Blight of the Immortals - Strategy

I've been playing a lot of Blight of the Immortals lately. It's a web-based game that's probably best described as a "slot, coop RTS". You control a number of cities (along with 3-7 other players) and fight against the zombie invasion. Each city is home of a race with a different power and different strengths (more on that in a moment). There are six "factions" each with their own currency and that gives the boards a certain "terrain" to them. I haven't been able to find a good site with any strategy for the game so I figured I'd work on it.

Unit Strategy:
Blue:
Men: 8 units for 8 coins. Passive: None, Active: 2 blue to "replenish" the recharge on a location they're sitting. A 1:1 ratio is average for this game. These are the workhorses of the blue army and the "common" blue unit. They're active isn't great except for emergencies although you might have a workable strategy by putting an extra unit of men on a good ratio unit like Cyclops, Treefolk or Trolls and using it to double their production.

Wizards: 2 units for 15 coins: Passive: None, Active: 5 blue to cast a storm on a unit that depletes it of 1% (minimum 1) of their strength rounded up per hour. These are great units for big stacks but they're really subpar for smaller stacks. For most stacks, they don't outpace city growth, so they can't wipe out the zombies in a city. They're the most expensive unit in the game and they're active ability is expensive as well. Generally, I'd consider elves and Orc Shaman to be better investments. There power doesn't scale in any way either. It is definitely one you want to keep out of the hands of the zombies, however.

Merchants: 1 unit for 5 coins: Passive: 2 extra taxes of the type that they're residing in (if it's yours), Active: 2 extra taxes per market level of the type they're residing in if it's foreign (cost 1 blue). You want lots of these as money permits. Get them into allied cities and start using their active ability. You're essentially converting 1 blue coin into 8 of another color so it's a no-brainer. Also, it seems every Merchant city automatically starts with a max level market.

Sorcerous: 2 units for 8 coins: Passive: None, Active: 2 coins to purify the blight from a city. This will cause the zombies to scatter randomly and (importantly) will wipe the blight clear of that city. Two things. First, you won't get bonuses for freeing the city after you've done this. Secondly, in this version, this power is of limited use (although still good). In the newest version, population of a city begins to matter so it makes a bigger difference.

Blue summary: Blue is probably the least intimidating zombies around. None of them have particularly high growth rates and the only really scary power in the hands of the zombies is the wizards. Even the men, the one unit type with a decent growth rate, gets a "bad" zombie power vs.  a "good" one. Blue clusters also seem to be the "biggest" of any race (followed closely by green).

Orange:
Goblins: 5 units for 5 coins. Passive: None, Active: 1 coins to plunder the city, reducing it's market to zero and giving you a bunch of coins per market level (4?). I'm not sure I use this enough. These guys probably should be on every border town and plundering before retreating. The conversion rate is pretty good. I'm content to let these fall into the hands of the zombies on most occasions as their low growth rate and crappy zombie power isn't particularly bothersome. These are the "common" units for Orange.

Trolls: 30 units for 20 coins. Passive: None, Active: 2 coins to do 2 points of damage to every stack within an 18 hour march. These guys get out of hand quickly as zombies. Along with Treants, these are two of the most important unit to keep away from the zombies. They grow in size quickly and the zombies propensity to split stacks ends up with lots of war dances happening.

Assassins: 5 units for 8 coins: Passive: none, Active: 1 coin to go stealthy. When stealthed, you'll inflict double damage and then flee in a random direction. These are amazing but you have to be careful. They're best when running into a large stack on a road because "random" will always be "back the way they came". Also, if you have a city where the random chance isn't likely to hurt you (i.e. you control most or all of the connected cities) they can be great. Finally, if you know you're likely to wipe out the defenders of a city, you can send them in stealth and then reverse their direction mid-march once they start fleeing. A very good unit, especially once they get a little bit of experience and a couple stack levels to them.

Hobgoblins: 15 units for 10 coins: Passive: half casualties, Active: Goblin Commander. 2 coins to give all goblins in range an extra 5 strength (permanently!). This has a really long cooldown (46 hours I think) but you can theoretically get your goblins up to something like a 15/12 ratio by using this frequently. If you have two stacks of goblins within range, 30/22 becomes achievable which is quite good. These guys themselves have a good ratio and put out large numbers. Be careful attacking zombie versions of them as you won't take many off a stack if you lose. I don't think their passive mitigates things like Orc Shaman and Elven specials but I'm not sure.

Orange summary: Keep the trolls away from the zombies. I prioritize walls on troll cities and I make sure that I've always got a decent stack near them. Assassins can also be somewhat annoying but you can often attack them with special powers to mitigate their deadliness. Keeping the Hobgoblins feeding stacks of Goblins is critical to getting efficient use of coins.

Green:
Elves: 6 units for 6 coins. Passive: none, Active: 1 coin to sacrifice 2 strength to destroy 10% of a stack after 18 hours. This is probably the most useful power to destroy big stacks. It survives the annihilation of the elf stack. Yes, the loss of 2 strength is annoying. But the ability to wipe out 20-30 units in a stack at once is big. These are one of the few units that I tend to get multiples of specifically for this reason. These are the common units of the Green army.

Centaurs: 12 units for 10 coins. Passive: Double movement speed, Active: 1 coin to double the movement speed of a nearby unit. The range on their special is short but the fact that they have a good reinforcement ratio (6:5) and their passive being one of the best passives in the game makes them a great unit. There's usually 2 centaurs in most green clusters so they can grow into a pretty hefty stack size.

Treants: 50 units for 30 coins. Passive: Half movement speed, Active: 2 coins to freeze an enemy stack and do 1 point of damage per hour. This is probably the best power in the game. It's essentially a combination of the wizard and the cyclops all for 2 coins. It's range is really short and the treefolk are slow which are big drawbacks. The treants reinforcement size is huge and they WILL get out of hand when the zombies get ahold of them. Like the Trolls, you have to put a stop to this.

Gnomes: 4 units for 2 coins. Passive: Immune to magic (can't be targeted by spells... not sure if this makes them immune to troll stomp or not), Active: Anti-magic shield (a little fuzzy on this one too). They have a great ratio (2:1 is the best in the game) but very small nominal numbers. Still, you should never miss an opportunity to reinforce with them. Interestingly, they're a nice unit to "give" to the zombies as they grow so slow that it's a lot better they take these then the Treants or Centaurs.

Green summary: Probably the most well rounded of the colors. They have two very, very good abilities and the fastest growing unit in the game. The flip side of this is that if your green player is poor, your zombie hordes are going to be rough (multiple elf and treant stacks can get very frustrating to fight against.

Red:
Orcs: 10 strength for 8 coins. Passive: Double dice rolls against zombies, Passive: 2 coin and 5 strength to provide a full reinforce stack to a neighbor. The combo here is clear. Use these guys to mercilessly power up a stack of Trolls or Treants. You could grow your numbers very, very fast this way. The cooldown is long but you want to plan around this combo because it's so strong. These are the common red army. They also grow reasonably fast (10 per day with better than 1:1 ratio) and their passive is quite good both for attacking and for keeping their casualties down (remember, your die roll mitigates casualties lost).

Orc Shaman: 3 strength for 8 coins, Active: none, Passive: 2 coins to do 10 damage +1d6 per lvl of strength of the shaman instantly. These are the best unit in the game, IMO. Their active is awesome and one of the few offensive abilities that scales (it's not uncommon for me to have a lvl 10-15 stack of these by the end of the game. The fact that they can just "poof" wipe out a stack is incredible. Needless to say, don't let them fall into the enemy hands as they can get pretty ugly. There's usually 2 orc shaman in most red clusters.

Red Summary: Two of the best units in the game. I'm eager to see what new units the devs have for these guys but my sense is that they're likely to be the strongest race after they get their full four.

Yellow:
Dwarves: 12 Strength for 12 coins, Passive: +10 Defense if they have walls and are the largest stack in a city, Active: 2 coins to level up the walls of a city. The common yellow unit. These guys are nice and you can get a decent stack of them (although 1:1 efficiency isn't exactly fantastic). Their ability should be used at every opportunity as it'll save a ton of money in the long haul. It has a long cool down, however.

Cyclops: 15 strength for 8 coins, Passive: None, Active: 2 coins to freeze an enemy stack for 24 hours. The best conversion rate in the game (outside of the slow growing gnomes) and a killer active ability. These guys are pretty brutal. They're probably the third worst unit to fall into the hands of the blight. The blight seems VERY smart about how it uses the freeze ability (I'm in one game where a combination of cyclops and wizards just decimated my troops through a choke point).

Yellow summary: Like Red, I'm sure there's more units coming for these guys. It'll be interesting to see how they round them out. Right now they're solid but definitely mid-pack and more of a "defensive" hold the line kind of army then a terribly strong attacking army.

Purple:
Fey: 8 strength for 8 coins, Passive: None, Active: 2 coins to "turn off" the active abilities of a stack for 24 hours. The recharge on their active is fairly short so you can generally keep a single zombie unit permanently befuzzled. This is great for shutting down wizards, cyclops and orc shaman that are becoming problematic. This is their "Common" unit.

Nymph: 2 strength for 6 coins, Passive: None, Active: 2 coins to dispel magic. I think this might be the crappiest unit in the game. The power has a crazy high range and I still make them (usually cause I have surplus purples out the wazoo) but they just don't grow in strength enough nor is their power particularly great. It doesn't stop trolls or orc shaman. It only stops wizards, treants and cyclops if  you catch it early. Elves are really the only thing it stops cold (because elves basically has an 18 hour delay before they hit you). So if you're fighting a lot of undead elves, go for it. Otherwise, use them as defensive holders in +40 cities and maybe save some units from wizard damage every once in awhile. There's two nymphs in most purple clusters.

Purple summary: Probably the weakest race. Their powers are not great and their growth rate is terrible (neither efficient nor particularly fast). They seem to need the most love from the devs with the next round of updates. Note: I always have lots of surplus purples. Once you have your cities fully developed you're netting 4 coins per pay cycle IF you buy both nymph reinforces each cycle. As a result, try to plan early to build up defenses a little more aggressively then you would with other races.