Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods

a PC computer game by Lionhead Studios.

Walkthrough

Overall impression:
It's more of the same.  If you love B&W2, you’ll probably like this one also. 

A fan-patch (last updated March 2018) has been released to make the game compatible with win10.
It is a game with decent replayability. I still give it an occasionally run every few years, 12 years after its initial release in 2006.

Starting the game:

• It appears to be far easier to import your creature from B&W2 than to raise a new one.
  Even though for some reason, in every new land you (again) need to remind your creature of a lot of things, I find it less of a hassle than starting all over again.
   
• I chose custom setting. That way, I started with a lot more tribute (>1,000,000) that I could spend as I liked. Even if you have preference for very good or very evil, custom setting gives you IMO more to start with than the preset good or evil.

Basic tactics.

• The only wonder that I ever built was the siren wonder.
  It gives the same impressiveness (3000) and tribute (100,000), but requires less wood and ore to build than the others.
   
• It is perfectly possible to win this game without getting much outside your city walls.
  All you need to do is build a few siren wonders and lots of impressive buildings, and the enemy cities will fall in your lap without a problem. The siren never needs to be fired to win the game.
  If you have enough villagers to charge one, you’re probably already doing pretty well with your town anyway.
   

• Worshippers at the altar seem to be the most important disciples in this game.
  You’ll need plentiful manna for your miracles.  
   

• Direct military attack is impossible in the beginning. Enemy soldiers are plentiful, and expert level.
  You start with few villagers, and for quite a while, you will not have enough to even raise a platoon.
  By the time you have expanded sufficiently to raise a large enough army to take on Ugly, his towns will probably  already have converted if you build impressively.  
   
• Military conquest is possible by avoiding impressive buildings and placing many houses to quickly grow your population.  Ugly's defense are quite strong, your creature can break down the walls and reduce the number of soldiers before you ever attack. When you are ready, have the creature help the soldiers by raising morale and healing them as often as possible. 
   
• You can also attack by expanding your influence into Ugly's city, and then burn his city down with your lava miracles.
  
   

Defending your town:

• Archers on the city walls are the most effective defenders, as long as the walls are intact.
  If you have enough of them, they are also deadly to the enemy creature once they start shooting fire arrows.
  
  Alternatively: build double reinforced walls within your influence ring. If catapults come near, drop a rock on top of them. That way, you won't need to defend your walls at all. The enemy's creature will not attack double reinforced walls. 
   

• It is well possible to play the entire game without ever having one soldier (other than needed for the mine challenge in the 3rd Japanese land.)
   
• The fire miracle is quite effective to wipe out any enemy that comes into your influence. As long as you don’t buy the “expert miracle”, it does not seem to damage your own people or buildings (much).
   
• The verdant miracle is just as effective. Its manna cost is more than double, but its reach seems to be a bit wider. It turns the undead enemies into cattle, sheep, swine, bunnies...
  They do not last more than a few minutes though before they all fall over and die.
  The verdant miracle doesn’t seem to work on “live” enemy soldiers or the catapults.
   
• A good tactic is to build a siren epic on the inside of your city walls. Its influence reaches well beyond the wall, so that you will get an early warning. You can also use several taverns for the same result, but less impressiveness.
   
• When enemies enter your influence area: a bell starts tolling. When the enemy is inside the walls, or catapults attack the walls, many bells will be ringing simultaneously. Do something about it.
   
• If you ever need to boost  your villager numbers quickly, consider using your tribute to bring 100 archers or soldiers “from the previous land.” If you disband the platoon immediately, you have 100 extra villagers without needing to wait for those breeders to do “whatever they do”.
   

Land 1: intro.

Land 2: JAPANESE COUNTRY.

You start this land on a lone table mountain (mesa) with a completed wall north and south, and several incomplete walls on the east side.

1. Do not close the incomplete walls, but drag the nearest tower on the Northeast side of the mesa around the foot of the mesa to the one on the Southeast side. This will temporary prevent access to the bottomless mine on the Eastside of town, but you get the extra tribute for enclosing the town that much quicker. Once that wall is completed, put a gate in the wall, so your creature can go play with some enemy platoons.
    
2. Build a siren wonder right next to that wall on the north side.
   Once completed, its influence will reach across the existing north wall. That is where the enemies will start coming first.  
   If you just dump the supplies onto the foundation, the villagers will build it for you, or you can leash your creature to it to build it. That way you do not use so much wood and ore as with god-building.
    
3. Build an altar right next to it.
   If enemies do get into your town, they seem to concentrate on destroying that second altar, rather than other larger buildings. Once your walls are secure, get rid of the first altar, less distance walk for your villagers. 
    
4. Enemy attacks will come from the north-west first.
   You will have to deal with the catapults before they attack your walls.  If they do show up, just drop a big rock (plenty of those around) or a fire miracle on top of them. Thanks to your siren epic, your influence reaches far enough that you can easily do that. Use taverns to spread it even further. 
   The platoons will not try to come closer as long as the walls are intact. They will even be so nice to all get together in one large group, so you can easily eliminate four or five platoons at once with a single fire or verdant miracle.
    
5. The enemy god may throw “dead” miracles into your town and create undead platoons within your walls.
   Protect the city with the shield miracle to prevent them from spawning. If you miss one, you can kill them with fire or verdant miracles, or have your creature take care of them. If your creature is nearby, they will attack him rather than the town.
    
6.  By that time, your advisers will have reminded you that you need to look for the men of the village. Send your creature northward up the hill. There is a prison close to the enemy city. It is the building that is surrounded by a purple haze. Have creature attack the gates to free the men. Ugly is so nice to throw rocks at your creature. If you move creature around a little bit, he doesn't get hit, but it helps in destroying the gate.
    
7. When the men are halfway down the hill, Ugly will roll a few huge boulders down the hill.
   If you do nothing, they may roll over your escaping villagers and kill quite a few of them.
   Have your creature stand in the middle of the path and take a hit from the largest boulder to deflect the boulder sufficiently to miss the men, and with a little bit of luck even your town walls.
    
8. From here on, it is very simple: build and expand as fast you can.
   Place a second siren miracle to expand your influence over the south wall, and a third eastward towards the mine so you can cover those sides in case of attack.
    
9. When the first town converts, the attack from the west side will stop, but attackers will start coming more from the east side.
   Close the walls on that side, or just let them come and deal with them one at a time.
   
   When the second town converts, Ugly raises his undead gorilla. It’s a real doozy. Three fire miracles or a good sized rock on his head a few times takes care of him every time. Your own creature can beat him up every time too.
    
10. If you expand northward towards the enemy citadel, you can build a wall to close him in.
    If the enemy uses lava miracles on the hillside ( e.g. when you send soldiers there or park archers on that wall), just cool the lava down with water. Archers on the wall will prevent any platoons or the enemy creature from coming down the hill, so you can get busy building a nice town.
     
11. If you build impressively, it should not be very long before the citadel converts too.
     

12. Silver Scrolls
    1. Whack-a-skeleton: a fast-paced game. try to hit as many skeletons as possible, without hitting your villagers.
    2. The dancing skeletons: The missionaries are undead, and dance to your bidding. You need to make all of them dance at the same time.
       
       To solve this, make a grid, and write down the numbers that each skeleton switches. I listed the grid for my game.
       If you push a few coffins at random, it won’t be long before you see the complement of one of those switches:
       the ones that are NOT dancing, are the ones marked on a horizontal line in the grid.
       Then push the correct coffin to get them all going.
        

Land 3: NORSE LAND.

Silver scrolls:

1. The sliding puzzle: makes the enemy creature nice for a little while.
2. The 2 torches: give one of the torches to your creature, swap the other one, and then take the first torch back.
3. curling: use one puck to push as many out of the circle as possible.
4. The cursed forest ?

You start this land in the very south, and it’s again all uphill from there. The ore supply is rather limited in the beginning, so do not waste it.  
There are many Norse villages to conquer. Every time you get one of his towns, Ugly will destroy it. It is easier to just convert them, rather than having to pick up the pieces afterwards. The newly converted will also bring enough ore for you to keep building whatever you need to build.

If you get upset by the messages of villagers being sacrificed, solve the sliding puzzle every time you hear Ugly announce that he wants someone. That will make the wolf nice for a while.  The game goes faster if you just ignore them.

1. Close the walls, and make sure you can reach over them by either putting a siren wonder next to them, or building enough houses / taverns outside the walls that you have enough reach to drop a rock onto any catapult that comes near them.
    
2. Start building whatever your town center tells you to build. If you get short on ore, limit yourself for a while to altars, creature pens, villas, taverns and nurseries. That way you can expand your city quickly without needing any ore.
    
3. Again, whenever Ugly fires a “dead” miracle within your walls, either hit them with fire or verdant, or let your creature deal with them. The platoons that come down from the hill are few and far between, so most of the time you can just concentrate on building.
    
4. In only one of four games did the wolf come down the hill to visit my town. You can use the sliding puzzle to make him nice for a while, or you can just kill him off.
    
5. It does require a lot of building to convert all the enemy towns.
   Plunking down building after building does tend to get a wee bit boring at this point.
    

   ---

Land 4: GREEK HOMELAND.
 

Again we start this land at the bottom of the hill, surrounded by enemies.

This land has three enemy cities.
The Westside town has a hurricane wonder, which will be fired within minutes of the start of the game.
The main Aztec town has an earthquake wonder.

We start with a beautiful city, which seems to be there only for the purpose of agonizing the players by making them watch it being destroyed by a hurricane miracle within minutes after the land starts. You can prevent this destruction by throwing fire or lava miracles at the hurricane wonder from the narrow land bridge between the 2 parts of your city. This may need to be repeated a few times until the first enemy city falls. 

1. Place a siren wonder (or a series of taverns) as close to the Eastside wall as possible, and have your creature or villagers complete it.
    
2. Do the same on the Westside.
    
3. Once the Eastside wonder is completed, collect a few big rocks and block the passage at the narrow land bridge at the very edge of your influence. That will prevent catapults from getting close enough to damage your wall, and you can forget about that side of town for the rest of the game. The gorilla is so kind to wait there, together with the multitudes of platoons and catapults that Ugly keeps sending at you.
   Building double reinforced walls has the same effect, but those walls might have to be defended against catapults once in a while. 
    
4. Unfortunately, it seems to be impossible to use rocks to block the path on the other side of town. The path is too steep and the boulders roll away, towards your own walls too!  There will be relatively few attacks from the Westside, so it isn't really that much of a problem.  To completely stop attacks from that side, build double reinforced walls on that side. If you wait until the villagers of the 1st conquered city arrive, you don't even have to put gates in them.
    
5. At regular intervals, Ugly will announce that "it is time for you to suffer."
   That means you need to get your shield miracle ready. Ugly will drop fire, lightning, meteor and dead miracles or just plain ol' rocks into your town. These can do a lot of damage to your buildings and villagers if you don’t use shield miracles. 
   
   Ugly seems to target the new and impressive buildings that you build after the game started. I built a temple some distance away from the rest of the town, and that seemed to become his favorite target. 
   The undead will go after your creature if he is nearby. If not, they’ll ransack the town, and eventually attack the town center.
   
   If you ever hear the bells ringing, and you do not see any platoons at the edge of your influence, better check near your town center. Ugly probably dropped off a new load of trouble there if you didn't use a shield miracle in time.
    
6. Apart from these annoyances, your main task is (again) to build as fast and furious as you can.
   Keep those mineworker disciples plentiful, that you have enough ore to build impressively.
    
7. After you convert the first town, Ugly will get ugly and will try to burn that town by firing lava miracles onto the hill above it. Since you did not conquer the town by force, you do not need to do anything, other than make sure that your migrants do not get burned up. Throw some water miracles to cool the lava stream if it would threaten your migrants.
    
8. After you convert the second town, Ugly gets ugly again, and destroys that town with an earthquake.
   Good thing you didn’t send any soldiers there.  The earthquake stays within the walls of that city, so no need to worry about it.
    
9. If you expand your influence far enough North that you can throw a few boulders into Ugly’s hometown, he may send all his platoons at once through the other city gate to attack your city. But because you have blocked the road, they’ll be so nice to wait outside.
   You can either wipe them from the face of the earth, or you can do nothing at all about them. Your choice. For some reason, they usually won't bother to come around to the Westside gates of your town.
   
   You can use lava or other more destructive miracles to destroy his city and town center. If you keep at it for a while, this may win you the game.
   
    
10. When you have built about 8 wonders and some other impressive buildings, the land is yours, and you get the option to start it all over again…

Enjoy the game.

Land 5: BONUS LAND

There is a Maori statue in each of the previous 3 lands. If you find all three, you get access to this bonus land. 
 

This is a no-win scenario. 
The goal is to defend your town against the ever-stronger waves of attackers until you are either conquered or give up from boredom. 
This scenario can be quite hectic and very frustrating until you figure out how to stop the attacks. 
Each successive wave has more raiders per platoon (wave 33 = 100 raiders) and each wave more platoons appear.  
For each destroyed platoon, the high score is increased, but you do not get extra tribute. 

You cannot build walls or wonders in this bonus land. 
Regardless what creature you had before, you get the turtle for the bonus land.

Bonus land starting map, with the 3 raider spawning sites marked.
              Bookmark the spawning sites (alt+number) and move quickly between them with the "[" and "]" keys. 
              Site #3 (near the desert town) can be isolated relatively easily. 
              Site #1 has 2 boats. This location can be isolated, but it takes a long time and a lot of rocks. 
              Your starting city is the green circle near the center

Recommended tactic: 

1. STOP THE ATTACK, or rather: make it last forever!
    
   1. Before you do anything else, place the basics: storage building, altar and a few fields. That way, your villagers won't starve while you're gone. Make a few farmer disciples. Leash your creature to a field to gather grain. Make a few worshipper disciples that you have mana in case of emergency. Uproot a few trees, plant them again and water them to get them growing. 
       
   2. The first attack wave spawns at site #1 only. By the time you have placed the basic amenities, your conscience will tell you that "The other towns need you too, Leader." That means the raiders have started pillaging the nearby town. To reduce the impact of that first attack wave, quickly expand your influence to that town = East of the South ramp from your village center.) Place villas or taverns down the South ramp and god-build for quick results. Kill all the raiders except for one or two. Ground forcing does the job without wasting any mana. Keep your creature away that it doesn't attack those surviving raiders. 
      
      As long as at least one raider is left, the first attack wave does not end and no new wave will spawn.  That one lonely raider will continue to pillage, but his impact will be minimal. Just drop some wood on whatever building he's at and you can keep this going for a very, very long time. (see picture below)
      
      
      This picture shows how effective this tactic can be.
      I have left one raider running around in the town near spawning site #1. This lonely 'undead' raider will never die on his own. After 4+ hours, I am still in the very first attack wave. I have taken over all the other towns and my influence ring covers the entire island. I