Lotus Strategies And tactics

[Mana 3,867]

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The Leaf rush

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Here's a simple leaf rush tactic for small to medium 1v1 (or 2v2 games if your ally also rushes and keeps the pressure on his opponent) at standard settings. I've won it consistantly against AI on skirmish with major disadvantage to me and major advantage to them.

Practice it on freedom skirmishes but it does not work well against wolf. (hehe... odd that, but its true.)

Speed is the key.

With your 2 peasants, build your WATER hut. Select the hut while its being built and double right click on the water beside it then select the 2 peasants while they are still building, hold down shift and alt, and place the rice hut and (still holding shift and alt) right click on the rice near it. (those peasants will then build the rice hut then start harvesting.)

Select the rice hut while its being built and double right click on the rice.

When there are THREE peasants collecting water, turn off the peasant production at the water hut. While those 2 rice peasants are harvesting their FIRST load of rice, hold down shift and alt and place a blade garden beside the rice hut when you have enough water and rice. After one peasant has been produced by the rice hut, select that hut and double right click on the blade garden so that all future peasants go to it for training. Select the blade garden and double right click on the minimap where the enemy will be. Grab one of the three water peasants and get him harvesting rice.

You should about now have enough water and rice for a SECOND blade garden.

Take the 2nd water peasant to help build this new blade garden and turn the water huts peasant production back on and double right click on the second blade garden. Select the second blade garden and double right click on the minimap into the enemy base, like the first one. Make sure you have only 3 peasants on rice and just one on water and all other 'left over' peasants are being trained (or queued to) in both buildings. Assign your two buildings to hotkeys ctrl 8 and ctrl 9.

Your first leaf disciple should be arriving in the enemy base about now!

hehe...

If he has a manned tower in his base, just stay outside its range as well as possible. As you have range units yourself, it shouldn't be too hard, take out the tower later if its a problem (see unclean below). Your objective is to stand on his rice murdering his peasants and killing any of his units that try to prevent that. When they have no units to target they will slowly damage the buildings near them. Don't be worried, dragon, lotus and serpent can't do much to stop it if they dont know what you're about to do to them.

The cool things about leaf disciples are that they inflict damage every time a melee unit swings at them as well as their own attacks. It will take 5 peasants attacking at once to have a chance and even if they do succeed, the survivors will all be in the red and some will be dead.

So, if the enemy gets all his peasants to attack your leaf disciple, they will pretty much all die when your second leaf turns up. You have totally ruined his economy. Also, leaf disciples have the best resistances of tier 1,2 and 3 troops in the game (first equal with fan geisha)

The main problem is that they suck against buildings. Just keep your leafs beside their peasants hut(s) and concentrate fire as best you can. As the battle rages, you'll get 2 yin rather quickly, hit '8' or '9' to see which building is free of training at that time and get the leaf damage upgrade started. Next, do the stamina upgrade. Having just one unit type makes upgrades affect all your troops and no decision making is required. =)

After you have around 6 or 8 leafs alive in his base, send one of your 3 rice peasants to his base and place a training yard in it. Put your most damaged leaf(s) in there first and train them to unclean, after two or three are done, your enemy is dead.

Have fun.

To get all the buildings you'll use (until the training yard) You'll need only 200 rice and 300 water. Water comes MUCH faster than rice, thats why you use three peasants on it to start with and move 2 of them to rice after a rather short time. (You start with 150 rice and 100 water, so what you actually need to harvest is a mere 50 rice and 200 water)

The reason why it doesn't work against wolf well is that wolf units are perhaps simply a little tougher to allow for their lack of healers. Hurlers and maulers beat the crap outa leafs =( The hurlers have good res to pierce and maulers have an annoying method of fighting, their leaps into the air makes many leaf spikes miss and they do a nasty 1-2-3 strike on their 4th swing. A towered hurler stops the rush right there.

However, while the AI gets a tower fast and efficiently, a player might not, so perhaps it could work. Most players will use more than 3 peasants on rice, if thats the case, you have a slight unit aquisition advantage.

Don't try to save up your units into a big group. There is no reason to do it. None.

As all of yoru units are produced automatically, there's nothing for you to do but fight. So, do that, fight and micromanage your units as best you can.

The only weaknesses that are obvious to me is that it relies on one unit type and your base has NO defenses. =) But after you've sent as many as 8 leafs, neither does he

Serpents can have a similar rush by building two alchemist huts in the much the same fashion. They will kill peasants and buildings faster and will arrive with plenty of stamina left to manoeuver but, they suck in melee so it is much easier to counter them.

Dragon just cant rush with archers or alchemists the same way. God knows I've tried. The closest I came to succeeding was by building 2 pairs of alchemist huts and fireworks for starburst BG. They were great for taking out buildings, but crummy for killing units.

Wolf can with hurlers but it can suck majorly against Lotus... wierd! Blade acolytes screw them quite easily.

If anyone has any techniques for countering this, I'd like to hear of it. But, only if you have a standard build plan that is designed to take it (the above rush) into account. I'll think less of you if you say "Yeah, well if you did that I'd build blah blah blah." You can't really do that very easily. Time to adapt is not something you have much of anymore, nor will you have much in the way of resources. You need a system in place to start with and that's what I'd like to hear about.

You should have unit(s) in the enemy base at 2.30 minutes at the MIDDLE speed setting.

Yes, I timed it. =)

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Fan geisha terrorism

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*None of the anti fan geisha tactics below take into account mugging or other useful Serpent units and BG. They are all complications, yes, but I can’t sit here and write 400 pages to cover every battlefield eventuality. I’m not saying one should ignore the possibility of mugging, be very aware of it, just be a good boy scout and be prepared

With DS no longer being stackable in 1.10j, you can't really get enough damage going through mass unclean to be sure of winning the fight.

So, only one DS bears any obvious fruit against them although more could be used tactically. Their (unclean's) range attack being magic makes them very inefficient as fan geisha's strongest resistances are to magic (and fire).

The fan geisha’s resistances are impressive. Its main weaknesses are to cutting and blunt attacks equal and piercing and explosive coming 2nd equal.

C minimal, P good, B minimal, Ex good, M excellent, F excellent

Your primary troops according to those above weaknesses would naturally be blade acolytes, staff adepts and the blade and staff brothers naturally. That really sucks. Tier 1 troops only or yin expensive bros. Crap.

Fair enough I suppose, fan geisha are just tier 1 themselves. But their BG and techniques are incredible and group augmenting:

'Dark pact' BG halves the attack susceptibilities (they take half damage) of units around the geisha (including the geisha),

'Razor fans' BG heals an area of allied troops around the striking geisha (at the cost of stamina per strike) and includes the striking geisha. No other healer can damage and heal let alone mass heal in the same move.

They have 3 upgrades or techniques, all useful in anti unit combat and support:

'Art of Love' reduces stamina cost for basic healing.

'Flexibility' increases the geisha’s life (or, yet again increases their resistances depending on which way you want to look at it).

'Pressure points' increases their damage in melee.

God. So, not only do they have the best total resistances of all tier 1 units in the game, they also have BG AND Techniques that improve their effectiveness in combat geometrically! In fact as far as resistances go, they have the best equal tier 1 & 2 resistances in the game, only the Lotus leaf disciple stands with her... But there's still more, hehehe, no tier 3 beats those resistances either. Only a few Zen masters and the Serpent’s necromancer (typical) beat it.

Okay, so that’s their strengths. They aren’t small.

One of the few ways you can exploit their own battle gears' stamina dependency is to either get them to use it, which may not be a good idea really =), or run the stamina off them by out manoeuvring them or steal it from them. Once they are without stamina, they can no longer use razor fan, no longer do that nasty hurt and heal combo. Then they become peculiar tier 1 warrior units. Peculiar because they are non aggressive and have to be given a lot of instructions when they are needed to attack a unit, usually forcing the player to pick off your troops one by one in groups of 5-8 by surrounding and cutting. At that point they will run to target with each command to attack quite often, ensuring that their stamina is used before it can regenerate.

If you get the geisha to empty stamina, they are not such a big problem if your army is roughly the same size and made up of units appropriate enough to last the fight.

However getting them to that point without losing units is the hard part.

What happens with a conventional melee & missile assault with the standard mix of units? ie (all numbers are totally arbitrary, you'll have in any given fight exactly how many troops you have, no more, no less.) hehe

4 unclean, 1 staff, 3 Infested Ones and 2 channelers

Against hopefully the same number of fan geisha, say 10.

If the Serpent player was any good, he'd have them all 'dark pacted’ as the battle starts. Perhaps he'd also have them in 2 groups of 5. Which of your troops he attacks first is the interesting bit. If he goes for the unclean, the staffs and infesteds will attack them reasonably chaotically (unless you tell them to stand ground). When this happens, the serpent doesn't really need to tell the geisha which units to attack so much anymore, he'll just concentrate on the odd bit of dancing, manual healing and concentrating the odd pair or triplet of geisha on lone units.

Unfortunately, the resistances of unclean and infesteds are rather sh!tty against cutting. Uh oh. Also, if both players had the same amount of yin for techniques, the geisha can be completely upgraded before all your 3 units types can. A sh!tty situation whatever way you look at it. The above basic combat wouldn't last too long. Even if they were rebirth infested, a straight fight wont work. So what do you do?

Well, against a serpent player, don’t rely on the standard Lotus build! But that’s hardly a solution. It just may make it less embarrassing!

However, there is more to combat than just standing there and letting the enemy pick the targets he wants from your group. Things you could do to save some dignity for that lotus build group:

1/ If you see the geisha move towards a particular unit, grab that unit and tell him to run away. If they follow, even for a short time, they could lose stamina.

2/ You can retreat your whole battle group as far as their collective stamina will take them… try not to get too far ahead or the geisha will simply stop and refuel. You could throw a DS or two along the way, but that could cost you the unclean ones responsible, as they may no longer have enough stamina to stick with the group.

3/ If you keep your units tightly packed, there’s a chance that your unclean could keep firing from within the centre of the melee troops without melee stopping them. This is your only chance to really concentrate fire on individual geisha. But if the geisha still have plenty of stamina, its not going to do much good.

A combination of above points 2 & 3 is the best bet in putting up a good fight, but it’s HARD!

There are a lot of better builds for taking out fan geisha. But I thought I’d address the build above first, as it’s more likely that you would have that build (or very similar) when the geisha showed up, especially in 3v3 games where its tricky scouting every base at all times.

A simple yet quite effective group are mostly rebirth infesteds with brother sehk screened by them from the fans. With the damage, health(/resistance) and AoE upgrades, the suddenly become very good. Their attack may not be the best in the world against fans, but they do have staying power and boy, 10 can throw a hell of a lot of maggots. As the fan geisha will cluster in their initial attacks, its quite simple to get the infested ones to ‘surround’ them as least equally or better that the fan geishas are trying to surround the infesteds. Sure, Infesteds are more expensive being tier 2s, but there are so many variables in the game that it shouldn’t make a huge difference in itself. Also, their rebirth BG coming from sehk is ‘free’ whereas the geisha need to pay for theirs. Of course, you have to get sehk stamina somehow. That’s up to you. However seeing as rebirth is nice and automatic, you don’t have to micro them much in combat, just try to make sure that the maggots are covering multiple geisha where possible, you’ll have some time to use sehk in the combat to constantly give new rebirth BG. You can do it via the portraits (in 1.10j) or, hover the active BG cursor over the units themselves. Sehk also strips stamina from units very quickly, try to remember that! Sehk is very fragile. Keep him at the very back of your group. Out of sight at the beginning of the combat is better but very hard to plan for.

Of course you should be still planning the battle sensibly and running the geisha whenever possible to get that stamina out of them! In the games I’ve played, every time I’ve gone silly with mass rebirth infesteds I’ve cleaned up many kinds of serpent armies. In general Serpents pierce resistance is their worst melee damage resistance. The big problem is that once you get to their base with a pile of infesteds, you cant really do anything! It takes AGES for infesteds to pull down a tower or any other building for that matter. Very frustrating. If your enemies ally shows up to help, he can finish them off easily with the right units and all you’ve done is lost a whole bunch of units.

So you really need a siege unit with you. Damn.

My current favourite tactic is 5 rite of ascension uncleans, 3 rebirth infesteds and 2 channelers with sehk. (versus the same 10 fan geisha)

After running the geisha as much as possible, engage them with the infesteds slightly ahead of the unclean group, they will buy you some time and break up the geisha formation, some geisha will probably be targeted against your unclean… when they engage an unclean, hit the rite BG and quickly get sehk to add the soul chill BG to the new warlock. He can do this twice but will get stamina back from shooting as the battle rages.

A warlock can use soul chill rather quickly. With max stamina, he’ll have 3 shots of it. But don’t use it yet… move the other unclean close to the geisha groups and repeat the process as best you can while still keeping all the new warlocks quite close together. The melee will look very very bad for a few secs, 1 or 2 or your infesteds may be dead, if you’re lucky you have killed one or two geisha. At that point, you should have 3-5 warlocks with soul chill. Get them close to the geisha and hit ‘b’ as fast as possible. Send the channelers to help anyone out that needs it at that point, but your main focus until then was ensuring that the warlocks survive to complete their BG acquisition. Sehk should have been the greatest help in that fight as he would have stolen plenty of stamina as well as given plenty of BG. After the Warlocks have their BG, you can give rebirth back to any remaining infesteds. Obviously Sehk is so very valuable in this tactic that he is in fact a major liability. If he dies, run away. Keep those 2 channelers defaulted to guarding him.

Obviously this tactic is a LOT more rice expensive than BG’ed fan geisha, so you are just going to have to be a very economical player, aint you? =)

However, the yin cost is not as high. You don’t actually need to acquire any yin for it to work, therefore its possible to face un-upgraded geisha with it. And that is a lot easier. If you are crappy at manipulating the enemy geisha into running and losing stamina, have one less unclean and keep a diseased one with deathwail (one click takes half stamina from enemy units, each click costs 1/3 stamina in diseased) with sehk, when the fight starts, move the diseased one into a support position with the unclean. When there are plenty of geisha stunned in former unclean darkness, turn on the BG to make sure those ones are now stamina empty, if convenient and you know how big the area of affect of deathwail is, get as many of the geisha as possible. =)

If you already have plenty of warlocks with soul chill, you can kill almost anything and very quickly BY GOD! Explosive range weapon, cutting AoE BG that stacks. Fearsom stuff. If you have around 7, you can take out ALL of their heros in 2-3 BG clicks (6 secs maybe). They work very very well when issyl has hasted them as the delay between BG activation is tiny which limits enemy 'dancing' and healing. A good defense(?) for larger warlock groups like that is to not have many infesteds, just 2 in front, and keep 2 diseased with deathwail in the same group as the warlocks. When you click 'b' to activate the warlocks BG, the deathwail will also go off. If you have 2 doing the deathwail, The opponent will be totally empty of stamina (one click) as well as health in the next click or two. They are very fiddly to make. Keep them safe =)

If you have 12 or more soul chill warlocks, just stick a few healers with them (and always that staff + Issyl if possible) you dont need anything else. When you get to that magic number, just haste, run into close melee with the enemy, hit b a lot, watch them die in the blue-white fog. Be carefull of tower stun though folks =) However, you do go so fast that you can run up and kill all the units probably before he gets the stun going, so you can then bring in the staff to protect them with dark canopy. For every 6 sniper musks he has standing at the towers, you will lose approx 1 warlock. If you get mugged, you may as well just sit there and cry. If in that mad hasted run, your oponent somehow managed to mug you, he was very very lucky. He must have had it in the perfect spot with his finger poised over the 'b'.

Chances are, in real games, you wont get that kind of warlock power, unless you're a turtler and safe for the first 15 mins then get slowly attacked and you keep sehk safe everytime. Its very dangerous to make so many at once of course, so try and make it a progressive buildup i.e add rite of ascention to new reinforcement infesteds/diseased/uncleans after beating back an attack) as you get enough SPARE stamina in sehk. 1st Priority for sehk on staffs (2 minimum really), then rebirth infested (probably, or blade acolytes), then those high tech warlocks soul chill. Soul chill is handy to have 1 or 2 of at the early stages of the game, damn straight, but thats when their price is so disturbing. So much resources spent on merely one unit... ewww...

**This is not the final word in anti-geisha-terrorism. Please criticise as required. But adding improvements is better! And remember, all the numbers above are pretty irrelevant. You have as many troops as you have at the time. The numbers are just guides.

*********************************************I have lost some games so I dont think I'm all that. Online, I'm a bit of a coward/berserker. I cower in my base until I can't stand the shame of it anymore and then I throw absolutely everything at them... Normally I feel this way when I have 6 units. I refuse to be labeled a turtler you see. There is no greater shame =)

I prefer 3v3 games where I know one of my allies. The online opponents are typicaly rather random and dont play together very cohesively. Whereas my ally will do as he's asked promptly no matter his opinions on the matter. I've found that having an ally that one can rely on is better than having an excellent yet fiercly independant one.

It was also flattering to watch him stuggle for weeks with serpent before finally giving up and being Lotus too... we share the kills rather equally now but I think he is a more creative player. Well, he uses a wider range of troops while I concentrate on efficient use of 4 or less troop types.

As an allied example, he'd concentrate on faster tier 1s while I concentrate on the standard unclean/staff/channeler mix.

He would join the combat after one minute, as per instructions. My DS from the unclean would kill the initial non magic resistant troops quickly, then the enemy would manoever his remaining troops more carefully to optimise their abilities to destroy my staff(s) then unclean. At that point my allies horde of cheap, weak yet fast tiers 1s would go screaming in, attacking his healers then the half dead enemies and range troops. This way, he'd get most of the kills in the combat, and I would then get most of the buildings. The main benefit of this may seem lost to most people. Most would believe that all attacking at once from two sides or the same side is better as you overwhelm the enemy with greater numbers. Sure, you can do that and often it gets the enemy killed faster overall, but the chaos on the screen makes it harder to protect your troops, especially from things like dragon spirit, smoke, mine fields (which the DS will let you see) and most especially enemy DS placements. Once the enemy has committed himself to using these battlegears and whatnot, they are on the field and visible to my ally and his tier 1s and he can navigate his way in and up close and personal to the enemy without getting screwed by them, while at that point, I follow by picking off the DS, mines or whatever.

Oh, my allies name is dark_mirror. I should mention that.

Some of the tactics I have posted have been his. Most are mine. Anything that involves an unclean is mine. heh...

in all the games I've played, some people, well, 2 have complained that I abuse DS and that my style was lame. Yeah, it probably is lame to use something so simple, although, I dont use DS concentrated in one spot very much at all (now)... if I seem to, its just the uncleans throwing the bloody things badly. I go for total area covered, not concentration (stacking), although its almost impossible to do that without some areas being a little more concentrated than others. Anyhow, just excuses. The players who did the complaining tended to feature mostly one or two unit types in their armies anyway which kinda takes the teeth out of their criticism.

After my more recent games I dont think the destacking of DS will affect me much at all.

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Channelers

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Where did this idea come from that channelers can only heal three times?

Sure, they only have a maximum of 3 ravens in reserve, but once they use one, that raven's respawn time begins and its quite a short time after foul nest upgrade, which is cheap at 1 yin. They have an advantage compared to the other healers (without horses) in that they can continue to fight, move about or even run while the ravens are respawning. Roughly, they can heal between 4 and 5 times before they run out of ravens as they dont have to be empty of ravens before they begin to respawn. In my experience with healers on horseback/channelers I think their failure is determined by how many healers you have lacking rather than how effective each of them are individually. If you have 10 troops that need healing in the middle of combat, 10 healers could keep them all alive, 5 might save at least 5-7 troops, 3 will save at least 3-4.. etc etc. The problem isn't how good the healers are but rather, how fast any healer can heal. My problems with troop losses are caused by not being able to heal everyone fast enough, not running out of ravens, just the damn delay between healings in general. Serpents geisha with razor fan could keep the whole group alive for a rather brief time, as their stamina is used up very rapidly. But if the serpent has plenty of geisha, they can take turns doing this. Fan geisha make excellent meat shields because of this ability. But not in addition good deliberate one on one healing unless your melee micro skills are fantastic. I find it difficult keeping track of which geisha has enough stamina for basic heling and is in a good safe position to deliberately perform one on one healing for the front line troop that really needs it. If you tell a group of healers to heal one unit, they all try to heal him, the one thats closest actually does the healing (unless it isn't ready to heal) unless that unit is continually hurt before others of that healing group get into range then other geisha in that group will also cast heal. Its a good way of making a unit briefly immortal BTW (shift and right click repeatedly the healing cursor on a damaged unit) But once all the healiers are all in physical proximity to the damaged unit, then they all will eventually be on the same heal rhythm or will sit there passively and heal anyone near them like normal.

As Dark Future said, they all heal at the same speed, ie. If they all had the same resource of stamina or ravens, they'd all cast heal say every 4 secs. Channelers are the best PURE role one on one healers in my opinion as they dont need a horse to heal at their best like a dragon geisha does (geisha save their all their stamina for healing only when on a horse).

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A better use for towers.

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You'd think I was just plain stoopid for sticking a healer in one... well, I was a newbie once.

Now once I got to know the game, I use them almost all the time.

Healers in Towers.

Reasons why they are better than any other unit for tower duty.

Early game, If you get one up there, you can last through some nasty 'looking' rushes.

Sure, you have less troops than him, but his slowly die while yours last and last...

In an early rush, maybe you have 3 combat units with a towered healer and your opponents attacks with 6...

3 units against 6 1st tier, but you got a healer in a tower, by the rice if you're smart.

1. healer wont stop healing till the tower is down (missile towers cant shoot melee units at the foot of the tower)

2. healer has a larger range from the tower

3. healer isn't unable to heal because there's no chance she'll be stuck in melee

4. Units near her stand a great chance of survival through bad odds.

5. Any missile unit you could have had in the tower can still be beside it and still shoot.

6. You can have more than one missile unit beside the tower, continually getting healed when they need it.

7. Healer uses no stamina.

8. Healer does not cause agressive behaviour in the enemy by shooting at them, this is normally bad, it leads to tower damage.

9. Healer can get out and follow your main army after defense is assured... I'd rather have a spare healer than a spare archer following an attack group.

10. Healer has effective battlegear for a change, the tower special. Other regular missile units lose good BG while they're up there, unless you like taking them out to use it then put them back in. Although, scry leaves aint such a biggie.

11. People will think you're nuts and be wrong.

12. The effective range of your missile troops is increased by the range of the healer... You can move your archers or whatever to the limit of her heal range and they are just as protected.

13. Their fragility is removed from the equation.

14. Their embarrassing failure as pure role healers for the Dragon clan is glossed over by finally finding a good spot for them. *not sure thats a good point in this forum ; )

15. Seeing a chick dancing on a tall table does wonders for troop morale. =)

For example;

If you are in trouble and have just one tower, Zymeth is incredible, just dont put him in the tower!

Stick a channeler in the tower... Keep zymeth close to it of course ; )

The enemy with be trying to kill the hero of course and forget the tower for quite a while... When they try to kill zymeths towered healer, it takes a while coz she is in the tower! It takes a LOT of damage to kill zymeth, plenty of time for the channeler to do her thing and keep your pet god alive =)

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Anti Kabuki

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Kabuki's strength versus Lotus lie in their excellent ressistance to explosive damage (warlocks & master warlocks range attack).

So, dont use them against a kabuki toting Dragon.

Use instead unclean (with a few rebirth infesteds as damage sinks and shields optional). Always have channelers with your armies. Always.

Okay, so the units are chosen, now what? The 2 real problems with kabuki are their ability to flashpowder stun to freeze your troops and multiply damage and their stardust

BG which will stop your unclean from firing. Damn that sucks.

The real trick is how you use your death sentry. I was a dedicated DS abuser from day one. Its true. I use it a lot. Although I find it much more effective when its spread all over the place than just on a confined area. Kabukis biggest problem when they attack you is that for both flashpowder and stadust, they have to get inside the missile range of the unclean to do it. Great, that means they also have to walk/run through some DS areas... IF YOU GET THEM DOWN FIRST! If you don't, he can butcher you.

If you do get a few of them down first, his magic-weak kabuki wont survive to deal the damage even if they do manage to flash or stardust.

I've seen some rather scary looking kabuki rushes... 15 of then running through 3 DS to get to my guys, they flashed like hell, my unclean stood there stupidly... the kabuki started to swing their swords... and the kabuki lay down. Phew.

Just get the DS down first. Make sure you have some idea as to where his army is...

Try to use DS defensively, throw it around and ahead of you as you get close to his base. Never run your unclean when you move towards his army ever... running out of stamina and losing your ability to use DS is foolish... keep your head, dont let him surprise your unclean.

Remember, your unclean will all be dead if kabuki surprise them and there's none of your DS on the ground.

Always take a staff with dark canopy with your unclean too... they are slightly more important than getting yor first healer out.

I often have one unclean slightly ahead of the main group. Say for example you have 6 uncleans. So, the one ahead walks towards the enemy base (this is somewhat early game) with the others following.... as soon as you see any sign of the enemies colour on the mini map hit 'n' for hold ground, get that one in front to throw his ds to his maximum range and walk him back to the others, The others will then drop 2 DS at their maximum range towards the base area but covering their flanks too, then one at their feet. Wait a few secs... Yes, these may be wasted DS. But they make an excellent place for your guys to retreat to or a safe place for you to build a tower... Anyhow, move towards that enemy base SLOWLY and start hammering it at maximum range... you will be still in that DS area hopefully. Archers are a problem at this point, be sure to have that staff I mentioned earlier ready to protect them. If the kabuki come then, assume they go for the staff... You will have one or 2 DS still free to use, if you have not used em, USE THEM NOW YOU FOOL! heh...

With surprise, mass kabuki can pretty much kill anything. Whithout surprise they are very fragile. No matter what you do with DS its best use in my opinion is as a defensive screen. Make sure you use it as such and your troops will last. My priorities in battle are not solely dedicated to killing the enemy, I put keeping my troops alive first.

Another option.

Zymeth and 2 unclean can kill 4 minutes worth of kabuki on many terrain features.

One unclean with DS, one with goo.

Have zymeth out front 'screening' the unclean at maximum unclean range. Drop the DS at his feet, drop goo on zymeth directly as the kabuki run forward. They have to run forward. If they just stand there, Zymeth just shoots them, they are forced to act.

Boy, wont your opponent be embarrassed.

Anything you add could help although, some might be more likely to get hurt than help, perhaps a channeler to patch zymeth and flee.

A dark canopy staff adept at max coverage range for zymeth, ie. with your 2 unclean might be seen quickly and targetted... but I think zymeth is the kind of target most poeple will lose their minds when seeing him alone and immediately target him.

All that stuff is said with a hero in attentdance and thats expensive in time and resources. But the DS theory is sound. A meatshield to hold while DS does its thing.

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Issyl & haste

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Use him AND KEEP HIM behind your longest range troops. He will remain out of LOS for the first few important moments of first contact between battlegroups. If he is out of your opponents view, Issyl will get a few hastes going through the combat. 1st on most or all troops (with good timing), 2nd on unclean, leafs and both warlock types. If you use him more than that, he's serving his purpose well and you've got it right =) If he is spotted, and targetted, use CTR + ALT + right click to move (run) him through your battlegroup and tell him to hold ground on the other side. He can slip through your troops but the enemy has to fight everything that tries to stop it. Tell him to always hold ground and click him when he's once again, got enough stamina for BG. Otherwise, keep him surrounded by friendlies if keeping him at the back seems risky.

Personally, I keep him grouped with by 2nd (1st backup) dark canopy staff adept. They are both ordered to hold ground so it limits the need to make deecisions and their BG are both often required at the same time so just hitting 'b' gets dark canopy up beside issyl (added protection) as well as the surrounding troops getting hasted.

Side note, Hasted Channelers with the raven damage upgrade make the best rapid anti-peasant units. They can sprint through dispersed armies, run to rice and kill a peasant each and probably all will escape again. Sometimes the targeting logic will work out magically perfectly as when you tell a group to attack one unit (a peasant), they will spread the load at more convenient targets (other peasants hopefully) in the vicinity.

For lite units like peasants, this is a bit like a range version of glass sword. Although, I'm glad its passive!

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Made by Shatter from the Official BR Forums

[eggna 2]

Shatter can sure type up some good strategies and expierences. I haven't read the whole thing of course but I agree with his healer in tower tactic, its effective and smart. At 1st of course like alot of people I thought more power less thinking, but thats not true at all. A healer is better then a cannoneer 3 times in my opinion. A healer as he pointed out should have a very long range from the tower and she could easily help in a rush if you're out numbered. The Channelers as he explains also are one of the most usefull healer there is, altho she has 3 ravens the respawning time is pretty quick and a good enough deal for me. She is the most powerful in melee too, but thats again just in my mind.

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Hehe, was a very long strategy indeed. I have been playing with lotus and my lotus has somewhat become stong. So I recommend the following for lotus players.

1) If you want to become good with lotus, you must have a strong micro.

not simply just clickling fast, but thinking fast too. It is far easier to

show in the game.

2) Secondly, you must have some good experience with Lotus, my strategy differs significantly depending on the player's clan and his strategy.

For example: you must make DS and DC as soon as possible while

defending against a rush. Ofcourse a tower can help.

Your ally can buy you time for the DC and DS. (dont abuse!).

3) Lotus is considered very powerful thus many people think it is cheap; but in my point of view it is a part of game. And trust me I have seen people stop lotus with dragon. (spear/stun) with a mix of (kabuki/flashpowder).

I have much more to discuss, but this is geared for beginners of Lotus clan.

[Mana 3,867]

Hehe, was a very long strategy indeed.  I have been playing with lotus and my lotus has somewhat become stong.  So I recommend the following for lotus players. 

1) If you want to become good with lotus, you must have a strong micro.

    not simply just clickling fast, but thinking fast too. It is far easier to

    show in the game.

2) Secondly, you must have some good experience with Lotus, my strategy differs significantly depending on the player's clan and his strategy.

                  For example: you must make DS and DC as soon as possible while

                  defending against a rush.  Ofcourse a tower can help.

                  Your ally can buy you time for the DC and DS. (dont abuse!).

3) Lotus is considered very powerful thus many people think it is cheap; but in my point of view it is a part of game.  And trust me I have seen people stop lotus with dragon. (spear/stun) with a mix of (kabuki/flashpowder).

I have much more to discuss, but this is geared for beginners of Lotus clan.

9[/snapback]

I never used DC and always won (When im with Dovesink, he covers the rushes while I use my peasants army to build a keep ) but now I just started using it, but only 1 Unit or 2 max that are equiped with it.

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Hah, well in that case your partner covered for you. I usually pick other clans. I only pick lotus when there might be a chance of an intense game or a game versus big time abusers.

[Mana 3,867]

He covers at start, but then when I have 20 or 30 Master Warlocks (No one knows their weakness ) I easily destroy Especially with the dark energy globe.

[eggna 2]

Yes Zymeth other known as 1nsane always gets his Master Warlocks, pathetic... Takes too long and my army pays for his choices, as does the rice field.

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Like I said before, I play depending on what sort of play the opponent is showing. I usually put 2-4 masterwarlocks/energy globe in the mix. They always help. Other people make only warlocks and there is no unit diversity thus a weak army.

[eggna 2]

A couple of Masters are great but getting 40 of them really extends the time far beyond what it should be for a game and in the proccess if hes alone he might pay or his partner. I just make Warlocks alot but not much. I can whip up about 6 of them in 1 min and 30 sec's so I like em. So I just make them grow and grow then when you have about 20 it can wipe out any army unless 20 Bersekers with shale head to head or a huge army of 30+ wariors. Warlock help out alot for me and their building crushing power helps too. I don't like dc at all since it never works for me but my opponent usually crushes me with it so I just use DS. The best there is, throw in a skull and boom their army is slow and feeble, in a couple of sec's they're dead. Best there is.

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Not only skulls, with a combination of deathwail, goo, the vomit, and soulchill; an army can still own. I always make about 5 channelers to keep the balance between and offence and defence.

[Mana 3,867]

Not only skulls, with a combination of deathwail, goo, the vomit, and soulchill; an army can still own.  I always make about 5 channelers to keep the balance between and offence and defence.

30[/snapback]

You know much more then I do, but I suppose I couldnt learn too much from the demo by playing on the same maps with a stupid ai...

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Hah, then in that case welcome to the world of BR multi-player. There aren't players as noobish as the AI. You will increase in level gameplay.

[[ST]Seraphim 1]

I think lotus has a significant advantage over the other clans. If you mastered the use of dc, ds, dw, and sc, you can't lose to dragon and you'll probably almost never lose to wolf. The key to defeating a person that has mastered the use of the lotus clan lies with proper use of vetkin and utara.

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

exactly thats why you must master your own clans. lol

[eggna 2]

Yes lotus does have an advantage a tad too big and thats what can be unfair fighting agains't them.

[{Dark}poolshark 0]

Okay, I didn't read all that. But I'll trust it's good. I read the leaf rush part. LEAF RUSH IS SO FUN! Dude that is my favorite rush. Leaf have crap defense but man, if they get melee'd they have thorns aura going for them. And they do more damage then they do range, so its great! Leafs! w00t!

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Yea, I remember how me and you used to rule the valley of death. Most of the time you would mass leafs. Its quite a simple rush, but soooo effective!

[{Dark}poolshark 0]

Lol. It is! We did! W00T! Good times, Leafs rock!

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

You know a new rush I saw,.....unclean mass, with gooo!

[{Dark}poolshark 0]

screw that, I made unclean/ds rush ._. Goo is good but not rush that'd take a lil too long

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

not really, its quite magnificent...listen have a few bros bless the uncleans use seperate uncleans and keep slowing down opponents army, quickly get out channelers and your on your way to go.

check this- If your opponent has fire and throws it on the goo...it explodes!

[{Dark}BerZerKer 0]

Zymeth Defence

build a watchtower in the main ejntrance of the base, or where the enemy is most likly to go. summon zymeth and call storm. put him in the tower.

thunder and energy bolt hell for the enemy. he still calls down thunder bolts from the sky, and over a very large area (line of shit from watchtower)

[{Dark}poolshark 0]

Yeah he does. It's good thing. Too bad towers can't move around.

[{Dark}WolfBite 2]

Yes, In the old forums, Lotus had the best defence because of the idea of putting zymeth on a tower.

[eggna 2]

Ya Zymeth casts way more thunder in tower then from ground. I still remember one game many months ago against 1nsane and he had Zymeth in tower with a puny army. Well I send my Necro and enough warriors to destroy him. Well what you know? My so called army gets attacked with 4 lightning attacks at once. My Necro was like almost alone but he kicked alot of ass. I returned to my base with him tho.

That game I had my own record, I had summoned Necromancer 5 times that game! Anybody did it more?