Undead Killing

[shovah]

This is a place for all undead killing tactics and how to conter them and includes all spells, items, nations, units, themes ect

Marignon: sort of a no brainer but alot of people still have trouble facing things such as ashen empire with it so heres my favourite:
try to take atleast some luck and avoid making a prophet until you get the cardinal heroe, after becomeing prophet hes a lvl 6 priest (late game i also try to give him the sword that gives priest bonus) and with boots of quickness hes an undead banishing machine, give him a few knights of the chalice as guards and throw him into battle with the undead alongside whatever priests you can afford (and a healthy supply of reasonably blessed flagelants if possible)

one of my favourite blesses for marignon is either air/astral+fire (if making alot of flagelants) or nature+water/earth/fire if making knights, paladins with f9+? blessing equiped with herald lances, accursed shields and something with reinvigoration/regeneration are infinetly useful againts undead and can also be useful for taking out all those banelords

I have to go for now and will post more later

edit: 40 views and no posts... i feel lonely

[Endoperez]

There are some really powerful spells in Fire (Holy Pyre) and Astral (Solar Rays). Because you are most often fighting against lots of undead critters at once, the best bet is usually having your mages cast these. Marignon Witch Hunters are able to cast both, Theurgs can cast Solar Rays, etc. Herald Lance allows a non-mage commander to cast Solar Rays, and as such makes them many times more powerful against undead. Flambeaus would cast Holy Pyre, but they are probably too expensive to make only to be used against masses of undead. If you want to be ready if an undead SC appears, having Flambeau and a tough commander won't hurt. It gives 3x damage to undead...

All kinds of priests are also powerful against undead. Most often having lots of cheap independent Priests works quite well, e.g. Jotunheim shouldn't start churning out Jotun Godes (240 or something gp each) just to get level 3 priests...

Against hordes of mindless undead lead by few commanders, use mind-affecting spells. The only targets in the battlefield will be the mages leading the undead... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Against undead SCs, use Maggots. It's a Nature spell, and can be quite deadly.

One of the best single magic paths against undead is Death. Few Sauromancers casting Wither Bones are a sight to behold.

[shovah]

thing is you cant tell wat undead u will face most of the time so its best to be prepared (ryleh kicks undead ****

[shovah]

2 Paladins taking out 75 assorted undead and a moderatly equiped bane, they had: herald lance, accursed shield, spirit helm, that armour with 50% resistance to all elements, amulet of resilence, and burning pearl
(maybe replacing pearl with bracers of protection?) the each only took about one hit which didnt do much damage, and these 2 also took on a banelord with hellsword and a few other goodies accomponied by 40ish undead and took NO wounds

edit: this was without my paladins being blessed because that would have unbalanced it (to speed up research+forging i used the special mod-a-god pretender (9 everything apart from blood)

edit: the blue dragonscale armour is better as is a wraith crown although its expensive and un marignonish.

i just tried this with 4 f9 s9 blessed paladins and they took out 2 banelords with wraith crowns, hellswords, burning pearls, shroud's of the battle saint, boots of giant strength, burning pearl, and lycanthrope amulet, and 2 tartarians and a bunch of ashen troops

[Vicious Love]

That seems like a good equipment loadout for taking out undead SCs and thugs, but it might not be all that effective against an AE chaff horde. The Spirit Helm is expensive and only useful against high-quality units, whereas Ermor relies on the lowest quality units in the game, albeit in large amounts. Ditto regarding the F9 blessing, though it can be tremendously useful against ethereal undead. Burning Pearls are also next to meaningless against soulless and not particularly useful against longdead, as neither type of undead has particularly good defense. Also, a Charcoal Shield would be much more effective against hordes of chaff.

Also, although your anti-SC results speak for themselves, I'm not certain this would be the ideal loadout for combating mid-level undead thugs and troops(wights, ghosts, etc), because:
A) Ethereal undead, especially ones with tricksy lifedraining, paralyzing and strength-stealing attacks, are another story altogether, and often call for an entirely different sort of tactic than that used against conventional undead
B) Melee heroes carrying loads of equipment vs. anything with a bane blade = a suboptimal idea. Decay hurts, and it takes a hell of a lot of MR to be absolutely safe.


As for my contribution to the discussion, fun fact: Spell Foci only cost 5 astral pearls, and work on Banishment. On a related note, it's usually most cost effective to get large numbers of low-level priests casting Banishment, instead of a few pricey high-level ones, but a Spell Focus/Rune Smasher combo is more than enough to change this. Best supplemented with a casting of Power of the Spheres, for an even larger area of effect, even more damage, and possibly even more penetration. If communion masters benefit from spells cast by other communion masters, a Crystal Matrix might be a good way of getting this boost out of a friendly astral mage(the alternative is the Crystal Shield, which is simply too heavy).


...


Also, if you're positively desperate for The Ultimate Banishment, I suppose a little Hell Power never hurt anyone.

Update: In case anyone wasn't aware of this factoid, the Herald Lance's x3 multiplier doesn't mean that any damage inflicted is multiplied by 3, it means(or so an older thread would have me believe) that the entire roll to damage, including strength, before accounting for armor, is multiplied by 3. Plainly put, the Herald Lance is the melee weapon against powerful undead or demons. The Solar Rays are very nice against weaker stuff, but nothing takes out a higher-end thug or SC quite like the pointy end.

[shovah]

ive been replacing the spirit helm with wraith crown for etheral and the burning pearls for bracers of protection and it works like a charm vrs ashen/soul autospawns (the paladins have 3 flaming attacks each alon with high defence, high protection and cold resistance 75%
they are also some of the best counters ive found for tartarians (next to my golems

and i know you could gain spells from them all but would a nataraja with 4 herald lances,wraith crown, some armour, boots of giant strength, lycanthrope amulet and amulet of resilence or something else work?
i mean would all his attacks work at his very high strength and x3 damage ?
if so maybe give him jade armour and boots of quickness and possibly some astral for armour negating work?
i mean the herald lance attacks would be 30ish strength each so 90 vrs undead and with astral weapon armour negating aswell. so that would be 360+ armour negating damage (tartarian killer) and thats without factoring in boots of quickness and jade armour

[Molog]

Charcoal shield on high hp regenerating critter works good at killing lots of weak undead.

[Endoperez]

Banishment with Hell Power?! Doing that with a Goetic Master would be like straight from the story of that theme... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[shovah]

try this slight change: paladin with herald lance, accursed shield, blue dragonscale armour, wraithcrown, ring of the warrior and bearclaw talisman
(
i used precious instead of talisman thanks to bogus but talisman is nearly as good, or you could replace talisman with burning pearl) 2 of these with a e9 n9 bless took out more than 10 tartarians in one fight until they got crushed by lightning bolts

the main reason behind no defensive miscs was i re-read rules on repeling attacks, basically with a long weapon you usually get a free attack before getting hit so i tried to boost attack and strength quite high

the plan was these guys charge in and hopefully bring a tartarian to low health, then finish him with repelling and it worked (etheral from the crown is esential)

i used mother earth to get that bless and her with boots of the mesenger, hydra skin armour, ring of regeneration, amulet of resilence, herald lance and charcoal shield works amazingly well vrs undead scs and weak hordes.

just get her tocast a few spells on herself at the start of battle and charge in (gift of gaia ect for extra regen) with the HUGE regen she gets and the shield the weak undead practically bounce off her and with her high strengthand herald lance she can crush SC's when she hits

[Endoperez]

While you do get a free attack when you repel, that attack does only 1 point of damage. Only one, always one. It goes through armor, though,

[B0rsuk]

Endoperez said:
While you do get a free attack when you repel, that attack does only 1 point of damage. Only one, always one. It goes through armor, though,



Enough to kill a soulless http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif ?
I always thought it's 0 damage. Well, 1 is better than nothing.

[shovah]

o well, the design worked better than the previus one which was defensive

[boltcutter]

I'm currently running an Arcosephale game with Earth 4, Nature 9. I'm planning on retrying Ermor with this combo, with a front rank of berserk blessed Heart companions backed by every priest and cheap archer I can find. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

[shovah]

i still prefer e9 though but thats simply becuase i didnt need any extreme scales or any other magic and i only had 1 tactic in mind

[Vicious Love]

Endoperez said:
Banishment with Hell Power?! Doing that with a Goetic Master would be like straight from the story of that theme... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif



Computer conked out for a few days. I've returned in time to LOL in agreement. Jolly good.

[Dhaeron]

Vicious Love said:Also, if you're positively desperate for The Ultimate Banishment, I suppose a little Hell Power never hurt anyone.


Speaking of ultimate banishment, it's a zero fatigue spell. A couple of of pythium divine casters leading a a communion of 8 or more communicants and blasting away at undead hordes with massively powerful banishments is a sight to behold. because banishment doesn't cost any fatigue, a few communicants can easily empower any number of theurgs. (without being killed for a change http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif)
With enough matrices any nation can do that though it's cheapest for Pythium, obviously.
I used this tactics agains Ermor once, and had it used against me a few times, it is extremely powerful against big hordes, though not very effective against SCs. And be prepared to lose the communicants after the fifth round if the battle isn't won by then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Graeme Dice]

Banish still costs the base spellcasting fatigue every time you cast it.

[shovah]

give a reinvig item to each comunion participaters

[Vicious Love]

shovah said:
give a reinvig item to each comunion participaters



Even if you have to empower or buy a matrix from another player, it's usually cheaper to get an earth mage communion/sabbath master and Summon Earthpower.

[shovah]

or a nature mage, maybe lizard shaman for astral and nature?

[Dhaeron]

Graeme Dice said:
Banish still costs the base spellcasting fatigue every time you cast it.


Yeah, but that isn't enough to kill communicants, not unless you exceed a 2:1 ratio. The usual communicant-killers are mages who use the "good" opportunity to cast high-path spells with obscene fatigue costs, not continuous casting of low-fatigue spells.

[Wick]

Speaking of Hell Power and Communion, if a mage casts Sabbath Master, Hell Power, and retreats then do the slaves benefit from the Hell Power? Do Horrors come for each of them?

This has to be good for something...

[Vicious Love]

Wick said:
Speaking of Hell Power and Communion, if a mage casts Sabbath Master, Hell Power, and retreats then do the slaves benefit from the Hell Power? Do Horrors come for each of them?

This has to be good for something...



Absolutely. And I can think of a bunch of situations in which a few dozen lesser horrors would be useful, even if they did almost certainly take out your own mages first. I'm not sure it'd be all that cost-effective under most circumstances, though.

[Valandil]

Solar Brilliance works too... Kinda expensive though.
I have a 1500+ kill pretender in my current game against AE ermor.