Carrion woods
 

need urgent help with carrion woods, Im about to start a mp game with teams and Im pangea, preferably carrion woods, then we make a death team (ermor, pan (cw) and Ulm (bf). However I have no experience what so ever with carrion woods, so any pointers would be great http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

PS, Game starts in just a few hours so its kinda urgent http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Carrion woods
 

<terrible advice>
<tries to hide fact he is on opposing team>
<more terrible advice>

Hope that helped http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Carrion woods
 

A few quick and not-in-depth pointers:

- be aggressive since you have a destructive dominion

- be prepared to abandon your living troops fairly quicikly and go with undead/summons only

- remember that nature mages provide supplies

- you need panic apostates to summon carrion lords; carrion lord cannot summon carrion lord the way Ermor can summon dusk elder with dusk elder; hence, either protect the apostates you build early, or have your pretender designed to summon carrion lords, since you'll run out of money and depopulate your home province; it depends on whether you want to stay mostly death/nature in magic, or you want to branch out with your pretender (there are no random magic picks in carrion woods)

- forget the bless effects; black centaurs are capitol-only - you'll lose them quickly; likewise, priests (dryads) might be a problem, but you won't need them as much as your opponents

Carrion woods is an extremely flavourful theme, IMO. Have fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 22, 2004, 23:55: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Carrion woods
 

I've been trying a little sample game with carrion woods, and my main consern is that we are going to play in a really magic rich world (70) with hard indies (8) Will my somewhat weak creatures be able to handle the throng of summons thats bound to happen?

Re: Carrion woods
 

The pretender Carrion Dragon (if you give him the right magics) can do the spells to summon the carrion leaders. That will save you rushing to buy a pandemoniac. I forget what the magics are you ned to give it. 3 of something and 2 of another.

If you plan to rely heavily on Carrion armies then make a Carrion Lord your prophet. That gives him access to some great spells.

Re: Carrion woods
 

Theres not much of a hurry really, cant summon a carrion lord untill i have 25 nature gems, and i get 5 a turn. So should have plenty of time to get myself a panic apostle.

Re: Carrion woods
 

I've only been toying around the theme a little but I think I can give you _some_ pointers. First, I'd certainly make a magically versatile pretender so that you can rely on some good summons (behemoths, yay!) when all the living dudes have deceased from your kingdom. You're going to run out of living troops very soon and you really can't be relying on masses of undead, either (you don't get bucketloads of people as with ermor). In other words, I'd make as many dryads/panic apostates (whichever you prefer, pans might be better since you won't have other good uses for the money, anyway - black centaurs are bit too expensive to my tastes) as I can and have them research to get to those good summons. I'd steer clear of Vine Ogres here, however. They're good summons but I really don't want my 320/350gp (depending on theme) Pans to sit home summoning.

Btw, has anyone managed to figure out how the unholy levels contribute to the kind of stuff you can reanimate. I assume you need 3 levels to reanimate carrion elephants and probably 4 for that ettin dude. But other than that, I noticed no major difference in quantity. I thus suppose that it's rather safe to assume that carrion centaurs are the way to go if you want lots of small stuff. Those movement 20+ beasts can also attack the enemy right off the bat with the quickening spells (I laughed my *** off at the first battle - "heck, never thought the dead guys could go _that_ fast"). Ok, you might find this weird but you should actually consider the undead guys your elite troops http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif . Mandragoras are probably some of the most underappreciated units in the game. You should thus consider using some fodder to protect them. Casting swarm in the first round can really prolong the (un-)life span of your troops. Spirit mastery is another spell you should seriously consider. You get 15 fodder for just 4 gems, best bang for the buck as far as summoning spells go. Ghosts/shades are ok too but more gem-intensive.

PS. I know I'll be playing against you in that game but this is what I think is the best way to play the theme atm, honest. :>

Re: Carrion woods
 

Hmm my text didn't appear ... It was useless info anyway... Since I am the opposition http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Carrion woods
 

In that particular game you would be crazy not to get as many different magic paths in order to utilize the huge magic site frequency.

I'd steer clear from Nature and Death since you have a perfectly acceptable mage of Nature and Death in the Pandemoniac. (Maybe take Nature up to 4, for getting Nature Gems ASAP, but death isn't a priority)

I'd look towards Air (since you can't make harpies), Astral (Magic Resistance and magic resistance gear is key) and then whatever else you prefer.

Use death summons like Banes for commanders (if you don't use pans) and other mages for summonable 'elite' units. Depending on what army you have your Mandragoras in (The Unholy 4 Commander) you will need other more survivable troops since most of your units, even the Behemoth looking ones, and the Ettin looking ones, have bad MR and lategame you will be staring large Groups of powerful mages in most armies.

Re: Carrion woods
 

Im trying the theme out a little, my carrions seems to die if you give them a hard look tho. they get massacered against LI.. The bigger carrions are pretty nice tho, especially the trampler (75 hp).
However, when I try playing pan on a non cw theme I do expand atleast twice as fast as cw, I have more versatile mages and fast armies. Not sure if I really want to sacrifice that for the cw theme :/

Re: Carrion woods
 

I actually still get harpies, they are so inexpensive that i can still build them without much difficulty.

Re: Carrion woods
 

I'd probably mess your scales up to get lots of pretender magic and rely on the high site frequency to give lots of gems for not only carrion but also other spells...your population dies anyway, so the scales won't matter long term. Maybe you can convince Ulm to build high res troops and spare you some money in the beginning.

Re: Carrion woods
 

Your dominion will tear down your homeprovince so quick it will be hard to recruit many later in the game (when you need them the most). You would have to rely on taking provinces that can stand your destructive dominion, spend the gold and turns to create a castle then recruit them. While not inconcievable, harpies die quite quickly and you'll need a good clip of them to create the effect you need (attacking the back).

What I'm saying is don't rely on anything you can build, think of it as 'bonus' and not as 'standard'.

Re: Carrion woods
 

Personally, I find Carrion Woods to be a very bad theme, because it essentially wastes a huge number of points: You're required to take Growth for it, yet you will gain nothing from having this Growth, since your population all dies anyway. As opposed to the Ashen Empire or Soul Gate themes, where the required Death scale is free points: Your population all dies anyway, so Death-3 for free points is simply beating a dead horse.

Re: Carrion woods
 

Ah I see your point Zen.
Can anyone confirm that I dont get better og bigger reanimations by using someone with a higher unholy skill?

Re: Carrion woods
 

I prefer playing carrion woods with the carrion dragon.

on Indi 7 he is capable of conquering most provinces alone. You can get into other magic paths very easy by using your nations heroes. My pretender started with death 9 nature 5, and this has not prevented me to get my hands on an archangel or that king of fire (whatever his name is). Turmoil 3 luck 3 is a must for carrion woods. Especially the harpy hero will give you free harpies that you can use to boost your commanders maximal leadership (full undead + some harpies)

Re: Carrion woods
 

Turmoil/Luck is a good combo for any empire that doesn't particularly care about losing its population: Carrion Woods, Ashen Empire, Soul Gate, Desert Tombs, etc. Ordinarily, Turmoil/Luck would give you so many horrible events that you'd wish you'd gone with Order/Misfortune instead, but when you don't care about losing population (Oh, no! I just lost 1/4th of my zero population! Whatever will I do?), it's totally win/win. Turmoil has no effect on the dead, and there are very few negative events when nobody is alive to care about their effects. Feel free to take Sloth, too. +120 free points, no harmful side effects. You get 2 resources for 0 population whether you have sloth 3, or productivity 3.