Carrion Woods Reanimations

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Has anyone tried quick roots to get carrion beasts into battles quickly. The horse carrion is incredibly quick when 'blessed' and can compensate for some of the problems with manikin dying before they reach the enemy.

I've tried it, but haven't had much luck. Yes, the carrion beasts get into combat more quickly, but that just means they die even more quickly.

In fact, in the ... 4 (counting SP) CW games I have going now, I've only found two means of success with the carrion / manikins.

One is to use them as totally disposable chaff, allowing living creatures to do the job with fewer casualties. Unfortunately, given CW's death economy, you really can't afford to use living creatures as the backbone of the army.

The other is to wait for one big carrion creature - the carrion elephant in particular. If you only have that unit, plus a carrion lord, you can effectively cast Regrowth to give it regeneration,, and then repeatedly cast Mend the Dead to heal it.

This is an awfully ineffecient use of a Carrion Lord, but the Carrion Lady can't cast Mend the Dead and the Carrion Centaur can't even Regrowth. Making things worse is the way that, if you make a Carrion Lord your Prophet, you get a battlefield-wide spell, Carrion Growth, which is easily negated by magic resistance.

Just why your own minions would be trying to resist your beneficial magic is ... baffling. But as it's easily negated by MR, _most_ of your creatures aren't affected. Not even the low level manikins, despite the spell description stating that it "makes the animating vines of most Manikin on the battlefield regrow at incredible speed".

"Easily Negated" means a penetration value of 7; the basic Manikin has an MR of 12. Seems like that difference of 5 means that the spell only has approximately a 1 in 5 chance of affecting each particular manikin - hardly "most".

So, you kind of have to spam-cast the spell, with what is usual the only commander (if any) capable of casting it, thus making the spell rather less than useful.

Seems like even with the special CW unholy magics, the carrion critters are pretty horrible in combat, _and_ you can't / don't generate them fast enough to build them up - basically you need at least a Carrion Centaur for every province to round up carrion, because the Black Dryad and Pan's can't lead them.

If you adjusted the price of the Carrion Summons to be on par with Ermor it might be more fitting in terms of turns per summoning.

So a Ashen Empire Bishop or a Soul Gate Shadow Tribune each cost 10D to summon, which is one turns worth of base Gem income. While the Carrion Centaur costs 10N to summon, 2 turns of base Gem Income.

The way the theme works and the spells associated with it, even if you have a high Nature Gem income, you have to have enough Apostates to summon the units. If you lowered the time to summon based on base gem income it would lower the discrepency. Or at the very least change it to a 2/3's ratio.

7N = Carrion Centaur
10N = Carrion Lady
17N = Carrion Lord

Etc.

[ April 29, 2004, 20:05: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Cainehill]

Other things can be done to help CW, but I'd like to second Zen's suggestion that the Carrion summonses be less expensive.

One thing that hasn't been brought up is the long term magic research issues for CW. Because of the population dying, I've found that even sages are too expensive to really use many of for research. Likewise, Black Dryads have poor research, are almost useless for CW (they can't lead the carrion beasts, and save for the rare Sagitarian Beastie, can't bless them), and cost upkeep.

Panic Apostates are _very_ expensive, have very high upkeep, and the few CW can afford will have far better things to do than research - site searching, leading carrion beasties, and summoning more carrion lords/ladies/donkeys.

Near as I can tell, the only semi-viable long term researchers are the Carrion Ladies; bad research ability, but they don't cost upkeep. But given their expense (in nature gems), and the fact that they could and possibly should be summoning more carrion critters, they still aren't very feasible as is :

Do you spend 16 nature gems for a bad researcher, or 25 for a Carrion Lord to animate more vines and rotting bodies, given that those are the bulk of your army, and they're slow to create. Either choice is bad.

Things might be alleviated a bit if the Carrion Commanders were either cheaper, or a little better. Or if the Black Dryads could at least lead 5 or 10 carrion critters - after all, they've lost some holy ability because of their exposure to the Carrion Woods, shouldn't they be able to command a few beasts? (Not necessarily giving them blood or death, but a minor form of the Undead Commander ability.)

[Anglachel]

Originally posted by Sunray_be:
And I posted my guide for Carrion Woods here
http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/cw.html

Thanks to Pocus and Mike for their comments.

Cheers

Wow! Nice write up. Thanks for the time and effort put into it.

[PrinzMegaherz]

Hm, it seems most people here would like CW to be an Ashen Empire with different graphics.

One thing I would like to discuss is whether CW dominion really should kill inhabitants. Maybe I'm wrong, but province population is not necesserely human. Take Caelum as an example: Their provinces are inhabited by Caelian people, which explains their need for cold provinces. And if we follow this path of logic, shouldn't Pangaea Provinces be populated with Satyrs and Minotaurs and whatever? Why is CW Dominion killing its own people / why are those people killed by your dominions willing to fight (get recruited as national units) for you?

I'm not sure, but maybe someone could try and mod CW without killer dominion, and look if its too powerful.

[Kristoffer O]

The same reason the god of Ermor is killing it's own people. The wrathful god of the carrion woods detest all life, human in particular. All that is living dies and kreeping growth infests the flesh and bones of the living.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
The same reason the god of Ermor is killing it's own people. The wrathful god of the carrion woods detest all life, human in particular. All that is living dies and kreeping growth infests the flesh and bones of the living.

Well, that's creepy and all, but killing one's own subjects is hardly an effective way to take over the world, unless you bring *a lot* of them back from the dead to fight for you.

CW has most of the weaknesses of the dead Ermors (no population base, very low gold income, hard to use living troops, relies on summoned mages/commanders, vulnerable to anti-undead spells) but less of their strengths (fewer autosummons, not amphibious, far fewer design points, no extra gems from home site). In addition one of their main magic paths (nature) has as one of its major foci, providing support to living troops (supply, healing, regeneration - all ineffective on lifeless undead with no need to eat).

Has anyone tried making extensive use of poison items/spells with CW? Is it just too hard to get the necessary nature mages? Too easy to counter? Too slow acting even when it works? Also, since your dominion is going to kill your population anyway, why not pillage it to bring in some gold while it's still alive?

Finally, I think all capitol restrictions should be removed from CW. The few living worshippers of the carrion God should keep moving to stay ahead of His wrath even as they bring it to new lands, and thus, they should be available for recruitment anywhere. Capitol only recruitment with a killer dominion is a death sentence for that unit, and although living worshipers of the carrion God are certainly doomed if they succeed, they should be permitted to live long enough to accomplish His purpose.