Is there Life After Death? (And how to make the most of the Death 9 blessing...)

[geo981010]

A while back there was some discussion on one of the cool perks of the Death 9 blessing - Life after Death. In the mid game on, a large portion of (non Ermor) gold income goes to supporting your mages, especially if you are fielding mages and have any real research plans. Having blessed mages get killed and returned as Soulless solves this - they come back dead and no longer demand their pay, so you can afford to hire more of them But what is the best way to do this? Been playing around with it and came up with some interesting ideas...

First off - trying to find a way to kill them once without risking the Soulless Version of the mage. Looking for area effect spells that the undead would be immune to but the live unit wouldn't - like Soul Vortex and Breath of Winter (or similar chill). Have a mage cast it and the others positioned in the same square will die from the effect, but the Soulless Versions are immune to same effect so they are ok. Soul Vortex takes a lot of research and isn't very effective (maybe 1/4 commanders would be converted in a 5 round battle). Breath of Winter did very well however - almost all troops in the same square as the Chill aura commander or troop (ghosts, etc) usually die in a normal or colder province within a couple of rounds. With this any nation can convert over some mages reliably if they can get a Water 2 mage around or the Rime Hauberk(though make sure they don't die before being blessed!). Just have to position your troops carefully and you can have hordes of them in no time...

Pythium, however, gets a really huge bonus in conVersions. The other thing undead are immune to is poison, and that poison aura on the hydras is perfect for these conVersions! Put your mages in one spot, and have a hydra with "Guard commander" assigned to one of them and somewhere nearby. Get them blessed in the first turn, and one baby hydra can convert 4+ theurgs in a 3 turn battle reliably. Since this is available in turn 2 for usage, this really allows them to start throwing around Soulless ex-theurgs stacks very early. Quickness and Mind burn would be the immediate research goals, and then Paralyze and Soul Slay, and later Frozen heart and False horor for your Theurg hordes. You can have amazing no upkeep 0 encumberance quickened mages everywhere with cheap screens of legion hordes to man the line- nasty, nasty. Would like to try this a little more, but for Pythium this seems to be a pretty effective strategy. PoD doesn't even require killing your economy to get there (80 point 40 admin castle, +3 order, +2 Production&Growth, -3 Luck, 0 Cold&magic, 9 Death PoD, rest dominion (6?)), and the PoD makes free soulless bodyguards for your Soulless commanders.

I imagine Bog Beasts (Miasma C'tis starting spell = undead shaman rush) could act as hydra replacements, but haven't tried this out yet. Also, this would allow C'tis to get over the Miasma problem - if you need indie mages, buy them and convert them quickly to Soulless so the Miasma doesn't disease and kill them.

Any other successful experiments with this, or thoughts on the Soulless Pythium nation? Haven't seen many threads on interesting bless effect strategies recently, so I hope you all ain't hording knowledge on me!

Further misc thoughts:
(don't worry - these won't be on the test )
With the hydra conVersions, about 80% of the units got one affliction, 10% got zero, and 10% two. The only afflictions that matter is the feeble minded (1/16 chance or so?) which really sucks, and the chest wound for the +5 encumberance. Still, the chest wound leaves them with similar encumberance to the old Version, but I tried to stick them on research duty asap. With the Chill conVersions, most of the Theurgs die in one Chill hit, so almost all of them got one and only one affliction.

the Soulless stats. Obviously they gain undead status, which means they no longer heal, and are immune to death magic, poision and cold. They also have incredibly bad stats (4 attack, 2 defense, 4 precision, 15 hp (for size 2 soulless), 10/25/0 base leadership, 0 encumberance, 2 strat move, etc), and become amphibious. Most bonuses are lost in the conVersion - research bonus goes away, Vanir stealth, fire resistance from Abysia, etc etc, so you really are left with a crappy unit. I think it's a bug, but they also lose Holy status, which means they can't be blessed again.

Soulless will not gain anymore experience, so if they die with 1 star they come back with one star and stay there.

On the plus side, Soulless will have normal full item slots (2 hands, head, armor, feet, 2 misc), even if the unit it came from didn't, which can be handy in giving a Coutyl an Astral Helm or Thistle mace after conVersion.

Lack of precision can be worked around- you really need to have mages that are going for 100% accurate spells (Incinerate, Mind Burn, Frozen heart), summoning spells, or keep them as research only.

If you pay big bucks for specials on the mages (Vanir for the mirror image/stealth), they probably cost to much to make them worthwhile to convert en masse. Also, some nations troops require a lot of extra care with this - Abysia has to be careful to not torch the recently converted (put fire protection on them even though they have it already!), Jotun/Caelum have cold resistance so you need to try poison or Soul Vortex. High HP mages like R'lyeh are tough to do too...

With the Shroud of the Battle Saint (Construction 4, Astral 1, requires armor slot), you can make any unit blessed and have them qualify for your undead mage legions. This is a big reason for Ermor to take Death 9 - allows them some indie mage hiring (special event cash) as long as they convert them quickly. This requires more research and astral gems, so this is probably too hard to focus on converting non-holy troops regularly.

Because of this, I think viable nations for these strategies would be limited to:
Pythium, C'tis, Marignon, Mictlan, T'ien Ch'i, maybe Raptor Caelum, maybe Iron Faith Ulm.

Ermor could supplement with it.

The others are just too hard to kill nicely (Jotun, underwater) and/or don't have cheap mage priests to bless(Vanheim, Man) or have real mage priests at all (Arco, Machacka), so I can't get the conVersions done early to make it worthwhile.