pan cw : formulas for freespawns/reanimations. quite finished . with guide too

[Boron]

the most interesting info form my testing is :
for reanimations pan cw is extremely simple minded .
you just need to summon carrion lords and totally ignore carrion centaurs + carrion ladies . they have a lower RoI at least in one area :

code:

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         costs  max reanimations/month    rp 

centaur    10N             1              0

lady       16N             2              3/4/6

lord       25N             3              5/6/8

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code:

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            leadership (c,u,m)   magic     hp

centaur        10/35/10             U      24

lady           10/45/5             NUU     15

lord           10/80/15           NNNUUU   53

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legend : leadership : c = common = normal troops
u = unholy
m = magic
max reanimations/month = unholy priestlevel too
rp = research points . i wrote 3/4/6 and 5/6/8 because you are forced to take at least magic 1 with carrion woods . so base rp for lady + lord are 3 / 5 , 4 / 6 are their rp at magic 1 and 6 / 8 at magic 3 scale .

so while the carrion ladies have give the same roi on research + reanimation ( negligible better : 3 reanimation / 6 research for 24 nature gems compared to 25 for the carrion lord ) their physical fragility makes them worthless compared to the carrion lords.

you need nothing else than carrion lords . they are the best leaders for your hordes too ( can cast puppet mastery ) . their high hps , recuperation and "undeadness" which gives them poison immunity make them unkillable by unequipped assasins early game . because of recuperation they are immune against seeking arrow too and if they got a chest wound it well be gone soon thnx to recuperation .
they have mr of 18 so they are hard to kill by soul slay etc. , anything with mr saves .
this high mr makes it very unlikely that they decay by a bane spider assasin hit . so even these machaka assasins can't kill them unequipped .

if you give them 5 carrion beast guards and script them they are even unequipped unkillable by every expect the most high end equipped assasins .

i am no expert with province target spells but afaik evo 9 flames from the sky is the strongest killer spell .
iirc i read in an old thread that there a damage throw is done too .
if that's true you would need several flames from the sky at once to kill totally unequipped carrion lords .


so a basic pan strat is really simple minded . each time you can afford summon a new carrion lord .
given the many points you get by pretender design you can either make a strong vq or an almost as strong rainbow as ermor .
if you sitesearch with that one you will have a moderate gem income , something a low top 5-8 ranking . simply put every nature gem in carrion lords .
research is a problem i strongly recommend taking magic 3 . you still will be always one of the Last 3 in research rankings for a long time .
nothing to worry about because you are the least research dependant nation in the whole game .
if you go in late early / early midgame on conjuration 6 you get spectres .

you don't need to worry about sc's as much as other races . with a critical mass of mandragoras / carrion beasts you can take out almost every early-midgame sc .
against pretender sc's use carrion beasts + your own pretender .

you still have to worry about banishment / undead mass desctruction spells but not as bad as ae ermor . while almost every ashen ae ermor fodder freespawn even dies on a single banishment you have 2 advantages :
-puppet mastery increases the ap of most of your carrions ( mr negates iirc ) and some of them are already quick . so positioned foremost the quick ones will reach enemy in first round and the great mass in second round .

-a few of your freespawns/reanimations are undead carrion elephants . they are like free behemoth and have almost the same stats , only slightly weaker .
they are size 6 tramplers . because they are undead they have so high morale that they never rout . if you don't fight sc's but hordes of enemy mages you could place several small squads of them foremost . hopefully they attract most undead mass destruction spells and your other carrion beasts can reach the front quite unharmed .
with 94 hp they should survive about 5 wither bones . hopefully then combat is finished victoriously for you already .

mid - late game you can include in your main armies sc-crippler banelords and the like .
i haven't tested this so far but i think it will work quite fine .

so pan cw is very strong but it needs to be left alone in early game .

against norfleets drive by seraphine strat you almost can't protect when on the offensive early-midgame
so try to Nap with caelum early game and backstab later

main weaknesses of pan cw are :
-slowest research at least early - midgame
-similiar to ermor but a bit more moderate : gold shortage
-very hard to get blood because of killer dominion and slowest research of all nations
-no easy access to clams if you don't find indy w2+ mages . then spectres are most probably your best deal for that .
-bad very lategame race on maps >200 provinces because of the hard access to blood / clams and because of hard access to astral mages . so while you are on the advance no protection for your army against flames from the sky , mass ghostriders and the like . so others can teleport/astral level in while you almost can't do that .

conclusion : pan cw is the second undead race , has worse research than ermor but on the other hand doesn't share some of ermor's weaknesses ( gold shortage , death gem shortage , AE : fragile freespawns/reanimations , no vq , easy to kill through early rush ) . perhaps not the most competetive , but very straightforward nation . expect on faerun and other 300+ province maps you have good winning chances .
i like 2 things most with them : the carrion lords and their undead status . no need to worry about bad events ( 50% pop killed ) or about being ermors earlygame neighbor .
with your sc pretender and your carrion beasts you should be able to give some others a surprise (expect extreme experts like norfleet / graeme dice / stormbinder etc. ) .

[ July 30, 2004, 22:56: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Boron]

UAERGHLSADFH

any tips what to do against the autoformat ?

my primitive chart got autoformatted now it looks crappy

[Boron]

with starting gem income of 7n you will be able to summon every 3,57 turns a new carrion lord .
at ~ turn 10-15 you will hopefully find +1-3 extra nature gems from new sites . so in average you will have about 10 carrion lords at turn 30.
when they reanimate alltogether then than you can roughly expect 1 carrion beast elephant / turn .

so in the beginning you are a bit weak ( but your pretender + the gathered carrion beasts are enough to defend ) + your dominion works against high numbers of enemies . cold 3 scale will especially be evil for heat enemies like abysia and killer dominion normally grants you at least parity in quantity .
in midgame you are strongest and will keep that strenght until lategame when wishwars and the like start .

if you are lucky or take luck scale you can afford to mix some minotaurs or other strong national troops within the carrion beasts .
with a bit combat luck the carrion beasts hit first . then the minotaurs take almost guaranted hits against size 3+ units because of the two reasons :
-lowered defense by swarming
-lowered defense by fatigue
-at 100+ fatigue even chance for ap attacks

so the minotaurs can hopefully take out thughs or weak sc's like poor equipped banelords / firbolgs etc. together with the carrions .

because the carrions will be the main target of enemy combat magic some minotaurs will survive quite long and gain some further strength by exp.

[odd_enuf]

when i did my own testing with cw reanimations i played with dominion 1 with independs 0, i send a bunch of ladies, centair, and lords out to provinces with neutral domains, and in that situation the ladies and the lords reanimated the same # of carion beasts.

odd_enuf

[Sindai]

Originally posted by Boron:
my primitive chart got autoformatted now it looks crappy

The code tags (which work exactly like the quote tags) keep the parsing software from pulling out extra spaces.

code:

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Boop                             Beep

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[Boron]

Originally posted by odd_enuf:
when i did my own testing with cw reanimations i played with dominion 1 with independs 0, i send a bunch of ladies, centair, and lords out to provinces with neutral domains, and in that situation the ladies and the lords reanimated the same # of carion beasts.

odd_enuf

that's the key . in neutral provinces .
only when you reach 100% according to the formula you get 1 reanimation / unholy level per turn guaranted .
in neutral territory or enemy dominion you seem to just summon random numbers .
so summon in your high dominion capitol for max output .

[Boron]

Originally posted by Sindai:

quote:

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Originally posted by Boron:
my primitive chart got autoformatted now it looks crappy

The code tags (which work exactly like the quote tags) keep the parsing software from pulling out extra spaces.

code:

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Boop                             Beep

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thnx

fixed it . now it looks 10 times better

[ July 30, 2004, 22:57: Message edited by: Boron ]