The Five Pillars

It's simple and to the point. These are the things you really need to do if you are in fear of surviving:

Classic Server

1. Forts
The best thing to do before leaving the 300 turn protection is to have at least 15 forts built, and maintain them. It's really hard to kill someone when this is done, and then 2 cast of disbandable fodder is added. This only applies to researching phase though. As long as you aren't attacking others, then you won't have to worry over dying during this. If you lose forts from attacks, then rebuild them.

After the research phase, you want to try to up your amount of forts to between 20 to 25. By this time you will be stacking better units. Although you could survive day to day randoms with less than this, if you happen to violate a guild ROE, you are subject to a BBQ session without warning. However, most guilds tend to try diplomacy first to resolve the matter.

2. Barriers
During the research phase, maintaining barriers is not a huge worry, but it can be a downfall if you don't. The ideal perspective on this is to have at least 2.5% of your land in barriers. This gives you 75% protection over incoming spells/items.
My personal rule of thumb is to build to 2.5%, then add an additional 2 or 3, just in case of someone spelling. That way, if you do lose a few, you don't have to rebuild as many to return to 2.5%.
There are also enchantment barriers that guard against other magics:
Fire barrier>protects against incoming ice spells
Mist of the Swamp>protects mainly against plains spells
Psychic Barrier> protects against all colors, with it varying according to friendliness to blue mages
Light of the Desert Sun> protects mainly against black spells

These not only protect you from incoming bad enchantments of the specified colors, they also reduce the incoming affect of spells cast during battle.

If I missed one here, please, someone add it

Now we've covered the land basics, but there is another factor: Spelling

In particular, having a war enchantment cast on your kingdom by an opposing mage is quite a nuisance, especially if you innocent of any crime, much like DarkL0rd.

The enchantments I speak of are these:
Frightening Howls
Vegetation Decay
Swamp Plague
Eternal Winter
Flood

I didn't include Sandstorm, since it's an item destruction spell, where these actually affect your kingdom as you take turns. I also didn't include the description of what each does, since I do want you to read the thread on DL's guild to killing.

The biggest issue you can face with these spells is dispelling, especially after a BBQ. Chances are you have been item bombed, with every attempt to drain you mana reserves, so there are definitely items you want to stockpile to help you with this particular situation:
Red Eyes>gives 45k-50k red mana
Dusk Crystals>gives 45k-50k black mana
Crystal of the Ice Eye>gives 45k-50k blue mana
Sand Crystals>gives 45k-50k white mana
Amber Crystals> gives 45k-50k green mana

Also another item, if you can get them is the rainbow crystal. These will give you approximately 100k of your main mana color, plus 50k each of the off color manas.

You want these if you have been drained after a BBQ. You may log in, find yourself with less than 10 forts, and have all five of the enchantment spells cast on your kingdom.

Very important!!! If you log in and find you were just BBQ'd, wait a few more hours to dispell, or pick a time you don't normally log in to play to attempt to dispell.

The reason is simple: there is usually someone waiting for you to move and dispell so they can immediately respell you. This burns your turns, your mana, and costs you more forts if you didn't dispell quick enough.

Now for techniques on dispelling. From my understanding, you want to dispell the enchantments in this order:
1. Flood
2. Eternal Winter
3. Swamp Plague
4. Vegetation Decay
5. Frightening Howls

The reason for this is each spells ability to take forts, which DL touches on in his guide. This offers you the best chance of survival, and maintaining what forts you still have.

Now, dispelling is a bit more tricky. Every mage has a Spell Level (generally refered to as SL, as I will refer to it this way from this point forward). The higher the SL, the harder it is to dispell, which means the more mana it will cost you to be rid of it.

I use a general rule of thumb that all spells, if your SL equals the caster's, take 55k of mana to dispell. If a mages SL is higher, I divide the amount by my SL, then multiply that by the caster's SL.

There are a couple of calculators out there to aid with this, if someone can provide the locations, it would be helpful.

Lastly, preparation prior to an expected BBQ is also another way to help with survival. If you are at war with another guild, and you fear an impending BBQ, sometimes it is best to fortify your kingdom. This is especially true if your opposition is an extremely active guild.

Inflate your NP well above the usual realm, but with mass fodder in your mid stacking to provide quicker protection with the least loss of land. Shopping the market, if you can afford it, will also add to that inflated NP once you have cast as far as you can. What this does is reduce the number of attacks needed to put you in protection. Others will argue against this. Quicker protection means less land loss, thus fewer forts lost before reaching protection. Now they have a harder time killing you.


Also, you want to build up more forts, since the purpose of the BBQ is to take all your forts if possible. During war, especially if you are in a very active war, it is a good thing to keep 30+ forts, even 40+ if possible. This does reduce your gold income a small percentage due to upkeep, but it also makes the task of killing you a bit more difficult.

Now, I'll give you a breather for a bit, and let a couple of others voice anything they wish to add.

I'll also be adding for the Normal server, since there are some slight variations to the beginning versus Classic.

Quick tip on dispelling
colour of caster related to the spell also has a bearing
blue casting - EW
green - flood
etc need more mana to dispell than say black EW or red flood

The formula is (caster SL/your SL) * 2 * spell cost
rounding up for all decimals to the next whole number, thus if dividing their casting level by yours yields 4.2, then round up to 5.

So if a mage with a spell level of 400 spells a mage with a spell level of 200, with say EW that has a casting cost of 25000. Then
400 divided by 200 yields 2 then times 2 yielding 4 then times 25000 then yields 100,000

thus the mana you would need to dispel EW would be 100k of mana.

though apparently as stated there are other factors then just the mere formula at play.

tossing in an extra 1-5k may not be bad. Its much better then losing 100k because of the other factors.

it's a bit easier for low level mages to disspell higher level mages' spells. Not sure how much though.

Grimwood´s hints how to survive killing:

Mante already said a lot but I wanna go more in details. WARNING: My short hints here are mainly for more or less experienced mages that at least dispelled once in their T5P-life.

Mante said that if you were just BBQed you should wait a bit (some hours) to dispel and rebuild. Usually I would say that is true BUT you also risk that more and more enemy mages come online, Eagle Eye you, take your mana with crystals, take your population, take your turns,....

So my general rule is: Evaluate the situation!!!

Questions:

- How many turns do I have atm?
- How many enemy mages seem to be active?
- How much mana I have in my bottles and how many crystals I have?
- How does population look like?
- How do I feel? (might sound strange but it is important! Never do risky things with headaches, when you are drunk,...)
- ...


In my eyes it is often a must to move exactly when enemies are working on you. Many players do the mistake that they wait but well organized guilds/war groups will exactly use that.

Now you will say "Man, they are all online and will spell me again when I dispel!". I say... "who cares that they are online?"

All you need is a fast connection and a feeling what to do.

So let us imagine you are fully spelled and you see that few mages already start to item you but still you have lot of turns and mana. MY RULE: Do not wait! Recover now!!!

And how?

Open several windows with right click:

If you have enough mana then the first windows are the dispels, if not you can throw crystals in between. After the dispel windows you can have up to 20 windows (my record was a 25 windows dispel run) it all depends on your shape but if you were burn landed, I usually have there "Build workshops" (number depends), "call mana acres" (depends on mana you need), " charge a lot" (You will need mana for more dispels afterwards), "build forts", "build bars".
The number of windows will increase if your kingdom is in a bad shape (pop gone, mana gone, ...).

Then if all windows are ready, take a deep breath and then activate one after the other. YOU NEED A FAST CONNECTION FOR THAT!
Always wait until you see that current window´s work was done, then jump to the next.

The big advantage of this method is that you can do many turns in few seconds. Your goal has to be to be fast enough so others cannot respel. 5 seconds is a good time and usually fast enough to escape.

You understood all?

This way I escaped several spell traps and high level BBQs against myself in two years. But I also saw people dying because of that:

Reasons:
- did not notice that one spell was not dispelled and continued
- were too slow and got respelled

Grimwood

/me has known the adrenline rush when you sucessfully do what grim's just described

ow yeah grim, thats imho the best way to do it
and as pen says, those 5 secs really give ya an adreneline rush like you've never felt before in t5p

Anyone know the time record for this method ?

Depends on the number of open windows and connection speed.

But three seconds is a good time I think.

Here's a link to Starlords Dispelculator v.0.6