The hand is difficult to control because your graphics are too highly detailed. Try reducing the detail level, or reducing the actual display (from 1200x600 to 600x800 or something). You’ll notice a slight difference, but since you can zoom anyway it won’t be that big a deal. At least, this helped me a lot.
Breeder disciples like to hang out and wait for members of the opposite sex to come by. They’re most active in the early evening during ‘Free Time’. You can change the time of day by clicking on the sky, but ya don’t have to. Just make sure there’s lots of houses. Placing a fertility statue or nursery improves the birth-rate in homes nearby… makes 'em wanna breed more or something.
Ranged units are good on the walls, especially when you cover 'em with a shield, and double-especially good when they’ve got flaming arrows. Make sure the wall is facing outward (towards the enemy) and select your army, then click on the wall. They should move towards nearby towers, then appear on the wall itself. If they get stuck, try clicking the ground nearby, let 'em regroup, then click the wall again.
Catapults are good at taking down enemy walls. Your creature, and your miracles, are good at taking down enemy catapults. It takes a long time, and you will lose a lot of men, fighting an enemy catapult with only archers.
To build a wall outside of your influence, you need to click on an END tower of an existing wall, or just start the new wall inside your influence. You can’t make a three-way wall like a Y shape or anything, but you can get rather creative with curves and end placement and come up with some… interesting… layouts.
One of my favorites is to build a wall with a door, a wall with two gaps, and another wall with a door. It should look something like this:
//////========* gate *=========///////\
Mountain===* ========= *=====///////\
//////=======* gate *==========///////\
Leave both gates open, and line the INNER wall with archers. You can put some on the other two walls as well, but you need 'em on the inside.
The enemy platoons will walk up to your city, make a beeline through the first gate, then turn to go through one of the gaps and enter firing range for your archers. Close the outer gate behind them so they can’t escape. Then close the inner gate so they can’t reach your town.
Laugh as your archers slaughter the helpless enemy.
Open the gates again to let more troops advance on your city.
Lather, rinse, repeat. The computer will never learn. Ever.
But they will, once in a while, send a catapult at your gates. This is a Very Bad Thing. Just send your critter after it, or toss a miracle, and rebuild the walls.
And ‘impressive area’ doesn’t really mean much here. Just build ten impressive buildings (wells, fountains, etc) and ya get the reward.
Some general tips:
Build several fields in fertile land. Build TWO granaries next to each other, and between the field and your storehouses. Build a university near the granaries and the field (You can tell when it’s close enough to improve the bonus by the little dark-green gear icon). The university improves the yeild of the fields, the granaries improve the amount of grain harvested, and the granaries improve each other, and the university improves both the granaries. Don’t bother making refiners, but make about 10-20 Disciple Farmers and you can feed a pretty big city.
Repeat the trick with the refinery near the ore mine. Granted, on this map the mine is bottomless, but in the future you’re gonna run into some serious ore shortage issues. It’s good to practice.
You can also use the lumber mill to improve wood production, but I find it’s more enjoyable to just take care of a nice thick forest. Trees will grow if watered, and if in a fertile area, will spawn more trees, which will grow if watered and spawn more trees… etc etc. The multi-grab upgrade comes in handy here, although it slows down a lot once ya get 5000 units or so (About four trees) in yer hand.
Housing can be tricky. Unless you wanna be evil, never build houses or hovels. They’re unpleasant to live in and reduce happiness all around them. Villas are my personal preference… not bad, good density, and they don’t need ore like mansions do. Ore is another good reason to avoid skyscrapers, although if you’re running out of land you might have to build a few. Nice an’ tall, just be careful they don’t fall down (hint hint).
Again assuming you’re playing a good god, you can increase the happiness of the villagers with the various buildings. Taverns, baths, temples, especially the stadium make your town more pleasant. Meadows can make it look nicer, and fountains, lamps, and the like can make it even nicer.
Hmm… can’t think of much more else to say that wouldn’t spoil the game for ya. Lemme know after ya finish the game once thru, or get stuck, an’ I’ll try to help ya out again.
And don’t hold your breath looking for multiplayer. They ain’t gonna make it. It just wouldn’t work with this game like it woulda with B&W I.
