Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Carrion Woods has caught my fancy. Any suggestions on scales and strategies? I had a false start last night and can see that mass protection will help with the manikins. Also, since I kill everyone with my dominion, how do I get the cash for the very expensive magic units?

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

search with earth, try and find gold or silver.
Additionally having extra growth appears to slow the death rates. For a nation that is forced to take growth, it sure has a lot of death.

Also just get one, and you can start summoning undead mages by turn 2, or powerful priests/nature mages by turn 3.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

take luck, magic and growth if you can. for magic take what you want, you could go low magic good sclaes sc (with good dom of course) or you could go for a bless for centaurs. My personal suggestions would be d7 n5 carrion dragon with 8 dominion, 3 sloth, 1 cold, 1 grown, 1 luck and 2 magic. Research quickly up conjuration and once you can get tartarians go thaum for gift of reason. with your gems mass cheap undead priest and get huge manakin armies. also your bless gives berserk and causes fear

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Thanks, I can work with that. One question, which mages and priests am I summoning in the first couple turns? Do I dump all my research in the path that summons units (conjuration?) and then get revanants for undead? Then who are the powerful preists/nature mages?

As I have seen posted here before, I wish I was at home, not in the office, or I could check! Also, if I was at home, I would be playing...

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Used to play CW a lot, and here's what I posted about it once: my scales (I tried others in about 15 MP games as CW) tend to be Turmoil-3, Sloth-3, Heat/Cold-3, Growth-1, Magic-3. Luck varies but I never take misfortune, because CW's national heroes are too good. I don't go past Growth-1 because the higher growth increases how fast the population dies, without having significant enough an effect on the rise of Carrion critter freespawns - better to take magic or a higher base dominion, imo.

To build up an army capable of expansion without the pretender, I often prophetize the starting centaur commander - this helps spread dominion from the get-go, and also lets him summon 3 Carrion critters each turn. (The alternative is to prophetize a Panic Apostate to reduce upkeep on it, but then you don't raise Carrion because you need the research more.)

---------

Those scales give you a LOT of points for your pretender, so I tend to take a real combat monster - carrion dragon for example loaded up with magic. In addition to going for combat spells, I also really like to have fire-3 and earth-3 : those gems get alchemized for gold, which helps a lot to afford mages, temples, etc, since your population & tax base dies off pretty quick.

Your research isn't going to be great, so I recommend either focusing on nature right away (Mass Protect + Mother Oak) or Conjuration (spectres & lamias for research). When you finally start going up Construction, don't forget the skull research items.

HTH.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

If you take the Carrion Dragon as a pretender then you might want to make sure that you have the magics necessary to cast the carrion spells. It can help give you a boost in the game.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

mother oak is great, it lets you mass produce unholy priests. I would rush up conjuration and possibly go into const if your making thugs or something and once you get tartarians go for thaum.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Your national summons are the Carrion Centaur, Lady, and Lord. They require death & nature.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

carrion lords are very a mainstay, but require tons of nature gems; hence the rush to Mother Oak.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

All,

Thank you for all the good information. I fired up something pretty similar to Cainehill’s plan and have got off to a decent start. Mass Protection makes an incredible difference to a carrion critter army! Also, my SC Carrion Dragon makes a real mess of armies once Invulnerability, Soul Vortex and Fire Shield are cast…

Any good suggestions on a helmet for him? He only has three slots available and all the helmets seem a bit weak. Horror Helm when he already has fear? Black Iron helmet when he is going to case Invulnerability? Flaming helmet when he is going to fight, not cast spells?

Thanks again!

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

I'd choose the horror helm - sure, the CD has fear, but adding +5 fear makes the fear affect a much larger area (something like 1 hex for every + to fear above 0) and makes the fear more difficult to resist. One of the other possibilities is the starshine skullcap, mostly for the bonus to magic resistance.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Isnt there one that gets a free cast? Basically an added action every round of combat.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Yeah, the one that casts lighting. But its 20 air gems, right? I'm not sure its worth it, since your carrion dragon is probably doing enough damage by itself.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Fear increases in power and radius? Good to know. I will have to look at how I use it then. Against indies, I want them to run away. But often against real nations, I want to kill them all and fear does not help in that endevour.

Hmm, against that Mitlan castle I was thinking about storming, fear on a SC would be great. Scare them out of the gate, then eat the commanders at the back. The rest of the troops just break down the walls, but do not storm, saving them from the arrow fire.

Thanks again, I see why you beat Norfleet!

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

An extra action would be nice, but I suspect I need either water or air magic. Right now I am F,N,D, and E.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Long term luck is very good for a pop-killer because you get income sources popping up. Those mines are nice and with a decent empire at high luck you will see several. They become your only source of income if you take a setback and get driven back a bit from the frontier.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Think of it like this, if a normal battle is going to last 5 turns, the hat is probably going to kill 4 people (thanks to uber precision) after 20 battles that's 80 people. Since most will probably be weakling indies I'll say an average cost of 10 gold apiece, that comes to 800 gold worth of kills. 20 gems => 800 gold is better than alchemy IIRC (but not by much)
I'd say this makes the hat a decent investment if you haven't got anything better (and were going for the required research anyway).
However, if you find that your battles last longer than that changes things.
I think you should just make a test game and see how effective the hat works with your pretender and chosen spells and work out if its worth it.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

But something like the Starshine Skullcap or Wraith Crown will help keep your expensive pretender alive. As Oversway said, the carrion dragon is going to kill a lot of units, especially if it has water or fire for BoW / Fire Shield. That is, of course, as long as it stays alive : I've lost CDs to a sleep spell (which the SS might have prevented) and to mass XBow fire, which the WC probably would've prevented.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

starshine if you will be facing mages, wraithcrown for (expensive) all purpose and horror helm for routing (horror helm gives+5 fear, carrion dragon has good fear base AND death magic adds fear). for the misc's give him luck and something (maybe reinvig)

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Also, bear in mind that many of the units killed by the helm would have been killed anyway, either by hurling themselves at a fire shield, freezing to death, being souldrained, or being picked off by a spare attack when they're the last unit in base contact with the carrion dragon.

Edit: Oh, and do factor in the forging time, plus the fact that gems are often worth much more than their alchemy value, as well as the fact that Dominions isn't exactly short on summons, spells and items that give you a 100% return on investment in a full 20 or more turns.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

I wasn't saying the helmet is better than other alternatives, I just responded to the part about it costing too much by saying that if you haven't got anything better it can be worth its price. I did not say it was the best/ultimate option.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

New problem. Last night my Carrion Dragon retreated from a battle that he would have won naked, in his sleep, with his claws tired. It was in friendly dominion and one carrion critter had spawned. Mitlan attacked, killed the critter and the CD retreated. Thing was, there was nowhere to run and he was killed…

Any way around this sort of problem? I suppose some PD would have helped, but Carrion Woods is low on cash and I was expecting to lose the province. I only took it to destroy the temple, as I am counting on a lot of dominion in this game.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

only solution is to send in sufficient troops (at the rear, on hold and attack, or fire if archers) that they are not all killed before he wins the battle. Unhappily, the retreat rules mandate that commanders retreat if their troops do; or that commanders retreat if there are no other troops and one of the commanders dies.

also, guarantee yourself a retreat path

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Did you have minor troops attached to him? Maybe bodyguards? Were they scripted or did they rush in to the attack?

The basic AI pretty much has to have a "if I have bodyguards, and they die, then Im in trouble and should retreat" type of thinking.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Sounds like Saxon did what is normally the smart thing to do with a single SC in a province: he didn't recruit, didn't buy any PD, so there usually wouldn't have been anything to rout and cause the SC to retreat.

But, at the beginning of the turn, before movement, a carrion beast was auto-generated by his friendly dominion. That single carrion beast was killed, causing his pretender to retreat.

It's one of the frustrating things about Dominions, and sadly I don't expect it to change in Dom3, since troops causing retreat is nominally part of the balancing of SCs.

Hmm - maybe if retreating couldn't be caused by the death of mindless units? A militia event could still cause you to retreat / get you killed, but carrion / undead freespawns, etc, could not.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

or just take 1 or 2 centaur archers way at the back set to fire.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Some ideas: http://www.the-battlefield.com/forum...?showtopic=426

Growth and magic will increase the quality of randomly generated carrion critters.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Cainehill has hit the situation on the mark, I did not have anyone attached to the CD.

At least I have lots of units who can call the god. That way I get it back in two turns. Then, I have it attack a province at the same time C'tis has Orion's Knights attack the same province. Those Flambeau make very short work of an undead dragon, buff spells or not...

Three deaths now, his magic is going to be nearly wiped out and his absence has allwed Vanheim to start eating into my heartland. Once you start losing temples and dominion, it can be tough to recover. Wish me luck!

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

set all your unholy priests (the undead dyrads are the best per gem for pure reanimation iirc) to reanimate, make an army of around 500 carrion beasties (the undead centaurs rock with cb), back up with a mass protection mage and hordes of unholy priests. If only there was a battlefield wide spell to increase attack, then carrion critters would be amazing.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

The carrion critters don't need any increase in attack: most have multiple attacks, and every attack means -1 def for the target ...

You need:

Vinemen - those can't be banished, are cheap, upkeep-free and can be mixed with your carrion critters speed-wise without problem

(Mass) Protection - to keep arches from killing your unshielded troops too easily

Mound Kings (ench-2, death-2, 3 gems) - to command your armies and gather all the freespawns

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

you forgot black servants, they scout and if you give em a lycan amulet, horror helm, some form of black steel armour (even the weak one) and a lucky pendant/vine shield they can slaughter indies. In my last, mega forgefest of doom ulm game i had a prophetised black servant (who, due to enemy dominion had about 12 health) hold a castle gate against hundreads of ulmish troops including multiple priests and loads of arbalests. he has full black steel armour+helm+kite shield, boots of giant strength and girdle of might for strength on lifesteal and an amulet of luck for all purpose. Black servants are cheap, low conjuration thugs and, with ethereal, decent starts, full slots and stealth work great for anyone with even below average forge powers.

I forgot about the - to defence, all carrion critters have atleast 4 attacks (3x sleep vine attacks+a claw/bite) iirc and some have 7 (6 sleep vine attacks). The multiple attacks+mega fatigue works great vrs small elite forces as high defence goes down with the multiple attacks until they are knocked out and killed. carrion woods, if they can get up mother oak and other spells (that one that reanimates dead people as vinemen is good for them) can be a force to be reckoned with and lategame when they have atleast dozens of unholy priests their reanimation numbers often can match those of ermor (since their summoned mages also reanimate) and, in extreme unholy mage hording then can surpase them.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

Thank you again, I have been able to drag myself out of the hole and am moving forward again. As you say, the mass of carrion critters are impressive, except against mechanical men... However, once they were out of the way, the green tide is rolling again.

The map is relativly small and gems are a bit short, so I have not been able to boost my units too much. However, more conservative play has helped me ensure that each attack is a win.

The AI is doing something interesting with Desert Tombs. It is holding some 1500 undead at the C'tis capital. Not quite sure what to do about them! I can eventually win the map if they stay passive, as I can win with provinces. However, I may see what a battle that big looks like. With Mass Protection, I know I am far more than a match for them with equal numbers, but 1500 is a fair bit.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

get a fairly strong commander (banelord/carrion lord/tartarian/pretender) and give them regen, reinvig and very high regen. Aslong as the enemy mages dont cast decay he will plow through undead armies like nothing you've ever seen and regenerating any wounds he takes due to godo hp, prot and regen.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

I thought regen didn't work on undead, like my Carrion Dragon or a Banelord? Let me give it a shot!

That said, it looks like I will be able to dominion them out. I have been pushing hard to keep the carrion critters coming and am slowly overwhealming C'tis. They are also on a long peninsula and I am taking the ocean around them and building temples. Hitting them from both sides should help. The game is taking a long time, the higher level of difficulty has made the AI pretty good.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

regen works on undead, but not on the lifeless. all the carrion things (dragon, ettin, mandragoras, etc) are lifeless, and thus - no regen.

Though lifedrain still works for them.

Re: Carrion Woods ideas please
 

yea, regen really helps if your sending your banelord vrs undead.