it should hopefully free you up to be able to tackle the rest yourself.

 

[Shrooblord]

Nice. Some pretty useful tips here. Didn't know about the ring of artifacts wonder building trick.

I have another use for artifacts: if you drop one in a village you wish to convert, it will land you a sizable amount of belief (anywhere from 120-350 I've seen so far - not sure what it scales with actually; some villages give you more belief than others using the same artifact). If you let it sit there, neutral or enemy villagers will dance around it and once in a while you'll get a pretty substantial boost in belief (like 35-50 or so). When enough time passes, this method will fully convert them!
Naturally, you can speed things up by impressing them the usual way. Miracle Flock and Forest work well, and especially getting rid of their village needs is effective.

One more trick I discovered when I played this game back when I was ten or so: the Invincible Man actually has a ring of Influence around him a short while after he lands. You can use this tiny ring to cast Miracles from and you can even place Scaffolds down in a close vicinity. After he lands, pause the game immediately. Move to a town you control. Unpause the game for only an instant to perform the following step and then immediately pause it again. Select a Miracle from one of the Worship sites or Village Totem or pick up a Scaffold. Now move back to the Invincible Man. Be quick once more: unpause the game and perform the action you wish to perform while his little ring of Influence remains.

If you want to be evil, you can use the Invincible Man as a fiery projectile by setting him alight with Lightning or Fireball before you throw him. When he lands in the enemy village, he'll set ablaze everything he runs through, from villagers to houses to the Village Store's supplies, making its people desperate and ready to be impressed/forced into submitting to your rule.

Finally, if you can manage to place Disciple Missionaries and Traders, these will both help your belief building in neutral and enemy villages as well as your resource management. I don't think the enemy gods attack your Missionaries or Traders, but naturally this tactic doesn't work as well online as it does against bots.

 

[Gremxula]

Rings or blocks of artifacts will enable giant wonders but are unless you play the game very slowly the wonders will never get finished in time to be of any use.

Invincible  man best use , simply throw a TC (5) scaffold then throw man at scaffold, repeat until scaffold can be placed in desired area. DO NOT OCCUPY this area just use it as a base.

 

[Ellilea]

Hah, a while ago I made a B&W Let's Play, I was doing great up until the last villages on Land 3 where my patience just expired It gets really hasslesome without the Norse wonder. Not because of the reach, I had the reach, but the resource miracles are very helpful normally...

Here, if you wish to see how good gods fall xP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87-P8p-WboA&index=17&list=PLpy_mAODOzN28DnFnry64CS4egRQswEqP