Carrion Woods ideas please

[Saxon]

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?

[Wish]

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.

[shovah]

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

[Saxon]

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...

[Cainehill]

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.

[Gandalf Parker]

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.

[shovah]

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.

[Saxon]

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.

[archaeolept]

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

[Wick]

Saxon said:One question, which mages and priests am I summoning in the first couple turns?

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