Overview
Once you know the game, and are able to follow the nomal guides on how to beat the corruption you can opt for this guide.I wrote it in response to reading the other guides, and hope you can look past the writing mistakes.Hope you like it!
Position
The important part about that is picking the position of the corruption where you can box it in.
From that position, find the wood, stone, food and chryst resources on the opposite side away from the place you want the corruption to spawn.
Place the main building close to the middle of the map, but grap the directions away from the prefered spawn point with houses, farms, 1 Ancillary, farms and wells.
Chryst is the least important as you can bridge quite a distance before you need it.
plan ahead
Once you picked the corruption’s spot it’s time for yours.
Remember to place every resource + the connected production together so they don’t have to run far.
Plan those places before you start the game.
wood -> planks
stone –> forge + cutter
for food you need to think a bit more.
You need a lot of space for a double line of farms (8 usually works)
But the farm needs access to water and a single piece of food.
Each time you have the mana to spare, you can motivate the land to increae that food source, so don’t mind the sice of it.
Just don’t forget to clear the competition around that food source like trees.
If you screw up the position of you farm, it WILL kill your villagers.
place the houses in the middle, as that way they are close by in any case.
water source –> dirty water -> clean water -> bottle
start of with a simple well or 2 near the houses so they have some water.
next to your farm you can have 3 purifiers and a bottler.
I don’t suggest you go for rain catchers or other risky ventures.
That is a lot of space required, and the supply of dirty water will often break if you place everything apart.
You could opt to move the woodcutter a bit later if you need the space.
mana
2by2 garbadge burners and 3by3 essence collectors are faster to collect your mana.
You can collect from all of them in one go that way.
Note that the walking distance can be decreased by adding the burners next to the caste
& the collectors next to the crystal.
Other sources of mana people seem to forget about:
-throw a couple of animals or corruption in the Cullis Gates
-keep sapping those free collection points.
-Don’t grap things at 3 * speed, you will loose mana!
The best way to go at things with mana is to have the max amount of labour golems while having the exact amount of mana left for a harvest spell.
That way the max amoutn of mana is in use at all times.
Spells to use :
-grap to throw them in the cullis gates.
-harvest speeds up the work a lot!
-recall for cleanup and in combo with harvest.
motivate land to grow the food patch to enormous sizes (minz is as big as 8 farms)
later:
-you can push a construction of a fire pit or defence tower if need be.
-earthquake or flame to clear buildings when you push with the fire pits.(godtower if the mana is a problem but it can fail a lot of times)
-lighting if you want to remove corruption or target a fire elemental (bad use of mana)
tunneling
Once the corruption lands on the map you can start the costant tunneling with the fire pits to your goal.
if you think it’s a good place to spread resoures from you can swith to an Ancillary if you think you can defend it.
Your first days of defence are cullis gates and peasents.
We need those workers to build fire pits after all.
You go for the Elemental Bolt Tower on day 3 if needed, or 4, 5 if you can handle it.
it’s a fast tower to get up and running without a lot of logistics.
After a few days you should know where a single tower can greet all the visitors.
As soon as the mana comes in the tower will start working.
This is way faster then the other towers.
Note that this tower needs open space to work.
Also note that you could be blocking the corruption with a ton of firepits, but have no walls or defences yet.
They will all take the fastest way towards your base.
Your sole tower should be greeting them over there.
chokepoint
After closing in the corruption with the fire pits we can think of the cryst wall.
Place the cryst wall but grap as much space as you can.
leave an opening in a central space where you can fire over the walls before they have to backtrack to the towers.
Leave space for 1 recombinator close to the front.
Don’t hug the wall, we want to shoot the fire elementals while they can’t shoot at us.
depending on how good you are doing, chrystal golems are ranged but weak on hp.
stone golems are stong but only ranged when fully upgraded.
Ballista towers can be placed in a line where behind the walls.
Tricks can be used to protect them.
-Any attacker passes an elemental bot tower that draws the agro.
-The golem swarm might destract them.
-They are far away from the front and not in any danger
You could fold the chokepoint entry to double the time they enter it, but this might backfire if they opt to go for your towers instead of the chokepoint.
If you are fast about this, towers should still kill them asap.
The recombinator tower tower is vital to keep the swarm alive.
Do NOT box the fire elementals in with water, make sure they go for the chokepoint and are killed.
We don’t want an elemental swarm killing the villagers in the winter or during work at the fire pits.
Note that the ballista should slowly clear all buildings in a huge range around the wall.
Note that having access golems can cause swarms to run around at the front sometimes.
push
During the push you will trigger a lot of spawns.
Only attempt this when you are confident that corruption is boxed in.
The chokepoint should be able to handle a setback.
Around the blockade, the ballista tower should have made the corruption clearable.
Clear the corruption in the furthest regions first from you chokepoint in order to keep the last corruption close to your most advanced defences.
This is easy as the chokepoint will draw the attention, and the builders can take the gate from the side.
Having labour golems can help as they don’t get scared
Contruct spell is able to build 2 of those fire pits in 1 cast for me.
If need be rebuild the wall closer, open up a path from the chokepoint to the newly closed off wall.
Add some golems and some balista towers after the chokepoint has gained access.
Spamming some earth earthquakes can speed the clearing of building up.
Note that a gate will be used by the golem swarm even if the corruption goes for the chokepoint.
Note that rebuilding the wall could block your influance, make sure a gate connects to firepits in front of your gate.
Note that blocking of your chokepoints and createing a new invasion path can screw you over big time.
day 15-25
This is the end.
You should end up with a ton of fire pits (like 50) and a swarm of golems coming to the defence of your builders while balista bots are flying everywhere.
If it’s not done by day 25 something went wrong.
If corruption passes your encirclement you are screwed and will have first block of that section and then dig out half of the map to get rid of it.
When you come back from that at day 25-30, you will notice that the push isn’t as smooth anymore.
A cleared map will let you farm resources and population any time you need some in a new region.
Step by step keep switching between maps to push the population to the max all the time.