Cost: Free. Manna: 70.

Holy Vision is pretty neat. It's a free look at the enemy. In Warcraft 1, this used to be a spell you researched, but they give it to you for free. I've only had it used against me a few times that I know of, and it really sucked. The other player knew when I did everything. Use holy vision to check out the mines. It's easier then a flying machine and faster. Also the enemy doesn't notice it too often.
When Holy Vision is cast to scout out an area, there is a little sparkle of light (plus you might hear the sound). This is important if you want to know whether your new towns have been discovered, just like watching for scouts and zeppelins.
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SnapDragon.

Cost: 1000 Gold. Manna: 6 per Hit Point. Range: 6. Time to Upgrade: 200.

Really there isn't a whole lot to be said about healing. You cast it, it heals! :)

Healing your guys. Select a group of guys and look at their pictures on the left. Find the ones that are low in health and click on them. This will single out the damaged unit out of a group on the screen and you know who to heal. This is much easier and faster than manually clicking through a group of guys looking for a hurt guy.

The Healing Equation. For every 6 manna, you can heal 1 hit point. So since a Palladin has 255 manna, it can heal 42.5 hit points because 255/6=42.5
Because a Palladin has 90 hit points, it can take over 2 full casts of healing to heal another Palladin.

Cost: 2000 Gold. Manna: 4 per hit point. Range: 10. Time to upgrade: 200 Time Units.

Exorcism is a great counter to Death Knights. You always have plenty of Palladins around so casting Exorcism shouldn't be a problem. Another good thing is that it has a HUGE reach (Range 10, two less than Blizzard). If you played the Orc campaigns you know what I'm talking about. If you see the Dks, get Exorcism. If you kill even 2 Dks, it will be worth it. We could talk about how it works on Skeletons to but like you are going to see any :)

Exorcism is an area attack spell. The difference between Exorcism and Death Coils are that if the enemy is not there, it does not take away magic points. Death Coils, in contrast, take Magic points even if there is nothing there to attack.

A Cool strategy for when playing against orcs is sending in some invisible Paladins. Then find where all the Death Knights are and then use Exorcism on them. Losing a Palladin is much less damaging then losing an Invisible Mage used to Polymorph. Make sure your Paladins are at full magic.

Exorcism cannot be casted on a Death Knight with Unholy Armor. So what you can do is cast unholy armor and haste on a DK. Then you run in and Death and Decay people without fear of exorcism. Your DK can still be polymorphed but nothing else can touch him until the unholy armor wears off.
( Thank you very much to Dark Depeche for this information. )

The Exorcism Equation.
For 4 Manna, 1 hit point is taken away.
So a full cast off 255 manna would do 63.75 hit points of damage since 255/4=63.75. This explains why it takes almost a full cast to kill a Death Knight. Actually if you had 240 Manna, you could kill a Death Knight.

Mages are the Kings of the Warcraft world. They can be unstoppable when properly controlled. One thing you do not want the enemy to do is get a lot of Mages. Mages can be tricky to control. In newbie hands they are almost useless but when they are controlled by someone with a clue, they are deadly. If you play Humans, Mages should always be your goal besides killing the enemy. Here is the human plan: More More More Mages. :)

Cost: Free. Manna: 100. Range: 10

Fireballs fire in a straight line. The damage across that line varies but in some tests the average was about 34 damage. The uniform average damage maybe different but that was the result after one test. Units in the path of the fireball received greater or less than 34.

The tip of the fire ball did the least damage. Damage to units hit with it was usually less than 10 hit points.

The damage path of a Fireball is 8 spaces with the last space receiving the least amount of damage. Surprisingly, the first space does not receive the largest amount of damage.

Fireballs suck. They are slow, hard to hit moving targets, and almost exactly like the same stuff Gryphons and Dragons use. Utterly useless!

Fireballs do a little damage but why even cast them? If you have Mages, you have blizzard and blizzards do much more damage than fireballs. I've heard all of the uses for fireballs and it still doesn't convince me. I've hardly even seen anyone use fireballs in a real game. That's because everyone else knows they suck too :)

The only thing I ever use them for is killing flying machines. I cast slow on the flyers then fireball. Usually it doesn't kill the flyers but it sure annoys the heck out of the enemy :)

If were ever to cast a fire ball in any other situation, you would want a group of enemies, preferably in a long line. Also you would want to cast more than one fireball.

Cost: 500. Manna: 50. Range: 10. Time to Upgrade: 100 Time Units.

Slow is a great spell. It is often the first spell I research since it upgrades fast, (100 time units), and it's cheap (500 Gold). Slow is the most fun spell to use. It annoys the enemy so much and provides you with so much pleasure. It's great for cutting those Ogres down to size. It's neat to cast on Ships and it's really really good on Gryphons/Dragons.

Unlike Haste, Slow does change the speed of a unit attacking. Haste speeds up dragons attacking but that is it. Slow slows down EVERY unit's attack by 1/2. Slow cuts the number of attacks a unit can do in 1/2. So what that means is that someone with slow casted on it, any unit, will only do 1/2 the number as attacks as normal. So if an Ogre does 40 hits normally, it will only do 20 with slow on it. So what this means is a unit with slow on it is only worth 1/2 a normal unit! Pretty amazing.

When slow is casted, it slows down the walking, moving, flying speed of a unit to about 1/2 of normal. So a Slowed Gryphon is about 7. An Ogre around 7. I'm not sure how rounding is done for the odd speed numbers such as 13 for Ogres and 17 for flyers. Really, it doesn't matter.

1/2 the attacks as normal with slow on it means that if you cast Slow on a Bloodlusted Ogre, it will only be about 1.5 times as powerful as a knight or Ogre! So you can use Slow to almost counter the effects of bloodlust!

Slow is just too cool not to use.

Cost: 2000 Gold. Manna 200. Range: 10. Time to Upgrade: 200 Time Units.

There isn't much to this spell. You cast it and poof a Sheep, Seal or Boar. Poly is good for taking out everything. Some really good uses are on Gryphons, Death Knights, Other Mages, and that occasional Ogre or Knight. Polymorph is such a powerful spell. It is really best used on Gryphons or other Mages/DKs.

Fighting Mages on the defensive is really hard sometimes. A good Strategy Gotcha uses in that situation is to make a Mage with at least 200 Mana Invisible. Then you sneak up on a Mage and PolyMorph him. If it is sea, do the pop out of the transport Poly and run. Polymorph is your greatest weapon against other Mages. It instantly ends the life of those pesky Mages. Often you can cast it before the enemy even notices you.

Polymorph is a stealthy spell. Often people don't notice you using it. In the 1 bloody knight story, Ricardo kept Polymorphing my Ogres and I didn't even notice until I started to wonder where my guys were going and I noticed some sheep on a once sheep free island :) In another game I played, I was able to kill 4 Mages with Poly and the enemy never even noticed. I guess he found out sometime. :)

Cost: 2500 Gold. Manna: 200. Range: 6. Time to Upgrade: 200 Time Units.

Invisibility is a great spell. The main use is the invisible Mage to cast Blizzards on peons or other things. Another great thing is the invisible double blizzard. You cast invisibility on 2 Mages then do the double Blizzard on the enemy. Other good uses are casting on Transports and on Palladins for sneaking in and casting Exorcism. You can also invisible flyers for a unannounced peek at the enemy.

Invisibility lasts the same amount of time on all units. So It doesn't matter what you cast it on. It is going to last the same amount of time.

Invisibility lasts the same amount of time whether or not your unit moves. So the time invisibility lasts is in no way affected by moving around a lot with your guy.

Let me dispel a rumor. When you cast invisibility on a unit, no one can see that unit except you. There is a big misunderstanding going on. See the computer CAN always see invisible units. But human players like you and me CAN'T! Just Because the computer's Mages, Death knights and possibly even Catapults can see invisible stuff, everyone has this lame ass idea that we can too. Well It does not work. Our Death Knights or any other units just can't see invisible people. Just because the computer can does not mean we can. The computer can do lots of other stuff that we can't do also. Like healing effectively during a battle, the computer Always knows where you are. The computer never makes mistakes in the building order, it builds the same way every time. So let me make this clear: unless you happen to be a computer yourself, your death knights, mages and whatever Cannot see invisible units.

There is a way to *see* invisible units. Just click and drag your mouse pointer on an empty area where you think there may be an invisible unit. If there is a unit present, it's picture will appear on the screen just like it does for subs. If you select the units picture, it will center on that unit. Unfortunately, it does not follow the unit. You will still have some warning that something is coming your way.

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Robert Di Giovanni

Although this isn't too handy, it might be useful someday. I think it would come in handy when looking for invisible transports. Sometimes you know that an invisible transport is around. This might help you find it. Although it is a long shot, it's better than nothing.

When you cast invisibility on a peasant, and you build a building, the peasant is still invisible when he gets done building something. What I thought would be cool to do is walk through the enemy's village with your invisible peasant then you could build maybe a tower or say a barracks in their town so that they could not see the barracks or tower. Let me make this clear that the building is not invisible, just the peasant building them. Then you could walk right back through the enemy's village unseen. When I tried it, I was able to to walk over the enemy's town, build a few towers and walk back home. All while the guy was still invisible. I think that might come in handy sometime. You could building a tower or barracks right out side their town if you put it some where where they could not see it. I bet you might be able to sneak a tower or barracks right in their town. I've never tested this yet.

Use invisibility on a transport. This is a major strategy in sea games when combined with Mage, Sapper, or attacks. Invisible transports can make the landing on the enemy shore so much safer. My favorite tricks are putting a Mage in the invisible transport, getting out casting a blizzard, then running back in the still invisible transport and running. Another thing I like to do is to pop out of an invisible trans and Polymorph Mages, Dks or other units. Yet another great trick is the invisible transport combined with the pop out double blizzard.

Use invisibility on Flying Machines when you want to scout out the enemies towns. That way no one will shoot at them and your enemy will not know you had a look at them.
( Jowfus told me this one )

You can cast invisibility on Gryphons if you want. I don't see it as being too practical but maybe you will find some use for it.

A cool thing to do is make someone invisible and put a flame shield on them. Then they can walk near guys, buildings, and anything and damage it. The only defense against these invisible flame shield guys is Death and Decay, Blizzards, and ships/catapults because they can attack ground.
( Thanks to Bradley York for this original idea )

Cost: 1000 Gold. Manna 80. Range: 6. Time to Upgrade: 100 Time Units.

Flame Shield isn't really too useful. I've never seen it used in a real game except for the humor value. The main use for it would be for casting it on your knights and charging someone or for casting it on a group of enemies standing together since it's hard to separate them once the shield is cast. But really Blizzards can do almost anything a flame shields can do only better.

Flame Shields Damage The Gryphons And Flying Machines!!!

Here is a really cool neat way for the Humans to kill a Dragon or a Zeppelin. Cast Slow on the dragon. Then cast a flame shield on the nearest guy, Even a peasant! Then have the peasant stand under the Dragon. It will Kill the Dragon!!! Have the peasant chase the Dragon if it tries to run. Its better to cast the flame shield on a Knight, since the Knight is faster. But Its a lot funnier taking down a Dragon with a peasant!!! Check out the implications of this strategy: It only takes 130 magic points to pull this off. You can use this to kill Dragons if you don't have enough magic for polymorph. You have a dead Dragon for sure!! The Orcs have nothing like this, haha.

Cast a flaming Shield on your Ballistas. That way if the enemy does not attack it they are screwed. If they do then they will get screwed by the flaming shield. Cool huh?
( Thanks to Michael Boyko, Gotcha, my roommate and buddy for this one )

Cast a flaming shield on enemies grouped together. Instead of running, the guys will just sit there and take it, haha. And it will be hard to separate the flamed shield guy from the rest and the enemy will end up killing his own guys. This works well.

Cast a flaming Shield on some knights and charge people. That works really good even against bloodlust.

When you cast flaming shield on your own guys, keep them apart so the flaming shields guys do not damage each other.

Cast a flame shield on two or three peons mining and watch gold production drop off dramatically. The peons will kill themselves off. I'm not sure but I think if a peon goes in a mine and the duration has not expired that the spell will be still be in effect when he comes out. This is not as good as death and decay but it works pretty good.
( Thanks to Niko Murrell for reminding me about the flame shield. )

I found another use for a Flame Shield. If you set it on somebody's transport then if he is unloading units, fire will take some points off them. Also if somebody is getting on the transport you can set a ring of fire around him and when he is inside the transport he will damage and maybe sink the transport. There is a little bug in war2 about that though. When a guy with ring of fire around him gets on the transport, the fire stays on the shore line. So if transport leaves the shore right away it won't sink but it will damage it. If you're playing human vs human, then it might be a good strategy against invisible transports, because you will see where it is.
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Knight

I received this and sent this reply to Knight:

So you say if a person with a flame shield gets in a transport then they damage the transport when they are inside it? His reply:

Yes, they do damage the transport while inside. But the ring of fire stays on the shore. The ring of fire seems to be around the ship, but it is actually hitting it. As soon as transport takes off the rind of fire stays on the shore, with nobody in it. This is a sucky bug! It would be soo coool to set a ring of fire on loading people and sink the whole ship!! It doesn't take much time to set a ship on fire!! hehehe :) Anyways, this works good because you see it around the transport and you won't notice that it's hitting it, unless that fag is telling you that :)

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Knight

(Thanks to Knight for this.)

The Humans have a countless number of dirty and wonderful tricks. Make sure you learn and are able to use all of them when needed.

Invisible Mage Blizzard on the peons.
As described on the General Spell page, the Invisible Mage blizzarding the peons is awesome. This is one trick that can cripple the enemy if not destroy them. This isn't anything you can really defend against. Since people can't really defend against it, do it yourself to other people. :)

Healing guy trick. One cool thing to do is attack with one guy and use Palladins to heal him as he is fighting. One game I was watching, Gotcha got attacked by a Gryphon. All he has was one low level archer. Normally this would mean certain death to that archer but this is what Gotcha did: He attacked the Gryphon with the Archer and used Palladins to heal the Archer. He kept healing the archer until the Gryphon died much to the surprise of the enemy. This is just one example. There are other uses for this. The main point is, use healing to keep units fighting a superior army.

Fighting Orc players can be really hard because of one thing.....Bloodlust. Since that is the first thing you should learn to combat, I will address it first. You want a way to defeat bloodlusted Ogres or just plain Knights?
Cast slow on them. That is one of the greatest weapons you have against bloodlust. Slow cuts Bloodlusted Ogres down to only 1.5 times tougher than Knights. Then you add in healing and a greater number of Knights and you will win battles against bloodlust. The only problem is casting the slow. With games at the highest setting like most LOSERS like to play, I know I'm offending everyone :), those Ogres run in and you are dead before you can do anything. Now the Orc players will say, fine screw them they didn't react fast enough. But me, I'm one Orc player that will say, that's wrong. The reason why Orcs dominate so much is a bit contributed to high, delayed games. If you wanna see what I'm talking about, play network games over fast connections. I've played War 2 over local IPX networks and just between me and Gotcha using our ethernets and you would not believe how much better humans do. Personally, I think you can pull this off almost as good with the game speed set just one notch below top. You can see even better results with 2-3 notches down. This doesn't hurt the Orc players since they are able to better control their guys too. The almost unanimous answer to this idea is TOO SLOW. Let me say this to you who say that: Are you Yellar? Are you scared that maybe I just might be right and you might find the enemy performs better and the game becomes harder? I say yes you are yellar! :)

The test of the real player is that they know that top speed does affect the game OR at least they are will to play at a slower speed to humor someone else that believes that. If you would look up Speed Hiker in the War 2 Dictionary you would see it means "a person who is so lame as to refuse at a slower speed and keeps pumping it up to top speed even against the requests of another player." Speed hikers suck.

Back to the topic, cast slow on Ogres. If you've played the first Orc campaigns, you would see how damaging this is to your Ogres. The computer puts slow on all your guys and it's so annoying. Then the Knights move in and beat you up.

I've been watching Gotcha and Ricardo do it and it works so well. They just have 2-4 mages with their knights. Each mage casts slow on 5 guys. Then the Knights attack them. This is particularly effective when the enemy is not bloodlusted. Like I said in the slow section, Slow makes an Ogre, Knight, 1/2 as powerful. So Gotcha attacks Ogres with the Same amount of Knights. He casts slow on the Ogres and ends up winning battles with pretty much all his knights Alive. Then he heals all his knights. PERFECT.

Fighting Bloodlust isn't as simple as saying just cast slow on the Ogres. Because as I'm sure as you know, this isn't easy. Here are some other things to do to fight Bloodlust.

Keep Ogres from Bloodlusting. One trick I've seen used pretty effectively is to station flyers around. When someone sees you bloodlust, they do one of three things either of which can be really effective.

Hit the bloodlusting Ogres with a bit of Blizzard. The Ogres will stop bloodlusting and charge. Then your Knights and the Ogres will be on equal footing. But remember you got that Mage. Cast slow on the enemy to turn the tide in your favor. Something that can help you even more is if the enemy is dumb enough to bloodlust while you are beating on him. The enemy Ogres will stop fighting and you will get even more hits on them, also maybe giving you time to slow his ass :)

Just outright charge with Knights. As an Orc player, I've had that done to me plenty of times. I'll start to bloodlust and just as I'm doing it, the enemy knights will run in and start attacking before I can finish or even start Bloodlusting.

RUN! One thing I've seen good human players do is run until the Bloodlust runs out. Now this can damage you because they will be beating on you while you are running but if they bloodlusted a long ways away, a short quick run is enough time for the bloodlust to wear off. Then if you are an Orc player like me, you would have a smaller number of Ogres because you were counting on bloodlust working and they will have a lot of Knights. :)

All of these things can help Humans overcome bloodlust.

Invade by surprise. One thing you have to watch out for is alerting the enemy to your coming attack. This will give them time to Bloodlust. What you must try to do is get in there beating on the Ogres before the enemy knows what is going on.

First, about putting Mages in Transports. I really don't like to put more than 2 Mages in one transport when the enemy has ability to sink them. That way if a transport goes down, the worst I ever lose is two Mages. Imagine losing 4-6 Mages! I've seen it happen and have done it to other people. For this reason, I try to keep the number of Mages in one transport, with danger around, from 2-3.

If you plan to go Mage time on the Sea, get at least two Mage towers and a bunch of Mages.

Humans rule the seas because of the following things:

Blizzard on peons and run. You make a transport invisible. You then put one Mage inside. You land on the enemy shore nearest the enemy mine. You pop out, blizzard on the peons, get back inside and run. On many maps, this is easy. On some maps and some Positions, you need the Invisible Blizzard trick.

Invisible Blizzard and run. You use this when you can't easy reach the enemy peons on Gold near the shore. What you do is grab 3 Mages with Full Mana. Stick two of them in a transport and make it invisible with the 3rd Mage. Then head for the enemy. Once you are at the enemy's shore, unload the two Mages. Immediately take on Mage and make the other Invisible. Then make sure you take that same Mage that casted the Invisibility and put him back in the transport. Now you should have your invisible Transport on the shore and your invisible Mage. All unseen by the enemy. With that Mage, walk to the enemy peons and cast Blizzard on them. Then as quickly as possible run back to the transport, get in and run. Most likely, you will not be able to get that Mage back to the transport. So rather than leading them back to the trans, commit suicide with him :) If you think you are really cool, take an extra Mage in the transport with full Mana. Have him pop out of the transport and cast invisibility on it again when it wears off. If you think you are really really cool, take four Mages. Use the first two same as before, with the 3rd Mage, make the transport invisible again and get back in it, with the 4th one, make that second Mage who blizzarded the enemy invisible again. Then get him back in the transport. If you are really lucky, you get home with all four still alive. Yeah right! :) I'd play it safe and go with 2 Mages. I wouldn't want to have to kill myself when I lost a transport full of four Mages :)

Exorcism hit and run. This is pretty simple, you send in a Palladin with full Mana, cast it on DKs, and RUN! For added success, make the Palladin invisible and send him in. If you are playing on sea, full a transport with 1 or 2 Palladins, make the transport invisible, pop out, cast the Exorcism, get back in the trans and run for it! If it's really hard to get to the DKs, make a transport invisible and put in a Mage and Palladin with full mana. When you land, have the Mage cast Invisibility on the Palladin and get back in the transport and head home. Don't worry about the Palladin. If you can save him try, but you probably don't want to lead the enemy back to your transport just to save one Knight. You might lose the Mage, Trans, and Knight instead of just the Knight.

Polymorph and Run. You stick 1 or 2 Mages in a transport and make it invisible. You send the transport to enemy shores. You land the Mages, pop out, polymorph, get back inside and go home. This is what you do against other Mages.

Double Blizzard and run. You take 3 Mages with full health. Use one to make the transport invisible. Put two Mages inside. Head to the enemy shore, get out with two mages and use the Double Blizzard mentioned on the General Strategy page.

Invisible Double Blizzard and Run. You take 5 Mages with at least 200 Mana. Use one to make the transport invisible. Put four Mages inside. When you land on the enemy have all four Mages get out. Use two Mages to cast Invisibility on the other two. Then have them get back inside. Have the two Invisible Mages walk until they are near the group of Ogres or Knights. Then use the Double Blizzard strat. Then run like hell back to the transport and head home quick. For added security or danger rather, add a 5th Mage in the transport to make it invisible again.