Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

You should be interrested by a post sent by Kristoffer O. on the French PC4WAR forum
http://www.strataegis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2691
Cheers

-----

Autosummoning:

10*(dom+growth+1) % chance (actually a d10 is used) of manikin reanimation if there are unburied corpses.
1+growth+magic% chance of mandragora - else manikin.

Also:

10*(dom+growth+1) % chance of carrion beast / pangaean manikin reanimation if the province is a forest.
1+growth+magic% chance of powerful stuff.

There might be some stuff prohibiting human manikin in forests (makng them beasts instead)

Reanimation:
Number: Priestlvl/2+(1D2-1)
Quality 10%

So, if you have ten provinces with dom5 (growth2+magic2) of which 5 are forests you would get about 9 manikin and 4 beasts each turn. Of these one or two would be powerful.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Ooops, just realized that the Last exemple seems illogical.
Kristoffer wrote that autosummon in forests gives "1+growth+magic% chance of powerful stuff" then later "Of these (4 beasts) one or two would be powerful". If 1+2+2=5%, I'll be damn lucky if I get two powerful beasts out of a total of 4... that means 50%!
Should I understand that autosummon in forests gives 10 x (1+growth+magic) % chance of powerful stuff ?
Cheers

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Thanks for the info Sunray_Be. Now if we could all put our collective wits together and come up with a good overall strategy for Carrion Woods. I still feel it's the most difficult faction to master. It's annoying to get your hiney handed to you by an AI set to easy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mmmm, let me see, I think I've that already http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
Only a draft, but fairly comprehensive I think.

Here : http://www.freewebs.com/sunraybe/cw.doc

Cheers

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One or two out of 9+4. A powerful manikin is a mandragora. 1+2+2 = 5%. 5% out of 13 is one or, if you are lucky, two. Zero is not uncommon either. Slight miscalc on my part.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Has anyone played CW before and after 2.11. I would like to get some feedback. The changes are somewhat limited. Are they noticeable at all?

Reanimations
Dominion based reanimation
Survivability of manikin
Power of manikin
Power of unholy spells
Research - reanimate trade off

Comparisons with Ermor

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Slightly quicker, though not better. Using a Carrion Lord to Reanimate still seems like an exercise in futility.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This has been another minor increase I haven't seen much in the way of making this work. I also haven't seen any leaders reanimated to drag over some of these Manikins for free.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have not seen this change at all, they are still on par with skeletons as far as getting destroyed enmasse.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To be quite honest Manikins rarely are able to survive long enough to gauge this.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did not notice a difference with these.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Still nearly crippling slow even with Magic 3. If you don't recruit a Dryad every turn and get a secondary fortress or find a Library you will be behind most other nations except those in Drain enviroment.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Much better than it was, still nowhere near either Theme of Ermor, which is a good thing. Maybe an idea or suggestion to make the reanimation fall more in line as the game progresses is to have provinces under CW Dominion revert to Forest after a period of time. Thus increasing it's overall ability to produce more and more free manikins.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

There are only changes in the reanimation, but I wanted some general feedback as well.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

A worthy addition might be a CW only spell that requires 2N that is Raise Manikins, replacing Raise Skeletons. Or if you'd rather, 1D1N, so it was fairly Carrion Specific. This is another distinct advantage that a Death Nation has over CW. Along with Drain Life (if there was something equivilant as far as damage/effect for CW it would be appropriate).

Or alternatively you could give them much better Tangle Vine(typish) Theme specific spells. (I.E. Carrion Vine, lifedraining Tangle Vines)

[ April 28, 2004, 19:29: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Oh, BTW, any common undead (soulless, longdead) benefits from regeneration when the ad hoc unholy prayer is cast. It sure doesn't make CW overpowered, but is it a wanted feature or an oversight?

So far, I can't say I saw any good reason to pick Growth+3 instead of +1. (1) It costs points (2) The few extra manikins you might get aren't enough to compensate the fact invaders get extra supplies from your higher Growth scale (I'm not 100% positive on this, but I think they get extra supplies from it)

Otherwise, I second Zen's comments on every point.

And I really like his suggestion about turning provinces into forests. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry, I missed that.

>Reanimations

Some are nice, some are really nice, but this is a very slow way to build an army (and expensive in nature gems, which could be used to summon things as Pangaea usually do, except CW can't), and conventionnal troops eat up your treasury fast.

>Dominion based reanimation

Seems weak with a low dominion, I haven't tried otherwise yet.

>Survivability of manikin

On par with your basic undead. Better than completely unarmored soulless or longdead though.

>Power of manikin

The stun damage is great vs heavies. Otherwise nothing to write home about.

>Power of unholy spells

I find the battlefield-wide prayers more than OK, and I like the fact that the small area regen prayer seems to target big critters first (hmmm, regenerating Carrion tramplers).

>Research - reanimate trade off

No real issue here since I use Dryads for research and Carrion leaders to reanimate and lead armies.

>Comparisons with Ermor

Much much weaker. Can't get wet on top of that.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Some more suggestions.

1) All nature gems are used to summon carrion priests, so death magic is in fact the main school of CW. I've never been able to cast Mother Oak or even Call of the Wild...

2) Curiously, death magic gives no "national" units to CW, unlike Ctis and Jotun.
IMHO Reanimation, Animate Skel. and Raise Skel. sould give manikins. Animate/Raise Dead should give mandragoras. Undead Horde should give both. Pale Riders sould give carrion cavalry. Carrion Reanimation should give mandragoras (yes that's powerful, but Ench 7 is a long term target for CW). Maybe 10% of stronger carrion beasts, like the undead giants of Jotunheim.

3) The price of carrion priests seems too high and should be slightly reduced IMHO. They are mostly used to reanimate and to cast unholy spells. Nature magic is thematic but practically useless and should not count in their price.
Or give indep priests unholy powers, instead of holy powers (like Ermor IIRC). But who will summon the expensive (in gems) carrion priests then ?
And I suggest to add some death magic to the carrion Lords. They are dead after all. What about, say, 3xUnholy + 2xDeath + 1xNature ? Still in the theme, and not higher than the Apostate.

4) Minor problem : other vine units (vine men/ogre and dark vines) should logically benefit from the special unholy spells.

5) Manikins are good when in large numbers. 3/1 seems a minimum against human HI, and archery fire can decimate them at long range. But autosummoning is very slow, even with a strong dominion. No problem if you control a large empire. Exemple : 20 provinces (including 5 forests) in a strong dominion can give you every turn about 20 manikins + 1 mandragora + 5 carrion beasts (including 1 powerful stuff every 4 turns or so). OTOH 5 Carrion Ladies can give you 2x less manikins but 4x more powerful beasts, even on a small map. So I always give priority to reanimation, over autosummoning.

Cheers

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

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

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Several good points.

The lack of battle summoning is indeed a big difference compared to Ermor. Manikin Versions of raise dead might be the way to go.

The regenerating undead is an oversight. Not sure if it matters much (thematically). It is indeed useful on summoned undeads.

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.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've tried, and they're indeed blazingly quick. Too quick, sometimes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I think I've seen 2 types of fast carrion critters. An issue with them is CW has no control on their production, while Ermor can reanimate longdead horsemen or animate some with Pale Riders. Being given the choice when reanimating is an advantage CW don't get (I don't beg for this to be changed, just stressing a difference).

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

The issue is not having a steady or regulated # in order to count on creating armies with Flanking Carrion Horses.

In fact I keep the Carrion Horses away from anything but my largest army because they *are* so fast and take the brunt of most melee which they are exceedingly poor at dealing with (superlow defense and protection).

Mandragora's on the other hand make a hard and solid flank while using the base manikins for fodder (because that is the only thing you have, not because you want to).

If the economy wasn't crippled so badly by the death of population then you could afford to keep up with research and create a least a partial army, but as it stands, you can't count on any sort of real income after turn 10, when you really start needing it and your dryads and/or sages start accumulating more and more upkeep.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

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 ]

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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.)

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wow! Nice write up. Thanks for the time and effort put into it.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

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.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

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.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I once again point to my sig: Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill all, and you are a god!

Now what's the objective of Dominions II again?

I rest my case.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I once again point to my sig: Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill all, and you are a god!
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
As others have pointed out before, this should really read "Kill all, and you are very very alone."
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To kill up to 16 specific other beings, none of whom are your subjects.

Even if you want to kill everyone, it matters a whole lot *what order* you kill them in. Kill your faithful servants *Last*. (Maybe I should put that in *my* sig... the Iron Pigs quote is getting old.)

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

i have a question about the reanimating formula for the unholy priests. In the write up linked below its listed as "unholylevel/2 +1dd2-1" but it doesn't say whether the first part of the fomula is rounded down or up. if its rounded down then carrion lords reanimate 1-2, ladies 1-2, and centairs 0-1. 2 ladies reanime 2-4, while 3 centairs (approx. the same gem cost) give 0-3, making ladies the best reamimaters. If rounded up centairs and ladies reanimate the same. So 5 centars would reanimate 5-10 per round, while 2 lords (the same cost in gems) would reanimate only 4-6 per round, making the centairs the best. so which is it?

odd_enuf

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you're the God of creeping death you gotta go with what you know. And I don't think the people you're killing are necessarily your subjects. They pay taxes but they aren't happy about it and then they die. I think like AE and SG Ermor, your dominion strength doesn't represent how many and how strongly people worship you. It's more like how many and how strongly people fear you. Worshipping you or fearing you both keep people thinking about you and thus make you stronger. Fear and respect are just different means to the same end.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Been playing with Pangea carrion woods now.
Also have a shortage of nature gems, but plenty of death gems.
Some things I've been doing.

I use mound kings to round up all the undead spawning. Also keep a couple of mound kings around in provinces to prevent all carrion critters disolving if there's a combat.

I use revenants for research. They research as good as the carrion lady or dryad, but are cheaper.

I let the expensive pans cast twiceborn and send them of to die against the closest enemy in my dominion. They return as undead wight mages which I think don't cost any upkeep and they get +1 to their death level.

Quik question, do shape shanging stuff like twiceborn, transformation, lycanthrope amulet work on pretenders? If yes, my crone is going to be reborn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That spell does stink. It definately needs more penetration. "Magically powerful Mandragora may sometimes resist the spell." Phoeey.

[ May 10, 2004, 04:04: Message edited by: Slygar ]

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Another weakness of Carrion Woods that should hopefully be corrected. The spawned carrion beasts need a recruited (Pan) or summoned commander in province with them, or... 40 carrion beasts will start dissolving when the province is attacked, even if there is PD, because the PD commander - can't command undead.

Contrast this will Ermor's SG and AE, where the themes each have an undead commander of PD.

Seems to me that Carrion Woods PD ought to be commanded by a carrion centaur, so that the carrion beasts that've been spawned aren't totally useless even for defense until they've been rounded up by an undead capable commander.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

If Carrion Woods is underpowered(Not sure on this point, myself), I'd rather not see it become Ermor MK II for the sake of balance.
I suppose it'd be more thematically appropriate to give it some sort of forest-only defensive dominion effect, in the vein of miasma/dark skies/lure of the deep. Or, if we want to make the woods really inhospitable, we could make one of the random reanimants an assassin, bound to the forest and unable to leave its home province/spend more than one turn away from a forest province/whatever. Officers vanishing left and right the moment night falls, that'll make any invader think twice.
If we want CW Pangaea to have enhanced offensive capabilities while retaining its style, we could always make said assassin a flying unit with 3 overland movement, so no forest is safe for those who'd despoil it.
Beyond that, scrying in forest provinces, friendly or otherwise, might be nice.
On top of all that some counterpriest mojo might be nice. It seems less appropriate than the alternative, since Pangaea has more problems with the industry of the outside world than with its faith, but it's definitely not completely out of character. An Anathema stylle battlefield spell, a Wild Hunt/Earth Attack style national spell which only affects priests of hostile faiths(Or priests without Nature magic) in forest provinces, and so on.

...

Assuming they're underpowered.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Whoops. Bit off topic, wasn't that? My bad, thought I'd read the Last page of this thread, turned out I was actually on the second page.
To which that actually relates.
Sorta.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Just a bump, this question never got answered. Also, has the Carrion Growth spell been fixed?
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Anyone?

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

There was a post by Kristoffer O. (but I'm not able to find it, that tell how the rounding are made by default in dom2). Gateway103 told me that are always rounded in the most friendly way for players.

bye
Liga

[ June 15, 2004, 06:59: Message edited by: liga ]

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

I believe Liga is right.

Re: Carrion Woods Reanimations
 

Thanks. Also, are there any plans to change Carrion Growth?